This is a very belated Christmas present for my dad.

It’s made with some fantastic wood. My dad’s dad was a woodworker. He passed away before I was born, but left a HUGE shed packed full of wood cut-offs (small pieces). When I went out there for my grandmother’s funeral late last year I snagged several very beautifully figured pieces.

So it’s a clock made by his son from his late father’s wood supply. Hopefully he’ll like it :)

The design is something I made up based on how much (or little in this case) wood I had. I think the top and bottom should have been a little less long (wide?), but it felt like a tragedy to waste any of this wood, so I left it long. The cool thing is that the sides were one board cut in half, so the figuring is mirrored on both sides. Neat! I think it looks like flames :) I ran out of wood for the back so I had to splice two pieces together, but like the sides, it was cut from a single board, so the two halves of the back mirror each other.

So, it’s technically a box, but I don’t really know what you’d put in it since the size is so odd. But, whatever, form over feature in this case :)

The dark wood is heavily figured walnut, the light wood is figured maple. The picture just doesn’t do justice to how awesome this wood looks.

the finish process was:

Dark Cherry stain mixed with shellac, then sanded off (on the maple only, to make the figuring stand out)
3 coats of wipe on poly
final coat of shellac

I’m still figuring out finishing, so it wasn’t very scientific, but I think it turned out nice. Actually speaking of, if anyone gets this far and has some pointers, I’m all ears. I put on several layers of wipe on poly, but it always dried to a dull color, and never looked as awesome as it did when it was wet. So that’s why I put the shellac on last, and it shined it right up.

I was up late in the shop one night, finishing cleaning up my previous project, and didn’t feel like going in, so I picked up a scrap block of mahogany and this is what came out.

Nothing spectacular, but after looking at it on my desk for a couple weeks now, something about the simple design really appeals to me

My coworker likes boats so I made him a boat clock for his birthday.