Hand made, Afresh!!!

This project started almost 6 months back and have been dragging my feet on it, not just because I am a lazy bum, but also due to the complexities involved in the project itself.

The lock down period seemed the best time to complete it, when the gentle push from J almost became a shove and he started asking me if I am going to work on it, or if he should re purpose the base for something else, less significant.

A name board for the house has been a cherished dream since we moved in. While the house was under construction, there were too many inevitable stuff that took our attention away and my murmur about a name board fell on deaf years. In fact, after a few years I almost forgot about it, until recently during a trip to J’s tharavad (ancestral home in Malayalam) in Thalassery, I saw a large name board made of a cross section of teak wood with golden brass letters on it. Most houses in Kerala are palatial and this name board looked imposing at the entrance. The piece of wood was itself around 3 feet. 

The cross section  of wood on top
 is the base 

And this desire for a name board for our house was rekindled and since its been a long wait, I wanted to do it as an DIY project. J wasn’t very impressed with my idea, since he thought I wanted similar one that we saw in Kerala. A bit of explaining and he sourced a really small cross section of teak wood from his place. 

The ready made carved out alphabets available online and in the market did not match my expectations. Either these alphabets were too flowery and grandiose, or bore an austere look. Joe also checked around with some timber merchants for carving alphabets and their samples didn’t appeal either. That’s when I decided, I will carve out the alphabets myself. Yep.

The Balsa wood sheet

I was particular it has to be a wood carving, ( for no specific reason, though). I scouted around for a while until I laid my hands on a sheet of Balsa wood, 3 mm thick, from an hobby products’ shop with a fancy name, called itsy bitsy. This is the same place where I picked up my shiny gratitude journal too.

Contrary to what I had imagined, carving out the alphabets wasn’t that easy. First off, while cutting out the alphabets from a stencil I created on the sheet, the wood would chip off into tiny pieces, almost in the finishing stages. There was rarely an alphabet that I carved out which came in a single piece. So after each carving, I had to use every glue I had at hand – fevibond, feviquik and in some cases even the fabric glue and the most humble fevicol.

@ close look, each alphabet
is a collection of multiple pieces

The carved out alphabets now looked as though a kinder-gartener broke it up using bare hands. I was thoroughly disappointed and wanted to even abandon the project. J not hiding his disappointment about the look of the alphabets didn’t help. Anyways, since I had put in considerable amount of time in this by now, didn’t want to back out. 

Meanwhile, J was working on the base. He had even ordered a grinding machine by Bosch and it reached us just before the lock down. The base was ground smooth along with the sides and a coat of varnish applied to make it look shiny and this process was repeated 5 times as the varnish was being sucked in by the base. At the end of the process J gave me a shiny base, with the grains of the teak visible. Now I had the pressure of making sure the alphabets matched the gloss of  base.

The finished base from J, 

the grains visible.

I set to work on the alphabets which still looked pathetic with all the glue on it, unfinished edges and varied colors because of the different glues applied thoughtlessly.

I used the available filers to smoothen out the rough edges, like sand paper from J’s tool kit, my nail file from the pedicure kit, and finally even took the help of the menial blade. 

Alphabets after some filling, 

filing and a coat of paint.

still not all that great

The carved out alphabets were pretty fragile, so had to be really slow and gentle handling them with these amateurish tools. Also needed a lot of light and was pretty painful bending over these and finishing them up. Sure enough they definitely tested my patience. Yet, the rich creamy color of balsa wood was patchy and had to paint them white.

And then it all came together and finally this is how the name board looks like  – fruit of hard labor.

The name board done 

The joy of ideating, creating and looking at your own handicraft – ineffable tour de force.  Here's how it looks at our entrance.

So what if it took 15 years for us to put up a name board for our home ?