Manatee sighting!
Skip in Falls Church
>No, I've got the right board. :) I started working on this a while ago and while *all* of it wasn't done with hand tools, I ended up doing quite a bit of hand work on it. Before my stepdaughter went to college (She finished her Masters a year ago so that makes it like 5 years? 6?), I promised to make her a Manatee to go on the inside lid of the chest I made (was making at the time) for her because she has a thing about marine mammals - especially manatees. (Hey! I finished the chest when she was a couple of years into college so the whole project went very slowly. But she loves the chest and it was one of the first things she moved when she moved out this past spring.)
I came up with the design from a picture of a manatee I saw on the internet. I then cut out all the pieces and then it got to be a lot of trouble and ended up getting lost on the top of my table saw. :) While cleaning off the table saw a couple of months ago I came across the poor thing and decided to finish it. Over the years a few of the pieces got lost and since the scroll saw has been broken a few years (You might get the idea that the power tools just aren't getting used aroud here.) I ended up making the lost pieces with a coping saw and a rasp. (Finally got some hand tool content in to the post!)
The manatee itself is made out of birdseye maple and some maple that had a natural black mineral stain to it. The eye and the nostril are made out of hand made ebony dowels and the background is some wildy mineral stained poplar. (When I saw the poplar I just knew it was the piece to use. It's predominately brown with some black and some green.) I picked birdseye maple because manatee's skin is supposed to be a bit blotchy. It just seemed that birdseye maple fit the bill. The finish is clear satin polyurethane spray- I don't even want to think about how many coats, I think the can is just about empty.
The round overs on all the pieces were done with rasp, file then sandpaper. The opening for the manatee in the poplar was cut with a coping saw then rasped and filed to fit.
I just told my stepdaughter it's done and she's coming over to see it later this week. The last time she saw it, it didn't look that good - mostly just pieces. (I got the feeling she was a bit dubious about it.) I feel really sorry about the quality of the picture - the real colors just didn't come through as well as I'd have liked. The poplar is really beautiful. The highligts didn't come out well either - the head and back are much lighter than the rest of the body. But the lighting and the angle I took the picture from makes it look darker.
Skip
