Christmas/Easter Cross

I made this for my mother-in-law last Christmas but I thought Good Friday might be a good time to post it.

This is NOT my design. My wife found it in a catalog. The original was made of metal. My version is made of bloodwood and walnut. It is about 15” tall.

This turned out to be very challenging. The cross section diameter of the heart is about 5/16” and because the grain can’t follow the heart curves, it was very fragile in the cross grain areas. After about 4 or 5 tries that snapped at various stages in the process, I finally got smart.

My solution was to create my own “plywood”. I resawed the bloodwood for the heart then turned the two pieces 90 degrees to each other and glued it back together. It worked perfectly. I had strength in any direction and was able to finish the heart on my first try with my “plywood”.

BTW, I don’t know how to carve. I used a MicroPlane rotary rasp in my drill press to shape the heart. It worked very well. I also used my rotary tool to smooth up some of the detail.

Gluing it up was a challenge too. No real way to clamp this thing so I used hot glue. Not too sturdy but it’s just hanging on a wall.

As usual the finish is “Tung Oil Finish”.

-- Leon -- Houston, TX - " I create all my own designs and it looks like it "