Last Thursday after lunch I got an email at work from someone at our church inquiring if we had any crosses on hand or if we would be interested in making one for them on short notice. They had a delegation going to Haiti the following week to assist with building/re-building a church and thought it would nice if they donated a small cross to be hung in the new facility. I replied that we didn't have one already made but depending on what they wanted style/decoration wise, the size, when they needed it by and what suitable wood we had on hand we might be able to put something together. Their only design requests were that it not be a crucifix, be fairly simplistic or undecorated and be small enough to travel easily. Then they dropped the bomb and told us that while they would be in Haiti the next 2 weeks their flight left early the coming Sunday morning so they would need the piece by Saturday afternoon!!!
Ummm wait, so they were inquiring on Thursday afternoon if we can have something ready for them by Saturday afternoon!!!:gar-La; To further complicate matters my wife and daughter were leaving Friday afternoon to go out of town for the weekend so any designing or decorating that required her hand would have to pretty much be done Thursday night. I would also have to be able to have it completely done before she left Friday afternoon since shop time after that for me would be pretty non-existent for me since our 4 year old son and 8 month old daughter were staying home with me and would thus limit me to pretty much only being able to stain/finish after they were in bed. :eusa_thin So I pretty much had the 6-8 hours between when I dropped the kids off and picked them up at daycare and camp on Friday, which luckily was my regular day off, to complete everything. :eusa_doh:
We were determined to get this done in time so I picked out a piece of Cedar I had left over from the board I got from Chris (CB Burls) :thumbs_up and rough cut it to length so we could play around with it. We decided to go with a Tau cross since it was a style the requester had mentioned and Peg sketched out a few on paper until we got a shape we were happy with and cut it out.
We then decided on orientation of the cross on the Cedar to get the best look and fit. We decided to angle it and traced the paper outline onto the board. We had pretty much decided that we probably weren't going to decorate this much, if any, since we were pressed for time. That said, Peg was off the hook at this point, except for final approval and moral support, and the rest was all mine to get right or blow. :gar-Bi
Friday morning rolls around and I decided that since I was going to be cutting this with a jigsaw and having to do a lot of sanding that I would attempt to make a template from hardboard so I could clean it up on the router table with a flush cut bearing bit. This would also allow us to make more in the future if we wanted to.
Template cut and sanded which required a new toyl since I don't have a spindle sander (stealth gloat) so this would have to do in the interim.
Almost done cutting it out.
Ready to be cleaned up on the router, which also required a new router bit since the bearing bit I had wasn't long enough to make the cut.
After cleaning up on the router table we decided that we liked the grain on the back better than what we had chosen as the front so I flipped it before rounding over the edges and routing the hanging slot.
It was now 4:00 in the afternoon and it was time to start kid pick up and dance drop off. Since they had requested something simple and time wasn't something I now had much of we decided that we would let the Cedar speak for itself and after returning from kid taxi service I started top coating with Satin Polycrylic. I got 2 coats on before Peg and my daughter left and 2 more coats on after. I let it dry and delivered it around 8:15 and the requester loved the Cedar and seemed very pleased with the crosses simplicity. I did have to spend several minutes refusing payment for the item even though we had told them in our follow up emails that we would donate it. She kept insisting that we allow them to pay since their request was so short notice, but I managed to convince her that we wouldn't accept any money from them.
Without further ado, the finished Tau Cross.
While this is kind of far from what we normally do since there was no burning or decoration on it we're thinking about maybe making a few more in our usual style to gauge interest at shows. It also allowed me to do a few new things and learn how not to do some things! :gar-Bi
Thanks for looking and sorry for the long read.
Brian.
Ummm wait, so they were inquiring on Thursday afternoon if we can have something ready for them by Saturday afternoon!!!:gar-La; To further complicate matters my wife and daughter were leaving Friday afternoon to go out of town for the weekend so any designing or decorating that required her hand would have to pretty much be done Thursday night. I would also have to be able to have it completely done before she left Friday afternoon since shop time after that for me would be pretty non-existent for me since our 4 year old son and 8 month old daughter were staying home with me and would thus limit me to pretty much only being able to stain/finish after they were in bed. :eusa_thin So I pretty much had the 6-8 hours between when I dropped the kids off and picked them up at daycare and camp on Friday, which luckily was my regular day off, to complete everything. :eusa_doh:We were determined to get this done in time so I picked out a piece of Cedar I had left over from the board I got from Chris (CB Burls) :thumbs_up and rough cut it to length so we could play around with it. We decided to go with a Tau cross since it was a style the requester had mentioned and Peg sketched out a few on paper until we got a shape we were happy with and cut it out.
We then decided on orientation of the cross on the Cedar to get the best look and fit. We decided to angle it and traced the paper outline onto the board. We had pretty much decided that we probably weren't going to decorate this much, if any, since we were pressed for time. That said, Peg was off the hook at this point, except for final approval and moral support, and the rest was all mine to get right or blow. :gar-Bi
Friday morning rolls around and I decided that since I was going to be cutting this with a jigsaw and having to do a lot of sanding that I would attempt to make a template from hardboard so I could clean it up on the router table with a flush cut bearing bit. This would also allow us to make more in the future if we wanted to.
Template cut and sanded which required a new toyl since I don't have a spindle sander (stealth gloat) so this would have to do in the interim.
Almost done cutting it out.
Ready to be cleaned up on the router, which also required a new router bit since the bearing bit I had wasn't long enough to make the cut.
After cleaning up on the router table we decided that we liked the grain on the back better than what we had chosen as the front so I flipped it before rounding over the edges and routing the hanging slot.
It was now 4:00 in the afternoon and it was time to start kid pick up and dance drop off. Since they had requested something simple and time wasn't something I now had much of we decided that we would let the Cedar speak for itself and after returning from kid taxi service I started top coating with Satin Polycrylic. I got 2 coats on before Peg and my daughter left and 2 more coats on after. I let it dry and delivered it around 8:15 and the requester loved the Cedar and seemed very pleased with the crosses simplicity. I did have to spend several minutes refusing payment for the item even though we had told them in our follow up emails that we would donate it. She kept insisting that we allow them to pay since their request was so short notice, but I managed to convince her that we wouldn't accept any money from them.
Without further ado, the finished Tau Cross.
While this is kind of far from what we normally do since there was no burning or decoration on it we're thinking about maybe making a few more in our usual style to gauge interest at shows. It also allowed me to do a few new things and learn how not to do some things! :gar-Bi
Thanks for looking and sorry for the long read.
Brian.
