In a festive mood and wanting to try out my new 6mm blade on my bandsaw I thought I’d have a go at a 3D reindeer that I’d seen on Matthias Wendals site.
Using a scrap piece of 2×4 I cut it down to roughly the size I wanted and printed out the template to stick onto my workpiece. The spray adhesive I used worked well to keep the template in place but was extremely messy so I’ll be doing that again with gloves or on some newspaper!
I first cut the front profile which wasn’t much of a problem due to the smooth curves though this was extremely noisey due to the large amount of wood being cut. This also highlight some minor alignment issues for the bed or the blade on my bandsaw as the cut did not join up perfectly at either end of the workpiece. I must remember to correct those issues later!
The piece cut off were then taped up together so I could do another pass. Matthias used nails to secure the pieces together and indeed when I did a second attempt at this later I screwed the pieces together and much better results.
I found despite the thinner blade some of the tight curves were a problem and I suspect this sort of design would do better smaller and on the scrollsaw. I may consider investing in an even smaller blade later perhaps (or improve my technique)
The final cuts saw the whole piece come apart and reval the 3D reindeer in all its glory. I gave it a light sand as best I could but didn’t bother to finish it as these were just test pieces.
A given my daughter loved it!
This took probably 30 minutes to make and even this common design could probably sell at craft fairs so I may rattle out a few next Christmas and see if I can make a few pennies for my time!
You can find the template on Mathhias Wendals site here if you want more details or a downloadable template