Wow a lot has happened over the last several months and not a lot of it has to to with woodworking. I transferred with my job from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City and so that has really occupied me for several months. I won't go in to the whole saga here but there were many issues that came up as we tried to move from Las Vegas to Salt Lake. We actually arrived in Salt Lake with no place to live but eventually got most things settled. We have one more move coming up in February and then I will be permanently settled in Salt Lake.
As a result of all this my woodworking equipment was in storage for awhile and I didn't really work on anything but starting in October I was able to get back to my nativity scene. I am now finished with all 12 pieces of the Kathy Wise nativity scene that I started on back in April. This project has been such a good learning experience. I made several mistakes and had to start some pieces over but they became better. I ended up doing the whole thing out of poplar and stain. A few things that I learned is that not all poplar is created equal. I found that some of the wood I used was much more green than other wood. By green I don't mean not as dry but actually more green in color. Some poplar is much more white. I can see it especially after staining the items. The stain really comes out different depending on the base color of the wood. I guess that is one thing that is a disadvantage to staining is that you don't really know what color it will be in the end.
At one point I had cut out several small 2 inch square blocks of poplar and stained each one with one of the stain colors I have. That gave me a basic guide but some of my finished nativity scene pieced turned out to no be the same color as any of the blocks. You will notice it especially on the camel and the ox. They were cut from poplar that had a much darker green tint to it.
I also realized one more thing while doing my last 2 pieces. I feel sort of dumb now but I was putting a couple of coats of polyurethane on each piece and then gluing everything together. My last two pieces I glued it all together first and then applied the finish to the piece as a whole. It was a lot faster, a lot easier, and it looks the same.
Well, here are several pictures of the finished pieces. Enjoy! ..... Not sure what I will work on next.
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| A little closer look at the detail |
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| I used a wood burner to create the lines on the camel's hump |
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| The finished Joseph I started months ago! |
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| A closer look at the detail of Joseph |
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| The complete 12 piece set |
