Post #394761 by TikiTres on Thu, Jul 17, 2008 6:48 PM

OK, here's some more testing (I didn't find fir yesterday, so I didn't try it). The left board is pine, the middle is red oak and the right is cedar. The pine grain is too far apart and burning doesn't soften up the wood between the grain very well. The red oak grain is way too tight for what I wanted. Cedar it is!

So I went and bought a cedar plank for my sconce project. First step was to lay the pattern on tracing paper. I struck a centerline so I could fold the paper over and trace the pattern from one half to the other to keep it symmetrical.

Here are the pieces cut out, note the totally intentional knot location in the middle of the forehead (evil eye effect):

And here they are routed and sanded, ready to burn:

That's as much as I could stand to do in the 95 degree evening heat! Plus I had to wash my car. As soon as I finish posting this I'm jumping in the pool!

The sconce will be mounted to a center frame that will space it off the wall. There will be lights in each eye and another just above the mouth to project light through the mouth. The bulbs will also cast light to the sides of the sconce. The idea came from a person that posts eBay auctions for wood tiki-themed sconces, I really liked them but unfortunately the ones he makes are twice as big as what I can fit on my patio.

More to follow :)