Grandpa's House and Workshop - Relief Carving

This relief carving was done in a piece of walnut that I got from my grandfather’s shop after he passed away. The carving is of his home and workshop in Blairstown, NJ. I made the piece as a gift for my cousin.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of the project completely finished. The first two images show the carving just before I sprayed its polyurethane finish. The third image is while I was still working on the project. If you look at the tree branch toward the right, you’ll notice a chunk of wood is missing. I had to repair that, which was a huge pain; but I learned an important lesson about power carving thin branches. The color of the wood is most accurate in the third image. I wish I had a picture that showed the wood at an angle, because it’s about 3” thick.

The fourth image is the picture I took that I used as a reference for the carving. The workshop is barely visible beyond the house, so I used artistic license to show more of the shop in my carving. My grandfather was a cabinetmaker by trade, but spent most of his life as a carpenter. He really enjoyed the woodworking he did in that shop after he retired (semi-retired… he was still a chicken farmer during that time), so I thought it would be fitting to make it more prominent in the carving than it is in the photograph.

-- Joe