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There are some brave women here on the island who get together and travel the tip-to-tip Confederation Trail by bicycle. Last year a customer got me to make a commemorative décor piece as a gift for his wife who made the 273 km journey.

First I used my iPad to make a mock-up of what he wanted on the board. A few design changes followed, including turning the bike logo the other way around, since the women rode from east (right) to west (left).

The brown portion was to represent the trail itself and the customer wanted it to be routed out so that it wasn’t flat like the rest of the board. He also wanted to be able to put two photos, taken on the day, into the piece. Then he decided to have the top portion of the trail end with a post and the starting and ending place names to be painted on the posts which would extend off the top of the board.

The next step was to draw out the revised piece to scale on paper, it’s about 30” x 20”.

I glued together pieces of pine to make up the board including the two small tops of the posts.

On to cutting out the photo areas, I had two 4” x 6” pieces of glass to use so I cut about 1/4” all around smaller than that with my jigsaw.

Then I used my small router to take away the extra 1/4” just deep enough to fit the glass, photo, and a cardboard backing.

I also routed out places for small glass holders on each side of the photos. This is the back of the piece, you can see how the piece of glass will fit in (and not fall through!), then the photo will go in, covered by cardboard:

The front openings are slightly rounded over, this is what it looks like from the front:

Here is the back with a photo in it:

I will continue explaining how I made this piece in my next blog post.

Thanks for reading!

I am still here working away in my shop everyday. I am hoping my readers from blogspot have switched over with me, please add my site to however you receive blog posts!

Today I am sharing some newer signs and will share some of my larger projects soon.

I use a lot of turquoise colours in my work. We are on an island and there are many tourists here that come for the summer and spend time at the beach. So turquoise seems perfect for a “Beach” sign. I have done both horizontal and vertical stripes which I paint and distress and then paint “Beach” over the top.

I am trying to switch my blog to my own site at followyourheartwoodworking.com

Please let me know if you are seeing this!

I just had to share this. I was cleaning up my workshop a bit today… sawdust gets everywhere. I decided to clean out the two cupboards beside my tablesaw where I keep dado blades, wood throat plate inserts, extra push sticks and jigs.

 

 

I often seem to find myself cutting shapes out of wood. I’ve cut mermaids, lobsters, anchors, whales, the shape of my province, and even pigs and cows.

I decided to do a reverse cut out of a cow, meaning keeping the outer pieces, leaving a blank space in the shape of a cow.

I used some spruce and stained it and then cut the pieces in uneven lengths and glued the pieces together, edge to edge.

The cow shape was cut with my jigsaw. Once I had it cut out I thought it needed something else, the cow needed to be filled in. First I painted the cut edges of the cow with a cream colour and then painted a thin piece of plywood black and screwed it to the back of the piece. I added three coat hooks across the bottom.

 

I superimposed Farmhouse and Welcome to give customers ideas of what I could paint on this piece. Someone may want their family name as well.

 

 

26″ x 13 1/2″