Celtic Cross

All-

After admiring much of y’alls work for the last few months I finally broke down and created a profile to share some of my own. Here’s my first.

I made this cross for my church and delivered it on Easter Sunday 2007. It is the 3rd of five donated projects that took place between 2006-2009.

It is 14'-0"T. x 8'0"W. The inner circle is a little over 3'-0" in dia. Every bit of it used 3/4" dimensional red oak that was "boxed" to replicate what would have been a very heavy solid beam 8" square. All edges were then routed to hide seams. The inside "cut outs" of the main vertical & horizontal beam intersection were done essentially using a barrel stave approach. The inner circle is 6" square and was made by making two arched forms matching the inner & outer radii of the ring. I then ripped the lumber into 1/8” thick wafers that I then glued back up and clamped to the forms. I purposefully ran them wider & longer than I needed in order to then rip them to dimension. Once done, I then assembled the inner & outer ring panels and sandwiched them between planking that was cut to a slightly fatter curve. Once these were assembled the inner & outer curves were sanded flush with a belt sander and all edges routed as mentioned above. They were then dry fitted, cut to their final length, and attached to the inside corners of the cross.

This effort then served as a prototype for the hammer beam project which was project #4. I’ll get this posted soon.

Enjoy and let me know what you think.