A hippo's nose job !, I love wood working

  It has been an interesting wood working day.  I visited a potential client that needs repairs and refinishing done to their live edge table.  A deer crashed through their front window and smashed the furniture on the ground floor of their home.  Regular repair guys are fixing flooring and book cases but the table needs an irregular guy like me.

  What else did I do with my day?  I repaired yet another box for 10,000 Villages like this one:

  

  The boxes come from India and often the lids warp with the temperature and humidity changes.  The hinges are maddeningly attached with nails so all the work on the boxes has to be done fully assembled. I have developed a whole bag of tricks for clamping, planing, sanding and re-staining these boxes. 

  Today was  another first for me.  I was so carried away with this project I didn't take a before picture, only after pictures.

  The hippo began with a symmetric face but somewhere in his travels from Kenya to Canada his right nostril got broken completely off.

caution: hippo at work.

I have no idea what sort of wood this is. It didn't help that I was working on the end grain but  I learned from trial and error  that it was better to use files and rasps than to try and carve it with blades.

  With some patience and a bag load of tools I reshaped  the face then sanded and polished my work.  I know that it has been repaired but....it just looks hand carved and individual to the uninformed eye.

  Do you remember the scene in Toy Story 2 where the guy  repaints and restores Woody.  He has a super tool box with all the specialized tools he needs. 

carving tools on left
Dremel tool box on right
small box of needle files, sanding jigs
 and other tools spread all about. 

  When I do those small repairs I use every tools I can lay my hands on.  There is always filing, scraping, shaving and trimming in those jobs for 10,000 Villages.  I have carving knives, about a dozen, a whole bunch of needle files and rifflers as well as various bits for my Dremel tool. 

  

   As a by the way this tool box was made by my father as a shop project when he was in high school, a long time ago.  It would be great if one day it was a tool box for one of my Grand children. 

 cheers, ianw