wood working: Rails

I saw this style of railing in a movie long back and it looked pretty cool. This is a common style used in most temples in South India and recently a lot of new houses are built with this style of rails. I decided to build a railing for my patio and here is the end result. I made a template in mdf and then replicated on pine. First I rough cut the wood using a band saw and then routed the final piece using the template.
The most tedious job was drilling the through hole for the bar. I couldn't find a drill bit that matches the rod diameter, so I have to enlarge the hole by sanding using a hand held drum sander.
I thought drilling the hole in the stone/concrete floor would be tougher job. But it turned out to be the most easy one. I was able to attach the post to the concrete in less than 10 minutes.
After sanding, 3 coats of exterior paint and 2 coats of polyurethane, this is how it looks.


Post: 2x2 Redwood.
Rail: 2x10 Pine.

-paul

wood working: Inspired by The Man with No Name

I was thinking about building a bed for my son for a couple of months now. I looked at numerous designs and finally settled on this particular style because the arching headboard looks really nice to me. Head board is made from Burch plywood. I Cut the arch using a jig saw and sanded smooth with a power sander.

Head board without any decorative elements looked very blank to me. So after building the project, I thought of adding two decorative elements to the Head Board to decorate it up a little. I was planning to put a bird's outline on to the headboard. During the making of this project, I saw a couple of Clint's western spaghetti movies and decided to cut a piece of a man on a horse (this is somewhat similar to the opening sequence in the The Good, The Bad and The Ugly movie). I also added the Golden Leaf decoration that I saw in a History Channel show.

Here is the final product.

Bed Size : Twin
Finish: Cherry
Material: Pine and Burch Plywood



-paul

Wood Working: Hanuman, The God of Strength

As I was looking for an item to build for my charity fund raiser, I considered the Hindu God Shiva for my second item. Recently I saw an episode in Discovery channel "Lucy: Mother of Man". Lucy was discovered in 1974 in Ethiopia. What makes her the mother of man was the fact that she routinely walked upright on two legs (Bipedalism) which is "the most distinctive, apparently earliest, defining characteristic of humans."


As I was watching this episode, I remembered a Hindu God, Hanuman, an incarnation of Shiva the God of Destruction and Death. Hanuman's story is depicted in Ramayana as a monkey god who fought with God to defeat the Evil. In one of the stories, he lifted an entire mountain "Dronagiri (in Himalaya)" and in another, he jumped the India ocean to Sri Lanka to fight a war with the king.

During his childhood, Hamunan wanted to learn vedas, so he approached Surya, the Hindu Deity of Sun. Surya refused to accept him as a student, said to Hanuman that it is impossible to learn from Him effectively because He has to be in constant motion. Undeterred, Hanuman raised his body over earth by stepping on the east and west mountains and faced Surya all day. Pleased by his persistence, Surya accepted him as a student.

Almost 400,000 years ago, Humans diverged from Neanderthal (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) and conquered the world. Neanderthal were much stronger, taller and well built than humans. One theory is the Modern Humans killed all Neanderthals, another suggest a natural extinction. Whatever the case may be, when I saw Neanderthal and Hanuman pictures, in my mind Hanuman is a symbolic missing link between the Humans and the Creator, just like the Neanderthals who link Modern Humans to the "Australopithecus Afarensis", Lucy.

For me, Hanuman represents :
- The Persistence for Learning
- Courage to fight the Evil
- Not everything have an easy way out
- You need to be committed to whatever you do
- One can either quit or dig their heals deeper to reach the next level
- Victor not a Victim

This piece measures 24"x14", made with MDF, 2 coats of black paint and one coat of wipe on polyurethane.

-paul

Wood Working: What would I have done?

Often time when people are faced with a touch decision, you hear them say "What would Jesus Do?". Have you ever wondered what would you be doing if you were living 2000 years back in ancient Jerusalem?

If you were on the King's side, you may be seeing a man, who is accompanied by the poor and sick, as a rebel to the Kingdom and probably say he deserve to die on the cross.

If you were on Jesus's side and believed he is going to start a new kingdom, you probably would be disappointed, sad and angry to hear that tomorrow is the last day of a man you followed, listened and hoped to save you and your family.

No matter which side I am in, there is going to be an image playing over and over in my head of a man on a cross:
- A Man with no chance of escaping the certainty of death.
- A Man who is going to loose everything in a matter of hours.
- A Man bleeding, hungry and thirsty probably falling unconscious but awaken by the screaming of the vultures circling over his head
- A Man mocked, ridiculed and judged by a group
- A Man looking like a failure in the eyes of the people he loved, cared, cured and taught
- The helplessness on a blood covered face

If you were on the roadside while the Procession went to Calvary for the Crucifixion, you still can hear the cries from his beloved, the laughter from the solderers and the carelessness of others. If you close your eyes, you can see the vultures circling over his head, hear their screaming intermingled by the cries of his mother.

I don't think I will go and see the crucified man on a cross. It will be too hard to watch especially when he is about to die. You will be reminded of the eventuality of one day you will have to go through a similar situation. This is how I think I will see him, in my mind, watching from far far away probably in the last hours of the sunset.

Inspiration for this creation is from this photo that I took in in 2004, Iglesia de la Virgen de Guadalupe church in Velarde, New Mexico


I am planning to build two more of these and plan to auction in local churches to raise money for a charity (which takes care of mentally challenged and orphaned kids and adults). 100 percent of the money will go to the charity to feed the inmates and feed other similar patients in hospitals near my village. This is a tribute to my two mothers, One taught me to be compassionate of the sick and poor, Other doing the same even today.

Your visit to this page itself is encouraging and rewarding for me.

-Paul

Wood Working: Swing

Couple of years back, I saw a picture of a similar swing in a movie. At first I was not sure I can complete this project. It took almost 4 months, mostly weekends to complete the project. Since I didn't have any measurements or never saw a similar swing in real, it took a lot of trial and error, cutting and re-cutting and a lot of sanding to make this one. Needless to say, I made a lot of Saw Dusts :)

I am a big fan of The New Yankee show and Norm Abram. After watching the show for almost 5 years, I decided it is time for making some saw dusts. I took inspirations from one of Norm's famous projects Highboy and the original movie frame to build this swing.

This is my second wood working project and first time ever using many of the power tools. Backboard is cut with a jig saw. Most of the joints are Mortise and Tenon with minimal mechanical fasteners.

The root on the round table is another project that I did earlier. During my house's construction, I saw an old oak tree root in my property. After peeling off the skin, trimming, filling, sanding, polishing and staining, it turned out to be a good showpiece. It took almost a month mostly weekends to finish the project

Hope you like this as much we do!

-Paul