Making a Basketball from Wood – Art, Sculpture, Woodworking

It was certainly an exciting week-end here
in Cammie's Garage. The football video, I reedited it for Instagram
last week. It went viral. It was shared so many different places. Lots of different Instagram accounts. It made it to Imgur. It made it to Reddit. It was shared to 15 different subreddits. It got 50-60 thousand upvotes. I ended up getting a lot of inquiries for
sports balls. Unfortunately, the cost is a barrier to entry
for a lot of people. Although, I did get one taker on a football
and one for a basketball, actually. Today, I am going to start working on a basketball. I have lots of this maple left over. I think I am going to use this. I went to the lumber yard yesterday to get
more wood. My friend there suggested that I use cherry. That would be a more appropriate colour, I
think, for a basketball. However, cherry is much more expensive.

I am going to use this maple and use a stain
on it. A regulation men's basketball is about 9.5
inches in diameter. This board is about ten inches wide. I just need to cut six of these ten-inch squares. There is actually quite a bit of ambrosia
in this wood. That is kind of neat. I may have made a mistake by putting that glue on there. That will probably resist stain.

Now that I have put some Danish oil on this,
as you can see, I rubbed off some of the stain. It looks very blotchy. I am going to sand this back again and put
more stain on it. Then, I will use a different finish. This is it. I am not entirely happy with the finish. I made the noob mistake of trying to put Danish
oil over top of the stain. I basically wiped it off. I tried to sand it back, but it was clogging
up my sandpaper. The finishing job on this could be a lot better. Ultimately, I restained it and finished it
with lacquer. Then, I buffed it with some fine sandpaper
to eliminate that shiny look.

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It is too heavy to hold on one finger. No trick shots with this. It is quite heavy. Thanks a lot for watching. See you again soon in Cammie's Garage..

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