It's Steve (now in blog form)

Kunal and I have been working on a little woodwork project lately.  I was going to post about it eventually but he beat me to it (so it’s like that, is it?).  So rather than write something original I’m just going to hijack his post.  Originally posted on Kunal’s blog here.

The duck tale

One of my college roomates is getting married next month in Phuket, Thailand. As a gift to him and his wife, I’ve designed, fabricated, and painted a pair of stylized Korean wedding ducks. Before I jump into the details, I have to give a big thanks to Steve for providing the idea, guidance and resources that were necessary to achieve a tangible outcome.

So why Korean wedding ducks? Apparently it is a Korean tradition to give a pair of ducks as a wedding gift. Aside from being cute decorations, the ducks are a way to visualize the current state of a relationship: a happy couple points their ducks face to face while a not-so-happycouple points their ducks away. There are some pretty intense ducks out there.

The process got started two weeks ago when Steve and I picked up a band saw from Westwood. Look how happy he is:

Three days later, I met up at Steve’s place to learn the fine art of band sawing and earn my woodworking badge. Here is a shot of Steve showing me the ropes:

Band saw, meet wood. Wood, meet band saw.

Steve’s ducks are on the left and mine are on the right. We proceeded to smooth the corners and faces with a Dremel and fine sand paper. Here is what the ducks looked like post-sanding:

We proceeded to stain the ducks and let them sit overnight in Steve’s garage:

Four days later, I met back up at Steve’s place and saw the dried ducks in all their glory:

Fast forward to this morning when I decided to paint the ducks with acrylics:

I ended up mixing white, orange, and light pink and went to town on the ducks:

I then went ahead and mixed orange and pink together to create some highlights and stripes:

Here is a top down shot:

Here is another shot showing the patterns from the other side:

Making these ducks made me realize how out of touch I am when it comes to working with wood and fabrication in general. Overall, this was an amazing experience to attempt a radically different project. I hope the couple keeps their ducks endlessly pointed at each other.