Back last summer one of my TM students, who is also a collector, asked me if I would turn a chess set for him. I was very flattered by his offer and said I would look into it. About nine months later I finished the job.

Now I don’t know much at all about chess. I started to learn the moves when an Eastern European yard man gave me some instruction when I was about ten. It never went beyond that. So, how do you design and execute pieces for a game about which you know very little?

One of my champions has been my son. At age four he told his Montessori teacher that his Dad could make anything. Since then I have been accepting new challenges without bothering about the fact that I really did not know how to do the job at the time.

Another great influence on my life was a Mr. Tom Hodge. Possessing only a high school education, after a career at NASA, this man went on to build his own machine tool shop which was so sophisticated that he ended doing work that NASA could not do for itself. When I knew him as a patient in Newport News, VA, his modern machine tool shop was 50,000 square feet.

He told me that people would come in and ask him if he could do a certain job for them. He would invariably say yes even though he knew nothing about the job to be done. He said he would think about it, sleep on it, get information from all the sources he could find, talk with the experts he surrounded himself with in his shop and begin to try this and that. Eventually he would come up with the finished product. Often it was something which had never been done before. He showed me an example of this one day. It was a railroad car filled with measuring devices. It was towed behind a train at 90 miles an hour and would give you a reading of the track conditions every ten feet.

I greatly admired this “can do” attitude and have tried to implement it whenever the chance arose. So, the first thing to do, it occurred to me, was to get more information. My attention was led to a very valuable resource. Mike Darlow is a professional woodturner and woodturning educator. He has authored many scholarly works of woodturning and woodturning design. It was just my luck that he had recently published a book called Woodturning Chessmen. Sounds like he wrote it just for me.

In his usual scholarly way, Mr. Darlow went into the history of chess, tracing its origin back to ancient India where it had been designed at a teaching exercise about the art of warfare. He showed the evolution of the chess pieces from India, through the Middle East and then up through Eastern and Western Europe culminating with the “standard” Staunton design that is so popular today. Staunton was an English chess enthusiast and champion who desinged the pieces that bear his name in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Mr. Darlow not only presented chess men designs over the past 1500 years, he also devoted many pages to the principles of design according to his point of view and many pages to the actual construction of the pieces. It was a real treasure trove and everything was at my fingertips in one volume. After reading this very interesting book I loaned it to my friend and student who had commissioned the work, and asked for his feedback which he duly gave me. I was interested to see if any design particularly appealed to him.

It was very kind of him to suggest that he wanted me to come up with my own design. He suggested certain ideas which he liked better than others but hinted that he really wanted me to be original. Being a collector, originality was high on his list of desirable qualities.

So, what does being original mean? What is truly original? You know that old saying that there is nothing new under the sun. I personally believe that there is a field of unmanifest reality in which resides all forms and ideas in seed form. I think that when we are creative we are just remembering those seed ideas. Some have more access to that level of reality than others. Yet, if that is unfamiliar to us, then we don’t have to look far. Those same seed ideas are repeated over and over in nature. Since they are the blueprints of nature, we see them in all that we see. Therefore it is a bit presumptuous for us to take credit for what nature has already created.

After giving this a lot of consideration I think that what we mean by creative and original is how we put together the parts of what has already been created. Even that may be debatable but at least it gives us credit for some level of creativity or at the very least the ability to “see” those combinations in our mind’s eye.

On the other hand, my client’s order for originality put the burden on me. It would be relatively easy just to copy one of the many patterns in Darlow’s book. So what it boiled down to was how do I see the game of chess as reflected in the turned pieces. My reasoning was that as a game of war strategy, the pieces should reflect that reality. The pieces should be “writ large” and the flavor should be masculine. This left out the many intricately turned rococo pieces of the late 17th and 18th centuries illustrated in Darlow’s text. Even the Staunton standard pieces failed to capture that flavor, in my opinion.

One of the things I have learned is that the creative process is not to be rushed. Mr. Hodge would take a lot of time to think and sleep on his ideas before completing a job that had not been done before. So I began to turn these thoughts over in my mind. The first decision was the choice of wood for the pieces.

Most would agree that in war there is one side that tends to represent good values and one side that opposes them. The Mahabharat is the classic epic in Indian Vedic literature in which a ruling family had turned against part of itself in pursuit of less than honorable goals. This epic is very dominant in Indian culture and probably lay in the awareness of the creators of chess. Therefore, one set of men needs to represent the good and the other side opposition to good. In other words there needs to be a clear color contrast to represent that idea as well as to be able to tell the pieces apart on the board of play.

Now some woods are more turner friendly than other. Some tend to splinter and tear out under the tool’s edge and others remain firm. So, I thought to myself, what wood would best suit the side aligned with goodness? It needed to be light colored and at the same time have a rich appearance. My choice was holly. It has almost no grain appearance. Being an evergreen it grows slowly year round and does not produce the soft early wood and dense late wood seen in a species like oak or pine. When carefully finished it looks almost like ivory or stone. It has a very regal appearance and it is almost snow white.

For a contrasting darker wood my choice was cherry. Cherry is one of my favorite woods to turn. It handles well, is hard and uniform in texture. It has a lovely rich color which slowly darkens with exposure to sunlight. The more it is handled, the prettier it gets. Thus the light holly and darker cherry would give good color contrast. Some makers resort to making the pieces of a light wood and painting one set black. My feeling is that black draws the wrong kind of energy to it and I prefer to avoid black whenever possible.

With the choice of wood settled, now I had to decide on the size of the pieces and their size relationship with each other. My client had some specific ideas about this and I went with his instructions. The king was to be about 3 3/4 inches tall.

With the dimensions established, it was time to prepare the wood blanks. I am always starting with rough wood. So the wood was band sawn and put through the planer. I would then smooth one edge on the jointer. Now it was ready for the table saw to cut the proper width, height and length. The results are shown in the photo below.

I wanted to add weights to the bottom of each piece to keep them from tipping. To do this I marked the center at both ends and then drilled an indentation in the base with a Forstner bit to accept the lead insert. I had some sheet lead and used a set of gasket punches to cut out discs and drilled the indentations so that the lead discs would just fit. They could then be secured with a drop of cyanoacrylate glue.

Now I had to start coming up with specific designs. As I looked through Mr. Darlow’s many illustrations, I became aware that there was no single set in which all the pieces appealed to me. I realized that each piece would have to fit in my “wholeness idea” of being severe and somewhat war-like.

So I started at the top with the king. After several experimental trials I settled on the design.

Then followed the queen. It had to be apparent that she represented a feminine form but I still wanted her to fit in with the overall design which was solid and substantial.

Going down the scale of rank I next turned to the bishop. In the Staunton set he is shown wearing a mitered hat. However, clerics also wear other hats and I saw some represented in Darlow’s book and adapted one to my taste.

The knight has been represented as a carved horse’s head. Aside from the association with cavalry this piece does not really evoke a war game to me. Again I saw a small head with a armor helmet with a small vision slit in Darlow’s book. I made the head bigger and used it for my knight.

The rook was the final piece and was fairly straight forward.

Details of the crowns on the king and queen as well as the openings in the turret of the rook had to be hand carved with a carving knife. One of the tricks I learned from the Marlowe book is to use the indexing stops on the lathe. Before I turned the parts off I used the indexing stops. Keeping my pencil flush with the tool rest I would make a mark on the piece at each appropriate interval. This way all the intervals were evenly matched and then it was no problem for the carving knife to follow the pencil mark to finish the detail on the piece.

All that remained was to design the pawns. Most of the sets I have seen really do not do much justice to the concept of a pawn. A pawn in a war game is a common soldier. So I settled on small man-like figures with primitive helmets. Now the design was set. I was ready to start turning in earnest.

The first step was to turn the blanks round with a roughing gouge. The picture below represents this step.

Next I used a pattern piece to mark the critical dimensions on the round blank. In furniture making they use something called a story stick. It is a thin flat piece of wood with the pattern of the piece cut in two dimensions and then meaningful data written on the stick. It is used to lay out marks for sawing out the piece. I have learned from my own turning experience that if you have an original you can lay out the critical marks right on your work piece without having to fuss with a lot of measurements. Measuring is not something that comes easily to my free spirit. So here I am holding a previously turned bishop in cherry against a holly blank and transferring the marks directly to the work piece. This system works very well for me and saves a lot of time. If you ever go back and want to recreate the set or a piece, having a pattern piece saved for that purpose will greatly simplify the process.

Next I cut the critical marks into the wood with the skew chisel. The skew is a good tool to learn to master. It is ideal for doing many tasks in spindle turning. Like many others I had problems with it. We had a turning demonstration at our local woodturning club (Baltimore Area Turners) and the presenter was Bill Grumbine, a well known turner and wood turning teacher. He was showing us how to reproduce spindles. He explained to me that the real secret is to have your skew very sharp. By that I mean shaving sharp.

After dressing the tool with my Wolverine sharpening jig (with the skew attachment in place on the bench grinder pictured in the background of the pictures) I take the skew and dress the edge with a diamond hone using first the 600 grit side and then the 1200 grit side. Next, I strop the edge with 7 micron diamond paste on a porous strip of wood followed by 3.5 micron paste. I get my diamond paste from Wood Carvers Supply, Inc. in Englewood, Florida. This produces a really keen edge. The tool can be touched up with just the diamond hone and the diamond strop to refresh the edge for many times before the edge needs to be reground.

Here I am beginning to cut the design into the blank.

In the picture below I am using a tool I had to design myself. My skew chisels were too wide to fit down in the narrow coves and grooves of the pieces. Some time ago I got some engine valve stems from my local garage. There were smaller ones from passenger cars and larger ones from truck engines. The steel is very hard. I cut off the head and this left me with the straight shank which I fitted in a tool handle and then waited until I had a use for it. When it was needed I used the grinder to make the shape of the cutting edge and then did the final sharpening with the system I described above. Now I had a very small skew to work into tight places.

Another trick I learned from Bonnie Klein I am using below. I wanted some accent lines in the otherwise monotonous robe of the bishop. I first cut these lightly with the skew and then use a wire to burn in the line to make it more visible. You can use most any kind of wire. This one happened to be inside a twisty tie and is quite thin. I have taken wire out of electrical cable or from other sources. You just hold the wire in the grove as the wood spins until you get the darkness you desire. You can buy sets of wire made just for this purpose but it is easy to make your own and the price is right.

Here you see the finished bishop being parted off with the skew.

After doing the hand carving and final sanding I had to make some decisions on the finish I would use. I did not want to sacrifice the whiteness of the holly with oils and shellac which impart color so I just buffed it with white diamond abrasive and finished with carnauba wax with the Beal Buffing System I have described in earlier blog posts.

With the cherry pieces I followed my usual routine of a coat of Bull’s Eye shellac. After this was sanded down carefully and rubbed with 0000 steel wool, I applied a coat of tung oil. I have found that placing newly finished articles on the floor next to the forced air heating vent speeds up the drying of tung oil and Danish oil products. When good and dry I buff using the three part Beal Buffing System.

I used my engraver to put my name and date on the bottom of the pieces. This picture also shows how the lead wafers fit into the recess at the bottom of the piece. This system allows the lead weight to be at the lowest point in the piece to give maximum stability.

Here is the finished product assembled.

Doing something you have never done before is a challenge, but it is what leads to growth. It is the nature of life to grow towards more and more. If we stop growing the rest of nature does not and we find ourselves left behind. I guess that is why my friend Cliff Hodge was so successful. He never turned down an opportunity for growth.

What you see in these pictures took me years to accomplish. As I am a self taught turner I started out knowing nothing of the subject. It was through years of trial and error, reading and growing in my understanding that I arrived at where I find myself today. Design is absolutely critical and I will have more to say about this in another essay but a significant part of design is how you finish the foot of a bowl or any other turning.

When you begin to turn a block of wood you have to find a way to attach it to the lathe. The first lathe I had came with a faceplate and little else. A faceplate is a flat circular piece of metal which screws on to the headstock of the lathe. The headstock, in turn, is attached by a belt to a motor and this is what causes the lathe to turn. The face plate I had was six inches in diameter. It had holes drilled in it to screw the work piece to the faceplate. It is a pretty simple and straight forward arrangement.

Now, many of the blocks of wood are fairly heavy, and when they start to spin, a lot of force is generated. To keep the wood from flying off the faceplate you need several stout screws holding the wood to the faceplate. With the wood secured you begin to turn. The first thing you notice is that the faceplate keeps you from getting in to turn a small foot on a bowl. The foot has to be about the same diameter as the faceplate or slightly larger. Of course you could glue your bowl blank to a piece of waste stock and screw the faceplate into the waste stock but that had not occurred to me at that point. I was determined to work this out myself without running to the books any more than I had to.

It takes a big bowl to have a six inch foot look aesthetically pleasing. So you begin to search for smaller faceplates and you find they make them in four inch and three inch sizes. I became the proud owner of three faceplates. I then made another discovery. That tick, tick, tick sound that my gouge made when I hollowed the inside of the faceplate mounted bowl was my sharp tool hitting the tips of the mounting screws. Further, when I took the bowl off the lathe and unmounted the face plate, I had three neat holes from the foot up into the bowl. Even if I was lucky enough not to go so deep as to hit the screws, I still had three holes that needed to be plugged. To make sure I had enough wood in the bottom to accommodate the screws, I ended up with thick clunky bottoms.

Now it may be a revelation to you, but the first thing a perspective bowl buyer does is pick up the bowl, turn it over and inspect the bottom. Wooden plugs just don’t make it. It proves your amateur status as a bowl maker. By the time I reached this stage I discovered scroll chucks. These are woodworking adaptations of metal working lathe chucks. The small one I bought required three hands to operate. Two were needed to operate the rod levers that tightened and opened the jaws of the chuck and the third hand to hold the bowl blank into the jaws. Being small, my chuck would not grip the wood very tightly and the work piece would frequently loosen and the work would be off center. I solved this be purchasing a much larger chuck which only required two hands to operate. One hand turned a key, while the other hand was free to hold the work in the jaws as they tighten.

Now that I had mastered holding the blank to the lathe without using screws, I still had the problem of finishing the outside bottom of the bowl. You can’t get to the outside bottom when you are hollowing out the bowl because that part is being held by the chuck (or faceplate). A set of flat metal discs that screw onto the scroll chuck was just the ticket. Buttons then screw into the concentric rows of screw holes in the metal discs to hold the rim of the bowl to the chuck so that the bottom of the bowl is exposed to turning. They work pretty well but are not absolutely precise. If you try making cuts on the bottom third of the outside of the bowl, they don’t match the cuts made when the bowl was mounted the other way. It is just eccentric enough to be visible no matter how much you sand. Thus you must complete all of the bowl except the bottom of the foot when the bowl is mounted the other way.

In the pictures above, you can see me mounting the buttons to the flat discs and then you see me working on the bottom and the buttons are a red blur. By the way, these buttons protrude a fair amount and are of a very hard plastic. When you forget and try to stop the work from spinning with your hand to inspect it, they hit hard and they hurt. So you have to keep your hands clear. Just ask me how I figured this out. Today I am looking at a large bruise on both sides of my right hand. I tussled with the buttons and I lost.

With all of these tools and techniques in place I finally was able to turn the base of my bowls thin without having to leave extra wood for screws and could make a foot of small and pleasing dimensions. It only had to be large enough to fit into the jaws of my scroll chuck. Lastly, I could put a finished look on the bottom of the foot by reverse chucking it in the flat jaw plates with the buttons so that the most critical inspector of bowl bottoms would have nothing to complain about.

There is nothing particularly remarkable about all this. It is just about how we learn. We start not knowing very much and then begin to run into limitations. One by one we solve the problems. Finally we come back to the central issue: aesthetically pleasing design. We might know design from the beginning, though more probably we don’t. Even if we do, we need to develop the technology in order to complete the design to our satisfaction. As we work we find out ideas of aesthetics change and we devise even better techniques to improve design. On and on it goes until we reach perfection. At that point there is nothing more to perfect. We have reached the truth we seek and now we are no longer seekers but have become finders. It is important to seek but it is even more important to find. Otherwise we never become fulfilled.

Fulfillment comes much faster with knowledge. When you don’t know how to do something, consult with someone who does. This can be a mentor, a reference book or an article in a specialty publication, the internet, or a group such as a club of members who share the same interests and have probably wrestled with the same issues as yourself. You may be able to reinvent the wheel but it is a lot easier to stand on the shoulders of others. Some day others may stand on your shoulders as you point out the way.

This summer I was clearing out the house where I grew up in order to put it on the market. After 56 years of continuous inhabitation by the Smith family you can guess that it was filled with memorabilia of my past. I found two small stools that I had made in shop in the seventh grade. They weren’t great but I thought they would do as gifts for my small grandchildren. So at my 70th birthday celebration in Vermont this summer I delivered them to my two sets of grandchildren. After a week long celebration the families headed out and we cleaned up. In a bathroom I discovered that one of the stools had been left behind.

My wife appropriated it when we got back home as there were some high cabinets that she could not reach. So I thought I should make her one to replace it when it eventually got back to the proper grandchild. It was a week before Christmas and I had been so busy with Fall shows and filling orders for knit shops for my knitted shawl and sweater clasps that I had not even started on the project

As I was looking at my lumber stack in the shop I found a board that was filled with memories. Shortly before he died in 1980 my father had the boys from the local saw mill come and cut up a cherry tree that had fallen in the wind. When I went to pick up the wood, Bubba Adams, the sawyer, reached into his pocket and produced a steel spike and a ceramic fence post arrestor. He said: “Would you happen to know anything about this.” With much embarrassment I admitted that my father and I had put that on the tree 35 years earlier when we had horses. The horses were long gone and the tree had grown around the spike and we had forgotten all about it.

“Well, the saw found it.”Bubba grumbled..

I thanked him profusely and loaded the wood. He would not take any money for his efforts. So I made a Chippendale mirror for him and his adopted brother out of the wood and I know that they hang proudly in their respective houses.

One of the two inch thick slabs had a dark stain and axe marks where the metal had been chopped out of the wood. I thought at the time that I should make something special out of this wood that would incorporate all the memories it held. So 28 years later, after having moved that wood from Virginia to Iowa, to New Mexico, to Kentucky and finally to Maryland I decided that this would be the next best time.

I wanted to design something better than what I had done in junior high school. The slab was a good 15 inches wide. My planer is only 12 inches. So I decided to do a somewhat rustic design and incorporate some of the natural edge of one side of the board and make a roughly triangular three legged stool with a 15 x 19 inch top. One advantage of a three legged stool is that even if the floor is uneven, and most are, it will sit flat without rocking.

I hand-planed the surface and was rewarded with rich color and interesting grain pattern. There is something deeply satisfying about preparing wood with a hand plane. I cut the shape of the top with my band saw with the table set to cut at an angle. The cut was cleaned up using a spokeshave. Looking at the top, I realized that the refined nature of the wood required a more refined set of legs. Not fancy, mind you, but something more than crude. After looking at pattern books of Windsor chair legs, I took some ideas, simplified them and went to the lathe and produced the legs you see. They were made from one and three quarter inch square stock and fitted into one and a half inch holes bored at an angle into the seat.

To get the same angle for each splayed leg I used a jig two inches thick with an angle cut on two sides and a 1 1/2 inch hole bored inside. It was made for me by my wood turning buddy, Tony Kowalewski, a home contractor. I simply clamped the jig to the top with two C clamps and then used a Forstner bit in a hand drill. The jig ensured that the hole got started at the proper angle and did not skate as I drilled on the slanted, hard, cherry surface.

I carefully crafted wedges to go in the slot sawn in the top of the leg to make it tight in the top. I even carefully drew the orientation of the wedges in my shop working drawing. Wedges need to go at right angles to the grain to avoid splitting the wood with the pressure of the wedge.

So I carefully aligned the wedges. applied wood glue and drove them home. After this point of no return I realized that I had done just the opposite of what I had intended and each wedge was running parallel to the grain. Time will tell if the joints fail due to this error but with a two inch thick wood top, it may take a long time for them to fail. The old saying of “measure twice and cut once” came to mind. In this case it was, “check the set-up carefully before you apply glue and drive home the wedge.” You have to pay attention to every detail at every step of the way. My problem is being in a hurry to see the project finished.

I was able to sneak the stool into my finishing shop in the basement of my home without being spotted by my wife. After the glue had dried I sawed off the portion of the legs and wedges that were sticking out of the top of the seat and finished the job with a brand new orbital sander just taken out of the box for this job. Boy, does power sanding make a difference! In just a few minutes the job was done.

I like to use oil finishes. One problem I have found is that the oil finish soaks into the wood and may take months to dry. Wet oil will make its way to the dry finish and blotch the wax. Some bowls I have had to re-wax and buff as many of six times until the finish was stable.

I read recently that if you use a de-waxed shellac such as Bull’s Eye brand, which comes in an aerosol can, to provide a light coat, and sand it well before you apply the oil, you can seal most of the pores and your surface oil will dry very quickly. I have been using this to great advantage with my bowls and decided to use this on the stool. I did not have the luxury of time, as it was almost Christmas eve. With this technique, and buffing with the Beal buffing system, which I have really come to love, I was rewarded with the finish you see in the picture.

I am somewhat of a neophyte at making natural edged bowls. I recently was given a whole Bradford pear tree and feeling flush with raw material, I was persuaded to take some risks I do not ordinarily take. As you hollow the bowl, part of the time your gouge is floating in the air. It takes a lot of tool control to keep from knocking off the fragile bark on the undulating rim.

This tree was cut in September when it was still full of sap. I found that Bradford pear sap is like glue and I would have to frequently change band saw blades to get the wood cut up in proper dimensions for turning. Well, that glue set up and made the bark unusually adherent so that it made for more allowances of imperfect technique than any other natural edged bowl I ever tried to turn.

The bowl was turned green to final dimensions, and sanding green wood does not work. Furthermore, trying to sand a fragile spinning undulating rim was just too scary for me. This meant that there was much more hand sanding in the finishing process after the bowl had completely dried. Wherever you have figured wood it dries with a very uneven surface. Here I used my cabinet scraper to good end to remove wood faster than hand sanding. I was surprised that the bowl dried without checking and with very little warping. It was most noticeable in the base which would not sit firmly on a flat surface without some attention from my carving chisel.

For finishing I applied and sanded out a couple of coats of de-waxed shellac and then finished with a coat of tung oil. I read recently that de-waxed shellac is compatible with any other kind of finish applied over it. This sealing of the grain prevented the tung oil from penetrating so deeply that it would take months to dry completely. I was satisfied with the finish which had not even been waxed yet.

See this bowl in my bowls gallery here.

Over the years I have come to think that it is more fun to have someone else tell me what they want rather than to try to guess what the customer may want. So, I welcome commissions. Usually it is a time of growth for me. The project is very likely to entail a design or technique which I have not used before.

A woman came up to my booth at fair one week ago and asked me if I could make a couple of large stirring spatulas. It seems her husband and his friend are involved in chili cooking contests and the chili is cooked in very large stock pots. The usual stirring instruments are not adequate. She was not sure what the dimensions should be but sent me a picture of one in use at a chili contest that appeared in a newspaper. It appeared rather crude to my eye and the word “CHILI” had been cut deeply into the plank with a router. I was concerned with food sticking in the crevices.

So I decided that 24 inches would be a good length. The customer preferred cherry wood and wanted it to be similar to the small spatulas I had for sale at the fair. They are the most popular item that I make.

Having an enlarged area on the end of the handle would help it from sliding down into the deep stock pot, I reasoned. It also broke up the monotonous straight lines of the long handle. She asked me if I could carve the men’s names and the word CHILI on the paddle part of the tool. I allowed as how that would be a lot of work and we might find a cheaper route and she agreed. I also suggested it would be easier to clean. Burning it in with my burning tool that I sign my work with was my suggestion.

After I selected a plank of cherry, it brought back some pleasant memories. There was a wild cherry tree that grew on my father’s farm in Virginia, just out side of Richmond. A storm took it out and I asked my father if he would get our neighbors with a saw mill to cut it up for me. It was one of the last things he did for me as he left us shortly afterwards.

When I wend down to pick up the sawn lumber the neighbor, whose name is Bubba Adams, a large and very kind man, reached down into the pocket of his jeans and produced a long steel nail and a ceramic electric fence resistor. He asked me if I happened to know anything about this.

The blood rushed to my face as I remembered that my father and I had put this up for an electric fence when we first moved to the farm and had horses. Bubba said the saw found it and it took out a few teeth on the big blade. In spite of this he would not take anything for his services. So I loaded it in my station wagon and hauled it home to my shop/garage and let it air dry. Then I moved that wood to Iowa, then to New Mexico and then back to Kentucky and finally to Maryland where I current live and work. The cherry for the chili paddles came from that tree some 28 years later.

Once I had the design for the paddles cut on the band saw and sanded it to a more refined shape I had to decide on how to burn in the letters. I have never had very good penmanship and I am sure I would have never passed mechanical drawing had I ever had the courage to take such a course.

The challenge with the paddles was to make the lettering big enough for the macho men to see without having to don spectacles. I thought of making an outline and then just burning in the space between the outlines. The problem with that is that wood burning tips do not burn evenly. You are prone to get little hills and valleys of different shades of color or blackness.

Then I decided that just burning in the outline would work and the letters could be written large as I wanted. So I went to the computer and selected a font I though looked nice and enlarged it and printed it out. It just fit on the paddle blade. I knew that the ink from my laser printer would transfer with heat and I thought I was all set. Then I realized that if I ironed the letters from the copy they would be in mirror script, a fact that I did not think the macho makers of chili would appreciate.

Not trusting my hand I got my wife to put a carbon paper under the sheet with the letters to trace the outline on to the paddle. It worked fine after we located some old fashioned carbon paper. From there it was a simple task to burn in the outline of the letters as you see from the pictures above.

The woman was very pleased with the paddles which were for a birthday present just a few days later. Don’t know how the men reacted but hopefully they will share in her enthusiasm. If not, at least they can appreciate the thought behind her organizing these unique gifts.