Celtic Knot Crosses for My Wife

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CarveOne
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Celtic Knot Crosses for My Wife

Post by CarveOne »

I made these for one of my wife's Valentine gifts. They are made of 1/4" thick padauk, and are 3-1/2" high. The rings are made of copper coated MIG welding wire wound around an Xacto knife handle and cut into rings. The rings were bent into alignment and tack soldered. The one on the right is a round 3D model, the one on the left has a slight modification to the shape vector to create a groove in the middle of the shape. They were both cut on a piece of scrap wood that was already 4" square. They have a few coats of clear satin spray polyurethane on them. They are shown on a 2 x 4 porch railing.

I will cut 20 more of them today on a piece of padauk that is 8" x 15". (No, I don't have any other girl friends ... :mrgreen: )

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Celtic Knot Crosses - Finished.jpg
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dwilli9013
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Re: Celtic Knot Crosses for My Wife

Post by dwilli9013 »

Nice. I really like that idea. I'm thinking the Padauk is going to look sweet. Thanks for sharing. :lol: :lol:
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Savannahdan
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Re: Celtic Knot Crosses for My Wife

Post by Savannahdan »

Nice. How did you hold them in while cutting? Bet you'll get at least a Moon Pie for it. lol

CarveOne
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Re: Celtic Knot Crosses for My Wife

Post by CarveOne »

Padauk is a porous wood and tends to be very brittle. Some finer grained wood would be better for these. I use 5/8" brad nails to hold it to the MDF spoil board, with a 3/32" piece of birch plywood between the padauk and spoil board. There are 0.065" by 1/4" tabs in the profile tool path. Five for each cross. I have also turned this design into an oval sound hole file for potential use on a future guitar project. :wink:

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CarveOne
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Re: Celtic Knot Crosses for My Wife

Post by CarveOne »

All 20 crosses cut fine. They look rough, but one has been cleaned up and ready for spray polyurethane tomorrow. That helps strengthen the cross arms and brings out the strong red color.

Savannadan, Yes, I always accept Moon Pies in payment for these, when I can get them. Especially the caramel Moon Pies. :D

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Celtic Knot Crosses - 20 Each.jpg
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Re: Celtic Knot Crosses for My Wife

Post by Savannahdan »

Thank you. Bet it took a moment or two to address the tabs. I like using the little 3m radial sanding discs Michael Tyler recommends. They are a little pricey but do a great job on real tight spaces.

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Re: Celtic Knot Crosses for My Wife

Post by CarveOne »

I use a new #11 Xacto knife blade to cut the tabs close to the cross. Cutting across the grain is a pain, but cutting with the grain is easy peazy. I pull up the brad nails using a 3/4" wood chisel to carefully pry the wood and plywood enough to lift the brad nails out using side cutters as a pry bar. When the MDF spoil board needs it, I fill the holes with wood filler and sand it smooth with a sanding block. Re-surface plane if/when needed, then roll on a few coats of polyurethane to seal the MDF from moisture again. I just need to drill 1/16" holes at locations in the project's material that won't be in the path of the cutters. Only takes a little time to measure and mark the locations, then drill the holes for brad nails. Unless the brad nails get bent too much, they are re-usable. Being made of soft steel, they don't do any serious damage to the larger carbide cutters if they get hit during cutting operations. Any scrap wood clamping blocks I use are held down to the spoil board with brad nails also. This spoil board has only been surface planed once since the machine was originally built and surface planed four or five years ago. 95% of my projects are built with this home built 3' x 4' machine. My 5' x 12' home built machine is mostly used as a work table. It was built for anything that won't fit on the smaller machine.

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Re: Celtic Knot Crosses for My Wife

Post by Savannahdan »

Thank you for the explanation. I might do some experimenting with the thickness of my tabs, especially for the small objects projects.

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Re: Celtic Knot Crosses for My Wife

Post by CarveOne »

This is a very hard wood to cut with a knife, so if I were to make them again with this wood, I could reduce the thickness from 0.065" to 0.050" to make cutting the cross grain tabs a little easier. With box elder or maple I would probably keep it at 0.065". The 1/4" tab width is fine, as long as they are placed in an easy to reach place on the project parts. I did not cut through the holes in the crosses on purpose. They would weaken the crosses, make it harder to spray, and will require a 1/16" cutter that would be a considerably longer cut time.

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