Brazilian eyes are smiling :) wood wallart

I check craigslist daily for free wood. Sometimes I go after it, sometimes I don't. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not. The ad on craigslist for free firewood that morning in early January didn't have any pictures. The wood was located in Camarillo, Ca. (about 20 miles from my house) so I knew it was a bit of a gamble (of driving a 40 mile round trip) to go look at it when there were no pictures. When I got there I saw that there was a lot of wood already cut up on the ground and I looked over it all but didn't see anything really good for wood wall art (although I did end up getting one piece off the ground). The only wood that I really wanted was the wood on the Brazilian pepper tree. The tree guy who was cutting wood there cut off a couple of branches for me and then I took it home and unloaded it.

I thought about waiting to cut it until it was dry but I had a good feeling that there was some really beautiful wood in there so I couldn't wait long. I was too excited to see what was inside. My friend Tom came over 3 days later with his really awesome Stihl chainsaw and helped me out as I cut the wood up into slices. (Thanks Tom!!!) The wood turned out to be absolutely amazing, some of the best I've ever cut up! I put it in my cargo container for about 6 months to dry (until early July). When I took it out I noticed most of it felt dry but some was still wet so I left some of it in the container and put some other pieces outside on a pallet to continue to dry for future projects. Most of the driest pieces went on the table and I began the layout. After grinding the pieces (with a flap disc on the grinder) I felt that the pieces still had a bit of moisture in them so after doing the initial layout I decided to give the pieces another month and a half more to dry before mounting them to the backer board and finishing the art piece. Even though I occasionally make art with unseasoned pieces, I wanted these pieces to fully dry before finishing the art piece. Sometimes unseasoned wood will twist, bend, bow, crack, etc. after the pieces are mounted to the backer board and I didn't want that to happen with this piece. Plus I knew I wanted to put oil based polyurethane on it so I wanted to make sure it was fully dry before I did that. I finished it up in late August/early September. So here it is!

Видео Brazilian eyes are smiling :) wood wallart канала scott oconnor