Making Wood Stingrays – Carving, Woodworking, Art, Sculpture

My wife was recently in the Galapagos Islands
for work. She brought back some pretty cool underwater
footage of some sea creatures. In this case, stingrays. This inspired me to make a piece based on
it. I started with some reclaimed wood. I have a few pieces of cedar and what is left
of an old coffee table. I flattened the edges of the cedar so I could
glue them together into one large piece. I cut it square on the mitre saw. Then, I sanded one side flat. I drew on a design. I wanted to make it look like it was sandy
waves. I started to draw my designs, very roughly,
on this scrap piece. Then, I cut out the rough shapes, very rough
shapes, just with the hand saw. I refined it with a marker. I roughed out the shapes with the angle grinder,
at first. I switched to the rotary tool to refine the
shapes again.

Then, I hand-sanded to smooth it. It turned out pretty cool. I tried to put them in a pleasing arrangement. The idea was to suspend them in epoxy. I made a mold out of some 1/8 inch plywood
and a glue gun. I wrapped the whole thing in plastic wrap
and duct tape, just in case there were any leaks. Total Boat sent me this kit a while back. I was going to use it on this project. I figured the wood would float in the epoxy. I glued it down with super glue. I mixed up a batch. I used almost all I had left. I poured it over and popped the bubbles with
a torch. Then, I noticed something was going awry. It started to smoke and bubble, so I set it
outside. It went terribly wrong. As you can see this was a complete and utter
failure.

I think this is the first piece I have ever
made that I will not be able to recover and repurpose into something else. As you can see, something went horribly wrong
with the epoxy. I discussed it with the Total Boat representative. We came to the conclusion that this is not
the right type of epoxy for this type of work. I poured it too thick. Not only that, it was about 90 degrees Fahrenheit
in here when I poured it. A combination of factors caused it to generate
too much heat and it cured too quickly. It basically boiled and then cracked. Bottom line, it was not the right type of
epoxy for this type of work. They do have a different type of epoxy that
is more appropriate for this thick pour.

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I am kind of bummed that I put so much work
into making these rays. I liked how they turned out. I think the concept is sound. I just did not use the right epoxy. I am not giving up on this idea. I am going to set it aside for now. I might come back to it at a later time. If you made it this far, thanks a lot for
watching. Swim on back to Cammie's Garage..

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