Lion with the pieces still attached.

Its good for me to have 2 picture alike for one gets cut up and without a picture to go by it might take forever. 

Then after all the pieces have been shaped after the pattern has been removed its even harder to put him back together.

this time I was smart enough to leave the outside all in one piece to have a place to reconstruct the pieces and start shaping them. 

Notice the numbers. The front side will get ground away so yes I did number both sides. And after lots of thought I traced around each piece on the 1/8" plywood so I would know for sure where each piece went. 

 

But after all the pieces have been shaped to suit then each piece has to be glued and positioned almost exactly for the final pieces to have a place to fit.

I also learned something almost too late. Notice on the inside of the one piece box I have  2 1/8"Baltic birch strips. This takes out all the gaps the scroll saw blade made making the lion fit together perfect. Now to get glue on each piece and laid exactly where it goes is one more chore.

Truthfully I did have to sand the sides of a few of the last pieces to fit where they were supposed to go. Glue takes some area not planned for. If I had not left the four outside pieces together, I might still be trying to fit this poor lion back together. My daughters wants a couple of these for their homes but after I had so much fun gluing this guy back together I keep putting off making more of this easy little project. 

I used 3/4" ash then after I got all the pieces cut out I reconstructed his head on another 3/4" piece so it would stick out then I tapered the sides of his face to blend in with the rest of his body. I used water colors for a coloring book. Also I used 1/8" BB for the back making it a box to glue the pieces back together. I knew gluing 1/8" plywood to 3/4" wood,I would end up with a warped lion but hey, he might not tell too many people.

If I hadn't got my wife out there and kept all the glued pieces pushed together as I was applying the glue ain't no telling what we would have ended up with.

This is the picture I enlarged that was in the stained glass pattern book.

pictures.docx

That is AWESOME!!!!

That came out great!!!

I can only say that I was inspired by your work. Oh yes one more thing.................darn I wished I could do that

nice job!!!!!

 

That is fantastic!!

Great Job!! 

OUTSTANDING - how many hours do you  think you have in it? Too many to talk about probably.  Thanks for sharing.

Nice work. Looks very impressive. 

Fred I used a 6" sandpaper flapper disk from Norton in an air grinder that had been worn down to about 4" in diameter so contouring the shapes went kinda fast. I did loose a little skin here and there but I think on this lion I forgot and glued the pattern directly on to the wood and it was forever removing the sticky. I normally put clear packing tape down first then the spray adhesive onto the tape then the pattern on that. For some reason I was not all there that day. Its good to have a reminder now and then and I for sure won't forget the clear packing tape anymore..

  This was the first time I used a stained glass pattern for usually they are not ideal for the pieces of glass are too big and then turning a picture in to wood ends up looking like someone made it in his first day of wood shop in school.

  Another thing, with the picture being square I could take out the spaces the saw blade made using 1/8" BB on two sides of the puzzle. This is much faster than real intarsia like some do. I'm lazy so I stain the wood rather than buy that exotic stuff. 

   

This picture came off google somewhere and it took two or three times longer to do than the lion. There is lots of different heights of wood and it is all Ash wood. All the color came from a garage sale, printers ink refills that someone screwed up their printer trying to save money. This is a very cheap item if it gets to a sale but most is flushed down the drain and the people pissed they bought it.

This is the third size of this picture I have made and on this last one I used the bandsaw to cut the pieces down to different heights. Oh and I mentioned the square lion has no gap between pieces. This picture I could not do that with the BB and it does have a gap here and there. I decided this picture would be a good candidate to work with for the outside is all one piece. I use lacquer on everything I build..

 

I normally rubdown everything I make using 0000 steel wool to take the shine off and it makes things very slick if a person uses Johnsons paste wax as the lubricant. You can see the small group of purple flowers in the upper left side, I thought they were grapes, wife informed me they are wisteria flowers, anyway that group is flat looking compared to the rest of the picture. This is where I started rubbing down everything, All the pieces were still loose not glued in yet. I got tired, didn't finish and glued everything in and forgot it. I can bring back the shine if needed just wait an hour or so and polish it all with Johnson's again.

 My vision of rubbing all I do with steel wool makes things look more professionally built and being flat or dull looking does not show flaws near as much.