Turtle Lane Sign

Remember Teresa? Sure you do, she is the pottery kiln lady. A couple of weekends ago we delivered the wood for her outdoor kiln. Well, she dropped by this week and had an idea for a sign for the end of her driveway. The story goes that one day she was on her way to work, and lo and behold a turtle was digging at the end of her driveway to lay eggs. Imagine, possible baby turtles. She asked if we could make a sign. First we had to draw something out on the computer.

We decided to build it in layers for dimension. There would be eight parts: the head, four legs, the tail, the body, and the sign. Jim traced all the parts onto inch thick wood…

and headed to the bandsaw to start cutting.

Here are all the parts freshly cut.

Meanwhile Jim had cut a piece for the sign portion and I headed in to the paint room. I used exterior grade white paint on the whole sign then traced and painted the letters on.

Back in the workshop, Jim used his carving tools to ease the edges of the turtle and give the shell some detail.

We added green stain with a little brown stain in the grooves for a little extra dimension.

With the stain dry, Jim screwed all the parts to the shell from the back.

Here he is all finished just propped up in one of our trees.

Fingers crossed baby turtles appear at some point. Wouldn’t that be something.

Have a great weekend.

Later