PeteG
Established Member
I was asked to make a wall tree for a charity a couple of weeks back. The tree will be hung inside their cafe where customers can buy a token in the shape of a little wooden cup, which they then hang on the tree for anyone who can't afford to buy a tea or coffee.
The tree comes from an original design by Steve Good for a jewellery tree, but only has the one owl on the right. Another customer asked me to make one with more owls, which I did, and this lead to the design of the wall tree after the jewellery tree was seen by someone from the charity.
Here's the pattern for the jewellery tree against the wall tree, which took six sheets of A4. A picked up a piece of Oak which was 34 inches long by around 14 inches,
so the maximum width of the tree I could get from the oak would govern the height. The customer wanted the tree as close to two foot high as possible,
I did explain that I hadn't made anything that big before on the scroll saw, but it sounded like a good challenge.
After a brief chat about how it would be hung, I suggested a large circular background sprayed in a dull gold which they really liked, but asked for the background colour
to be green, in line with their company colours.
Here's the test to see how it all looked and to decide how I would finish the bottom of the tree.I used a piece of 18mm plywood originally, but after four undercoats and four top coats I really didn't like the finish, so I cut another background from 18mm MRMDF.
I made an oak frame for the back put together with Dominos, this frame will then fit over a beech block which will be fixed to the wall, with a couple of screws going
through the top of the frame in to the beech.
Here's the test hanging, I've drilled in to one of the cupboard doors in the workshed, it was that or a living room wall
For the cups I used 3mm birch ply. After making three test cups to see how they looked against the tree, I then stacked cut seven strips of ply which gave me another 21 cups, so 24 cups in all.
The height of the tree ended up at 538mm, and on several occasions my left arm was at full stretch with me standing a few feet away from the saw, while swinging the wood from right to left cutting around the rounded ends of the branches. Fun to do although a little challenging.
The tree comes from an original design by Steve Good for a jewellery tree, but only has the one owl on the right. Another customer asked me to make one with more owls, which I did, and this lead to the design of the wall tree after the jewellery tree was seen by someone from the charity.
Here's the pattern for the jewellery tree against the wall tree, which took six sheets of A4. A picked up a piece of Oak which was 34 inches long by around 14 inches,
so the maximum width of the tree I could get from the oak would govern the height. The customer wanted the tree as close to two foot high as possible,
I did explain that I hadn't made anything that big before on the scroll saw, but it sounded like a good challenge.
After a brief chat about how it would be hung, I suggested a large circular background sprayed in a dull gold which they really liked, but asked for the background colour
to be green, in line with their company colours.
Here's the test to see how it all looked and to decide how I would finish the bottom of the tree.I used a piece of 18mm plywood originally, but after four undercoats and four top coats I really didn't like the finish, so I cut another background from 18mm MRMDF.
I made an oak frame for the back put together with Dominos, this frame will then fit over a beech block which will be fixed to the wall, with a couple of screws going
through the top of the frame in to the beech.
Here's the test hanging, I've drilled in to one of the cupboard doors in the workshed, it was that or a living room wall
For the cups I used 3mm birch ply. After making three test cups to see how they looked against the tree, I then stacked cut seven strips of ply which gave me another 21 cups, so 24 cups in all.
The height of the tree ended up at 538mm, and on several occasions my left arm was at full stretch with me standing a few feet away from the saw, while swinging the wood from right to left cutting around the rounded ends of the branches. Fun to do although a little challenging.
