Yet Another Christmas Projects Post

Once again Christmas arrived much too quickly this year. I wanted to avoid the candle holders, picture frames, cutting boards, etc that are typically given and decided to get a little artistic.

The first project was a rootball that I had among my collection of cutoffs and random bits that came from a retiring woodworker. I had in mind a sculpture of sorts.. something inspired by the piece in the livingroom on the set of Two and a Half Men . The base is a round puck of a kind of rosewood.. really beautiful stuff.

The second is a piece of crazily-spalted maple. The board refuses to stay flat, so I played on that and framed it with a slightly-wider border of walnut, tacked and glued in places where it seemed to pivot on. A blast of spray-shellac really darkened it up and brought out the color.

The third project was a cherry serving tray. It was incredibly quick to make and I think I took about a dozen orders from family members for future trays.

The last piece was a walnut branch from the back yard. I split it in half last year and let it dry. There were some streaks of silver and blue where the sapwood and heartwood meet, so it looks pretty cool. I stepped one half higher than the other to give it a little more appeal.

All four projects took about 6 hours of work, minus a few hours of rattle-canning and sanding.

-- Dan, Rochester, NY