Trinkets for a Neighbor - Watching Finish Cure.

[glenn bradley]

I have a great neighbor who is a pastor at his church. I am not a big church goer but we tend to go when he is at the pulpit. He is the kind of guy that will, at the drop of a hat, load up his excavator, trailer it to your property, and help you dig trenches, move rocks, level ground, whatever.

I try to be that same kind of guy. Anyway, I am suffering the tortures of the damned otherwise known as waiting for finish to cure. We have had unusually chilly weather here lately . . . I mean some days it barely gets out of the 60s . This has led to a slow cure on the current project. As I often mention, this means it is time to go to the scrap barrel and make some "stuff". My neighbors church runs a program where they provide food for those in need, visit those who cannot get out, and all that kind of wonderful stuff. I thought (or didn't) that I would take some stuff out of the burn barrel and make up a batch of small crosses that he could do with as he pleases amongst his many service programs.

My evil plan involved some small, simple, inlaid crosses. I milled some scrap cherry to 1/4" thickness.

I cut some other scrap to about 1/2" x 1/2". I milled a 1/4" x 1/8" groove at the router table.

This oughta do it.

I glue in the inlay and surface the blanks.

I have a router sled that I have shown before so I won't go too much into that in this thread. Essentially it lets me do accurate, repeatable cuts on multiples of the same item.

I rigged up this cam-action hold down since I have a lot of these to do.

Here is the final "dummy" made out of extra stock; no inlay. I just feel better going in to a run of multiples when I am confident I have the dimensions right.

The blanks will be cut into 2" and 3" pieces. I use my shop made flip stops for this.



You have probably seen people use these spindly sticks to hold small items near the whirling death machines we so dearly love. I use a couple of caps off some fiber optic connectors on the end of a piece of white oak.

This lets you hold down small parts that have a habit of becoming projectiles.

Some people use a pencil. I just like a bit larger thing in my hand when I am that close . . . wait, I just realized that sounded kind of creepy.

I guess I made more blanks than I thought. Wait "I thought?" I don't think I thought at all! What was I thinking !?!

Now I have to half-lap all of these. I will probably do some sort of edge treatment. I guess in my haste to do something nice I failed to realize the volume

 

[Mike Stafford]

Back in the day when I was making jewelry boxes and cutting small pieces for the dividers on a sled I also was hesitant to use fingers or pencils. Somehow I came up the idea to use a piece of dowel with one end dipped in Plasti Dip several times. I had a partial can of this product left over from when I had restored the plastic handles on some Channellocks. The Plasti Dip is quite durable and did not slip when pressing down on a small piece of wood. And a segment of dowel that was nicked by a saw blade was certainly not of much concern considering the alternative.

 

[glenn bradley]

Here we go. I wanted to walk through the whole process once before I batched out a couple of dozen. There's nothing like doing step three of something 24 times only to find out at step five you made a boo-boo.

3" x 2". Now I just have to do the others.

 

[Charles Lent]

Allen,
Do a search for a "Comfort Cross" pattern. Here is what I quickly found on a Google Search. These are small, a bit out of shape when compared to what you are making, but these are to hold for comfort in the Lord when someone is grieving from a loss or some other reason. There is always a demand for them, and no standard shape or size. Just one shaped to be comfortable when held in the hand and fingers wrapped around it. I think your friend will get very excited if he receives an assortment of them. I think he will like what you are making, but my experience says that Comfort Crosses are more in demand.

Charley

 

[David Johnson]

I loved making those small crosses for confirmation classes. The kids still thank me for the gift. Made some with lapped joints and some with 45 degree joints, all combinations of woods , Just what ever came to mind. All are appreciated.
David