Paper Towel Holder - a carving project

   Sometimes I can't help but invest more energy in a project than most people would think it was worth.

  

  Today I just spayed the last coat of varnish on to a paper towel holder that I made in my shop.  The holder is a five inch flower (sort of a poppy) that I carved from basswood and then painted.

  Unpainted you can see the shallow relief style of carving, but I felt that to have it "pop" it needed to be painted.  As a project, a paper towel holder isn't really worthy of this much work, but some times I do projects more as 'skill building pieces' than for the actual finished result.  I like flowers, I like carving and my painting needs improvement, why not make something while practising those aspects of wood working

  This also turned out to be the first project were I used one of my newest homebuilt shop accessories.

  There is the base of the stand held in the jaws of my homebuilt face vise.  I am using two small Bessey Clamps  in this vise and if you go HERE, you can see my blog entry on making the face vise.  Having that face vise allowed me to hold the carving solidly so that I could shape and sand the edge easily.

face vise set up to cut the end grain for dovetail joinery.

  Please allow me to harp once again on one of my on going themes.   Always buy good clamps.  I was lured into buying cheap clamps in the past and they always let me down at the worse possible time.  Cheap clamps, slip.  Not always, but enough to make them a hazard and a heart break.  It is worth a few extra bucks to have clamps that you know will not slip when you need them, and be realistic, good clamps will last a life time, two life times it there is someone to inherit  your shop tools.

cheers, ianw