Happy New Year to you! It's been a while since I've written anything here. But - don't think that I've been sitting around watching football!
Well, OK, I have been doing that, but I've also been working on a ton of small projects. Here's one that will be memorable, for a variety of reasons.
Someone approached me about making an urn for their father's ashes. And their father was a part-time woodworker, so they wanted me to incorporate one of his old pieces, a small table, into his urn.
This table top is right out of the 80s, possibly the 70s. It's plywood, with a golden oak stain and a very darkened patina to its glossy varnish.
The bottom didn't have any varnish on it, and over the years - the kids wrote on it with pen and crayons. If you zoom in here, you'll see a signature and date.
They'd asked if I could possibly incorporate the handwriting into the urn.
This plastic box is pretty standard; I've made quite a few urns and all of them have used a plastic liner box like this. Inside is a plastic bag with the actual cremains, so there is some flexibility there, in case you don't want to be bound by the size of this box.
That said - working with plywood like this was a challenge. The main case was easy enough to construct - and mitering the corners was an easy solution to hiding the plywood. The plastic liner fit inside this plywood case perfectly. Notice the pocket holes for screwing the top on this. Normally - I NEVER use pocket screws for attaching anything. But in this case - there wasn't a better way to attach the top.
So I trimmed down another piece of the top - cutting it to size and routing in a similar profile on the edge. Luckily I had router bit in my arsenal! But once I routed the edge, cutting the matching profile, the wood that was exposed was a massively different color.
Again - my bag of tricks gave me some options! These Mohawk spray stains allowed me to match the newly exposed wood to the older stain/patina. It took a few test pieces to find the right combination - golden oak with medium walnut stain layered on top of it.
The top is attached from the pocket screws, so that no joinery is exposed. And the bottom is screwed on from below, should anyone need to access the contents. Since it's being flown across the country, there's always the possibility that TSA will want to inspect it, although there is proper paperwork verifying the contents. So hopefully that won't be a problem.
And yes - I did incorporate all of the writing that was on the table top. Here's the bottom of this urn, with the handwriting on it. There is more handwriting inside the urn, as well.
I tested a small piece of this plywood, to see if I could laser some artwork onto the wood. But the 45 year old varnish on the surface created some wicked fumes. So lasering this was out of the question. Instead - the family will order a brass plaque to finish off this piece, commemorating the vital info for their dad.
As time goes on, I find myself building more and more of these urns. And I've always considered it an honor to build these pieces. I know, that might sound corny, but I love personalizing these pieces with things that are important to the families.
God Speed, Charlie!
