Something different.

New direction for me yesterday. The guys that own the house I remodeled ask me to do a couple of mosaics and mount them in picture frames to go into the bathroom. I've seen this done on TV but have never tried it before. This is what I got done yesterday and will finish applying the field pieces this morning and will grout it tonight. They furnished the honu (HOE-NEW, Hawaiian for turtle) and the field pieces are left over from the shower. I've got some Koa to make the frames out of. I'll be posting more photos as this comes together.

No, I didn't forget the library job! The guys are having a big birthday bash next month and want them finished for that.


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way to go royall:thumb:

if its going in the bathroom, make sure to seal the grout really well, and spar varnish the frame to within an inch of it's life. about 5 coats will do! :D
 
Those look real great Royall. Be interested to see how you mount the picture frame around it. You going to rebate the back of the moulding you put around the edge. Will it overlap the tile edges? I suppose we will see in due course.:D:thumb:
 
Thanks everybody. Warm fuzzies are always welcome:D:thumb: Didn't get as far as I wanted today. but both pieces ard together and I started cutting the Koa for the frames. I was going to grout the pieces then mount them. but changed my mind.... yeah I got one:D I was going to mount the honu piece in a rabbet from behind the frame and the whale piece in a rabbet from the front of the frame due to the boarder around it. I didn't want to cover any of the wave detail of the boarder. Then I decided to just drop them both in from the front and then grout them in a rabbet that is just a little deeper than the piece is thick. The whale will be more difficult as it is hand made locally and varies quite abit in thickness. I'll then grout up to the edge of the frame. The honu is 16x16 and the whales/mermaid is 14x14. I like the honu piece but find the other one a bit too "cutesy" for my taste.

This is the first time I've worked with Koa. I'm working very slow with it as it is a little on the expensive side. It was 58 bucks for the board that 4 1/2"x 58". It is 13/16" thick and had some rough spots so I run it through the planer with new blades. Went very lightly and still got tear out of the grain.:( I did run a scraper over the worst of it and got most of it cleaned up. :eek:

Tomorrow I'll rabbet the inside edge and miter the corners. I'm going to spray them out with lacquer. Hopefully I'll be able to deliver the finished wall hangins by Friday.:thumb:

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I like the honu piece but find the other one a bit too "cutesy" for my taste.

Ah, fess up, Royall... you're just trying to persuade us you're not turning into an old softie! ;)
That baby whale is hyper-cute! Maybe there's a new specialty for you to get into! :thumb:

This is the first time I've worked with Koa.

In his best The Dude voice: "All the best boards are made of Koa!"

Thanks,

Bill



Ok, so I can't resist posting the woodworking dialog from Surf's Up:

Big Z: Look at that. Do you know what you're sitting on there? This is koa wood. The best surfboards in the world are made of that stuff.
Cody Maverick: Yeah?
Big Z: You got a koa board?
Cody Maverick: I don't have a board board.
Big Z: Well, you wanna... you wanna make one?
Cody Maverick: Nah.
Big Z: What? Man! I come all the way back here to give you the necklace, and now I'm offering to make you a board and you say "Nah"? Get off your lazy , we're making a board. Come on. It'll be the best board you ever had, I'll tell you that.

Big Z: [teaching Cody to plane a board] All right, look. First of all, with the grain. With the grain. You see what I'm doing here? You let the tool do the work, you see? Just like you're riding the wave, you let the wave do the work. You don't fight the wave. You can't fight these big waves.

edited. Full text at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0423294/quotes
 
OK!!! I know what's happened here. Let's start over. The guys wanted me to surround the honu with some left over tile. They bought the honu, I didn't make it or the whale. I'm just mounting, grouting, and framing them!:D The most artistic thing I did is the broken tile around the honu. Sorry for not getting all the facts straight in the beginning:eek:
 
But, but...the broken tile is the best part. You're a master, Royall! :p

Seriously, both mosaics look great, and I'll bet the koa frames will be excellent icing on the cake. Nice work, man.
 
Yeah, great job. And yeah, cute whale. Cute mermaid too.
Now, my beloved wife would never let me put up a painting/whatnot of a mermiad, but I never thought about trying to camouflage it by putting a cute baby whale in the same piece! :rofl::rofl::rofl:

...art
 
Cathie dosen't like mermaids either:D Funny that the guys being gay couldn't find a mosaic with a merman in it. I was teasing them about it when they showed this one to me:D They tried to get the lady to make one with a merman but she didn't want to go there. For an artist I thought that was a little narrow minded. There is a large number of gays in the Puna district of the big island and Cathie and I haven't found a couple yet that we didn't mind being around. Most are very talented guys. There is one couple that has been together 27 years and build fantastic homes. The latest is an 18-1900 sf home on post and pier like ours is except there posts are 8' tall:eek: Got a great view of the ocean though:thumb: I need to ask them how it felt in the last 5.0 quake we had a couple of weeks back:eek::D
 
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