Curt's big project

So Ragen does these blogs and she thought that the project i was working on should get one too...... well i didn't know that meant i had to do the blog too. So here goes. My dad has a couple of friend's that are Helicopter Pilots that fly for in the Military....this is pretty significant you will see why in a bit.  After they returned from deployment close to a year,they presented him with a flag that was carried in the chopper with them while the flew there missions. They were issued a Certificate the gave the flag authenticity. So I thought this was really Awesome and did  not want see it get lost in my dads office, so I decided to build him a case worthy of presenting these pieces of history and Honor the men who gave them to Dad. 

So dad first told me they were in the Air force. So I decided to use the Air Force symbol, He was probably busy and I was fishing for information about the guys and the sizes of the flag and the certificate without tipping him off that i was building this. 

Out come the Tools

I had to find the right Materials to make everything pop. I went with Brazilian Purple heart and an African Zebra wood

The Zebra wood has a really awesome cross grain 

 The star is the center piece of the whole set of wings so has to be precise. It took me an hour just to lay out the template on paper to begin.

My first attempt turned out alright but .... not good enough it is the center piece of the whole project

this one turned out better

Beginning the glueing

As you can see the star lays out the angles for the wings so it had to be perfect . so with the start complete i can begin the layout of everything else. This was about three weeks into the project here. 

I Started by routing by the edges of each piece cut out and then inlay the circle in the center, which turned out to be a little more of a feat than I envisioned.

Its coming along slowly . This is about 2 months into the project Due to being busy at work, and lack of free time while I'm at home. etc

The eagle has landed, all glued up and a rough sand on all of the pieces.

Time to start the rest of the project, by now its July

 So I Modeled the top of the shadow box after the Sergeants insignia... This too was a fun and learning experience these pieces of maple were steamed and laminated to create the arc. 

By this time its the middle of July but this part of the project has been going very well. You can see in the back ground the eagle has been sanded and varnished and sanded and varnished again and again to build that luster. The Flag case and the shadow box have come together and I used Velvet as a backing its pretty and velvet attracts less dust than other materials.

So here it is after about 5 months of working on this, I was so involved and kept going and going all of a sudden I realized I was done. The eagle is mounted and The certificate holder was attached. Hope he likes it

At this point my folks don't know this is coming. I go to mail this to my dad and UPS drops the bomb of shipping on me close to $300.00 so needles to say I had to parcel post this ie. slow boat to china. Well with parcel post to Alaska there is no tracking, no guarantee, and the date that they give for this to arrive is about three weeks from now. 

Finally with some of me sweating it out and calling my mom repeatedly to check the porch, it arrived at my dads house. He installed the Certificate and flag. And then comes the kicker my dad calls and say he got it and thinks it looks great! the guys will really like it so i go into explaining how i got the ideas and what not. I talk about how the eagle on the front is the Air Force symbol and how much work went into that. Well at this point and time he lays it on me that these guys are in the Army and they are Air Calvary...... A total different Branch of the military. Sheeshh    Oh well it still looks good