[Lightningbolt]

I was greatly inspired a couple of weeks ago by Sludgeguy's spool santa found here: giant Santa Spool I'd never seen one of those before and I knew that I had to have one ASAP! What a great Christmas project!

I got one of my 2" X 2" X 12" pieces of basswood, put it on the mini-lathe and churned out three 4" pieces, then drilled a 5/8" hole in each of them. I forgot to sand the ends of each piece while it was still on the lathe so I ended up having to do it the hard way.

This was only my first attempt and my paint job could stand some improvement but I believe that I've found this years Christmas presents!

[hobo]

great job lightning bolt nice painting too.


HoBo

[Mark N. Akers]

Dave:
Great job on the spool,keep up the fantastic job.

[sludgeguy]

Hello Dave,

Nice job! I really like leaving the center wood larger so you can get more size to your carving! A really great carving, I like your paint finish better than mine. Keep up the Great work!

Thanks for sharing!
Doug Sludgeguy Keller

[Fred Zavadil]

Dave, very nice carving, good idea too.

[Lightningbolt]

Thank's for the comments. Looks like this is the project that I'm fixated on for now and I'm loving it!

For the most part I was ok with the final paint job on the santa but I still have a LOT of room for improvement with getting the lettering more realistic on top of the spool. When I finish with the other two 2" blanks that I've already cut and drilled I believe that I'll use the next smaller size bit when drilling the center holes... I'm thinking that mine is a tad too big and that'd give me more room for the micro-lettering. If I were carving these in a "mass production" then I think that I'd look into getting some kind of rubber ink stamp made up. But until then I'll just have to focus hard on my toothpick/magnifying glass painting skills.

I've also decided to try doing a bigger version of the spool santa. I'm already marking a 3" X 3" X 12" piece of basswood for the lathe so I'm getting excited about attempting one on a 6" piece of wood! I'm thinking that this size might make quite a striking impression sitting on the shelf... and the lettering might be a little easier without so much eye squinting.

This is indeed a fun one and I'm hoping that each new santa will be better than the last one. It's always kinda "gutsy" posting the first one of anything so hopefully I can only get better. Thank's again!