Christmas wood projects

[Micktoon]

Hi All , Just thought I would post a few photos of what I have been making for various Christmas presents . . . . . . . .. while I should have been rebuilding my lathe :palm:
The photos are not that good as taken on my mobile phone and to be honest I only took the odd in progress shots but you will get the general idea from them.

This is a full size wine bottle made out of an old fence post that had been lying around for ages, it is being dyed green in this shot and the block of wood lying on the lathe bed below the green bottle is the other half of the post , that will become the red bottle.



I am in a local woodturning club and this collection was my donation to the yearly sale the club has to raise funds , the colours are not good in the photo the bottles were brighter than they look here, the red and green ones are pine and I am not sure what the other one is , maybe apple ? or some fruit wood, they are life size to give you some idea of the sizes. The Christmas trees are various timbers, some with different types of wood for the pots and some all out the same bit of wood. The mice are stuck on with blue tack here just so they dont knock together while being transported really, they ended up with less blue tack so it could not be seen.



This is a closer shot of the mice on the cheese, they ended up looking better than this as I managed to get some map pins to do the eyes with, they are just burnt on here , they looked much better once they had their beady eyes fitted. The ears and tails are leather and the whiskers are cut from a paint brush.



This was the bigger project for my girlfriends present , a pine chest with dovetail joints..... everything that could go wrong, did go wrong doing this , so it took ages and there was some swearing going on I can tell you. All the mouldings / trims etc were routered out of solid wood, the dovetails ( with much hassle were made with a router on a woodrat ( its a sort of jig type thing that can do many types of joints with a router ). There was no real drawings or plan just knew what it was to look like and made it up as I went. This is the only photo whilst getting done , its finished but in bare wood here.



This is the Chest finished and in position , its storage and a coffee table, its dyed antique pine colour and finished with dark wax that gives it the aged look. The colour is darker than this photo shows. The Apple and Pear were also made to go with the chest they are Laburnum wood.



This photo is more like the true colour, I bought the brass handles but they were not really what I had in mind but all I could find, trying them on they looked to plain so I made the brass backing plates then attached the handles on top of them and they look much better. Anyway she loved it and it now has pride of place. Note all the new wood coasters on the top, it has been made clear by its new owner that if anyone dares to put cups etc on it they will be in big trouble :hammer:



So it looks like its back to the lathe at long last now :thumbup:

Cheers Mick.