Shallow Ship's Wheel Shadow Box

Wow Jchon – that is outstanding. I would have loved to see the look on the Hero’s face when he received it. Did you turn the wheel’s spokes (not sure what they are called)? Again, nice work and a great cause.

-- Bill - "Suit yourself and let the rest be pleased." http://www.cajunpen.com/

very touching. chills.
a wonderful piece.

-- "Functional WoodArt" by Debbie, Canada (http://www.execulink.com/~yohan)

Nice. Real nice tribute.

-- Bob Vila would be so proud of you!

Interesting story, and nice job. Can you explain how your formed the circle?

-- John

Very nice job. I am sure that getting some appreciation for what you did for the war vet goes a long way.

-- Grumpy - "Always look on the bright side of life"- Monty Python

That is a super job! Very attractive design and classy wood joinery. I’m sure it is/will be treasured. Nice work!

-- Tom, Surfside Beach, SC - Romans 8:28

Thanks for all the great comments :o)

cajunpen – yes, I turned the wheel’s handles… I’m rather pleased with the way they turned out (no pun intended). I just put a length of 2×2 on the lathe and started turning them all in a row, without a template or measuring, just eyeing them to the first in the line to get them all alike.

wwnovice – being the first circle I’ve ever constructed, I was a little concerned before starting this project, but having completed it now, I feel I could really pound out a ton of them with no problem. I just chose the number of sections I wanted to have (12 in this case), multiplied that times the number of sides I’d have to angle (2) and divided that number into the number of degrees in a circle (360). 360 / (12×2) = 15. That told me that each side of my 12 pieces (I used 5”x 4” pieces) would need to be cut to 15 degrees in order to form my dodecagon (12-sided polygon). After adding some bloodwood “stitching” for both looks and joinery, I glued them all together. I then attached the dodecagon to a piece of plywood of about the same size w/ sticky tape, found my center and used a nail/string/pencil to draw my inner and outer diameters. A few minutes at the band-saw and some sanding and my circle was complete.

-- Jchon - Denton, TX

Very nice job. I am in the Navy and am always going to retirement ceremonies. This would be great to give as a gift to them. All I nned to do is figure out how to turn wood to make the handles. What kind of wood is it?

-- The tragedy of life does not lie in not reaching your goals, the tragedy of life lies in not having goals to reach for.

Thanks SWODADDY – the wood is nothing special – just scrap oak I had laying around from a previous project (that never happened :o).

-- Jchon - Denton, TX