Advent

Though the secular world already considers it Christmas, we are still in the Advent season. We, as Christians, await for the coming of the Christ child. Advent is an awaiting, the preparation for an important person, place or thing. There is a reason I stress a more "liturgical" theme for this post because I have a little tangent project.

I have a life sized baby Jesus statues that has been passed down through my family. When I first received the statues, the manger that belonged to it was in complete shambles. So, I didn't take the original manger. This was about a year ago. Now, as Christmas approaches and I bring out that beautiful statue, I deem it fitting I throw together a manger.

I am making two, the other is for a close friend who also finds his baby Jesus without a manger. The difference, which I didn't realize in the design phase, was that mine is much bigger than his. Therefore, my manger will be a little longer than my friends. I went ahead and cut all the pieces and am still currently gluing everything together.

I'm sure by next week...the last Sunday of Advent, the manger will be ready, filled with hay, awaiting the birth of the Savior, Christ the Lord.

Now, returning to the project at hand. This weekend, I went to look at material options as well as cut the pipes down to size. I noticed that I modeled the thickness of the frame pieces at 1/2 inch. In reality, there is not wood choices that have a thickness of 1/2 in, rather 3/4 in seems to be the standards throughout all options I'm considering. So, I went back to the drawing board and made the corrections to get the new dimensions of the project. So, the only material I purchased was for the grill, which is 1/4 in hard Birch. I will eventually purchase Pine for the frame.

First, the pipes. They are solid wood. So, very simply, I measured the desired length of each pipe and hacked off part of the pipe. Here are some pictures of this process and the result:

Original Pipes

Tops Hacked Off

Final Result

So, it looks like things are moving right along nicely with this project. Next step will now be to clean the pipes and get them ready to be painted the usual silver color like all the other pipes I've done. At the same time, material for the frame needs to be purchased and cut to size.

Until next time...