
The Baptismal Font is complete just in time for Easter! Â I knew it would happen, and I'm very happy with the results...even if I had to make two of them to get it right.
Â
While making version 1.0 of the font, I had a slip up and ended up having to re-cut a series of joints on the box joint jig (a.k.a. finger joint jig). Â If you're not sure what I'm talking about, check out parts 1Â and 2 of this series. Â This meant I had to re-cut all eight pieces shorter to match and the whole font was just too small.
Â
It was meant to be, though, because my hardwood dealer was all out of the clear maple that I was using on the first font and I decided to go with the slightly more expensive curly maple. Â And MAN, that stuff looks GREAT! Â I was very happy with the figure of the wood and it took the Danish Oil quite well. Â
Â
I also had some scraps of curly maple in the shop left over from an American Flag that I made for a customer, so I was able to easily make the trim pieces for the top of the font. Â For these pieces, I cut the pieces on a 45 degree angle slightly longer than the length of each side. Â I then glued them on one at a time always aligning the right side of the new board with the left side (the long side) of the previous board. Â This basically made the top look like a big 8-tooth saw blade. Â Using the hand plane, I trimmed the pieces hanging over down and flushed them up with the next piece and just moved around the octagon doing this until they all lined up. Â I then put a 45 degree chamfer on all exposed corners of the trim using a hand plane and a chisel for the inside corners. Â
Â
There was some epoxy work in there before I added the trim, but honestly, that took a little bit of time, but was super easy. Â I used a product called Pond Shield that's made for building custom aquariums, so it's food and fish safe and obviously water proof. Â There's fiberglass on the inside corners to help reinforce the joints and I ended up putting 4 coats of Pond Shield on. Â It's a little bit expensive, but if you want wood that's waterproof, this stuff is really nice and was pretty easy to work with.
Â
So, here's what the font looks like installed and ready to go.

Â
Â
Â
Â
Recent Posts
Archive
Tags
I'm busy working on my blog posts. Watch this space!