Intarsia first pattern

[dedijerry]

"Humility" is a modified Lora Irish drawing, it can be found in her "Great Book of Fairy Patterns" It just so happens to be a Fox Chapel book.

I am going to attempt to make this piece from her line drawing. This will be my first piece without a traditional purchased pattern. I thought it might be fun to try and do a WIP.

I probably won't get too detailed but am going to try and show the steps along the way. I can be a little slow sometimes completing projects so it might take a couple of months or a few days just depending on"Honey Do's" and work.

I used tracing paper and traced the pattern and deleted some of the detail, then made enlarged copies of the traced copy, I taped those together to get my master pattern. Then made enough copies to cut out the pieces to match the woods. She will be about 12"x12".

I have decided to use Purple-heart for her robe, Yellow-heart for her scarf and robe trim pieces, Hard Maple for her skin, Padauk for her hair and lacewood for her wings.

Tonight I have chosen the woods, cut the pieces with my band saw into manageable size, applied my blue painters tape, and attached the patterns to the tape with 3M 77. All ready to start cutting.

[Terry Murphy]

That is going to look great. Keep us posted.

[woodsman]

I am loving it already, very cool pattern. With you doing it, should be spectacular.

[Fran1942]

This is going to be fun. I like wip's. Could we have a look at the whole pattern or the picture that was in the book?
Fran

[JimSawyer]

This should be a wonderful WIP to follow...
I've totally subscribed to this thread...
Do keep us posted...

...And there's no such thing as too many pictures when it comes to an adventure like this.....

Thanks for taking us along...

[Wood Dog]

Thanks Jerry, WIP's are great learning tool. Looks like a fantastic project. Sweeeeeet.

[dedijerry]

This is going to be fun. I like wip's. Could we have a look at the whole pattern or the picture that was in the book?
Fran

Thanks Fran the pattern and pic are there. Should be the first pic.

[Fran1942]

Duh!, my bad. I looked at the pictures of the patterns on the wood and missed looking at the first one. Maybe I have brain damage after all. lol
Fran

[dedijerry]

I got a few pieces cut this afternoon. Have a few gap issues to work on (but then I am willing to have some as long as they are in the right place and not too big.) ie. in the shadows or as a good definition between colors.

I love to remove the pattern as soon as I get a piece cut, that way I can see the colors coming together.

I have already begun to see the depth I will need around the front sleeve. Looks like I will need to shim it up some. The back side of the head wrap in yellow heart (where it comes from behind the head) seems kind of overbearing now but I will cut the thickness in half with my band saw and with some good shaping I think it will be less obtrusive. Looks like this piece will have several other shims.

You might notice that my wood thickness is different. the purple heart and the paduak is 3/4 and the yellow heart is 4/4 but I'll fix that as I start shaping it. Someday I'll get a planer till then I'll just make more sawdust.

I am a little nervous about cutting the small hair pieces so I decided to stop for the evening as I was getting a little tired, and a little chilled out in the garage.

[BernieP]

G'Day Jerry

Looking great so far, must admit took a while to figure out the orientation, but am getting old and live down-under LOL. Look forward to next episode.

Cheers
Bernie

[dedijerry]

Finished cutting tonight... might need to re cut the long yellow trim piece, and I need to do something with the eye. I don't like it without which is what I thought I might do. I have been thinking about wood burning it, or cutting it out and leaving a fret hole ... it is very small as this is somewhat of a small piece overall. Also have decided to leave off the back side of the head wrap, I cut it smaller and thinner but I thought it was just too much and detracted from the face and hair.

It's gonna need some pretty intense shaping to give it the depth it needs.

If you see something... or have some suggestions please don't hesitate to make them. This is gonna be a first for shaping without seeing how somebody else already had shaped it.

Thanks for reading and following!

[JimSawyer]

I'd wood burn the eye...
But that's just me...

Great looking piece..!!!
Can't wait to see it finished....

[fireglass]

Hey Dead Eye,, Wow very nice!!! Am looking forword to seeing her all shaped up. Lance

[dedijerry]

Got to spend the whole afternoon working on "Humility"
Started by cutting a sacrificial sanding shim for the wing, I knew I wanted to give it an overall shape before I shaped the sections and then shaped the individual pieces. I used 1/4' piece of Baltic Birch ply put the wing on it a traced it. I cut out the shim, and attached the wing to the shim.

A little more about that... You probably noticed that I use blue painters tape, well I have not removed any from the back pieces only the front. since the tape is pretty secure I use spay adhesive (pretty heavy) and spray the BB board and then quickly applied the wing and let it dry. This saves me the expense of double sided tape. But you also have to be a little more cautious when sanding although I never have had many problems.

So with the overall shape done I removed the top of the wing from the shim and left everything else attached, that way I can sand the leading edge of the next section a little lower so the top appears to overlap the lower section, once that section was completed I just keep repeating the process until all the sections were sanded. The shim needed to be cut down as more sections are completed, so as to allow room to sand the next section.

Once each section was completed I then began to shape each individual piece, to shape the feathers and give more dimension I sanded from the edge farthest away up to the nearest edge making sure not to lower the thickness of the nearest edge.

hope that is as clear as mud, you can see the progress in the pics below

[dedijerry]

Ok so I also shaped most of the rest.. so far everything has been sanded with 80 and 120 grit this is what i always refer as rough shaping, fine tuning will happen later.

I had mentioned early on I thought i would need some raising shims but found I don't need to.

I still have some pieces behind the bottom of the wings and the bottom wing tips to rough shape

Overall I like the way it is coming along, the last pic is one with a coat of mineral spirits on it, just a little cheating on seeing what the end result will look like.