Wise Men Project - Cutting Nearly Finished & Shaping has begun

Yesterday I had a great day in the shop. I went to the local Woodcraft store and bought some wood that I needed to work on my wise men and the eagle project. I decided to work on the wise men fist since I need to get these done by Christmas time.

One of the boards that I picked up at Woodcraft was a nicely grained piece of red heart. I had always used bloodwood in the past for my red, and it makes a really nice red. The problem is that it is like cutting bricks. Red heart on the other hand is fantastic and easy to work with. If I am pleased with the finish on the final product, I think that I will switch over to using red heart for all my reds. There are a lot of projects that I have wanted to do with red in them, but with the bloodwood I had always avoided them.

So I cut out a total of 16 pices yesterday, so the only pieces left to cut are the hands and the chest that carries the gold.

So I dove into shaping the pieces. It took about an hour and I had the first wiseman roughed out. It was a pretty straight forward shaping process and I am very pleaseed with the way it is turning out. I started with the yellow robe and thined it down using the table belt sander. I used this a reference point for the main body piece. I feel that the main body needs to come out and be rounded, like a belly, and the yellow robe needs to be lower.

Once I had the main body shaped then a worked on the sleaves and the collar. I made the sleaves taller than the main body to give it the feal that the wise man has his hands outstretched and is holding the chest of gold.

Finally, I finished up with the head and the turban, bringing them down to the right size and rounding the face equally on all sides to provide for a nice rounded shape. I have a couple of touch up areas to complete today on the shaping, and I need to figure out how I am going to make the chest for the gold.

Well, I am going to get in the shop, time is ticking. More later!

16 Pieces Cut on November 8, 2008
37 Pieces Since Bloging