Handmade valentines gift...

I've strung together some of the steps I used to make this gift for my wife, it's made in the same way as the hanging Christmas decorations, just slightly more elaborate.

I used Cherry, Pear and copper to make it and each material has a meaning or symbolism attached to it which varies from culture to culture, as an example Cherry trees in Japanese culture symbolise good fortune, new beginnings and revival and in old Buddhist stories the Cherry represents femininity, Pear wood has similar meanings as Cherry, and the shape of the fruit has long been associated with the female form and Pear trees usually live for a long time and Chinese culture associates this with immortality.

The Copper elements also have similar meanings, the metal represented Venus the goddess and the planet in Roman beliefs and copper has long been used by the Celts for making jewellery, it was in ancient times a highly regarded material, which is why it's often found in burials along with other metals such as Bronze, which is a Copper alloy.

Here's the video -

Thanks for visiting.

Homemade sanding stick...

Now that the garden and allotment are starting to wind down a bit I've had more time to get round to a few projects, one of which is making a tool to hold sheets of sand paper so I don't have to put my hand inside things I'm turning on the lathe.

I've made a couple of video's, one is of it being made and the other is of me using it, but basically it's a round handle that you can attach a sheet of sandpaper to, there's a coupe of pictures below and the video's as well, all I've really done is to turn a round piece of wood and then cut a slit into it, it's into this slit that the sandpaper slides, it's very simple, but saves catching your fingers on fast spinning bits of wood.

Pictures - 

Really should've made one sooner

Check out the video's, there's a couple of pictures of the brush pot I made for my daughter at the end of the shorter one, onto the next project.

Making the sanding stick - 

Using the sanding stick - 

Thanks for reading.