Some details and decorations still need to be added. I will even out the colour of the wood with some aniline dyes (different from stains. Stains are basically a thin paint, and they tend to obscure grain.) I am using hand tools to build the piece, as is my wont. On the whole, it is going well.
It is rather small, but if I am to stick to the plan, or at least the photograph, and preserve the proportions, I need to keep it small, or it will not fit in my house. I am also constrained by the wood I find and the lengths in which I find it. The longest boards I dig up are a little under four feet long, which means the longest parts of the altar have to be under four feet long.
We have decided to dedicate the altar to the Holy Family. Perhaps I will combine the altar with a few kneelers and the organ I am building to make a small chapel in the basement. If I had time and money enough. I would build one of these for the Holy Family. However, I am broke, and I doubt the landlords would appreciate us making the addition.
Soon I will begin work on the superstructure of the altar. I will take photographs when there is something to show.
12 comments:
As good a woodworker as a writer...now, how's that book on coming along???
WOW! I'm trying to talk my hubby into making me one. Do you have plans that you are following?
Vox: the history is pretty much written and posted on this blog. There's a link to it under the "pages" near the top.
Ranter: I've been working from a photograph I found on the web. I drew up an outline on graph paper which allows me to maintain proportions and measurements. I described it and show the photos in the first post on the altar. I link to that post near the top of the this post.
Oh, and thanks to both of you for teh compliments.
I know, but I think that you should take it off of this blog and copyright it and try to get it published. It is good and it is a history needing to be told, but there is so much more...how about the "priest to the Maronites"...who knew that a little church in Long Branch has a stained glass window of St. Maron, St. John Maron and Our Lady of Mt. Lebanon? The priest had a stroke on Christmas Eve Midnight Mass and died on the Feast of Stephen, his name day.
These are the stories to fill it out and that need to be told. You do it well, and I think there is a market for it, small and local maybe, but I'm serious.
Besides, it can't be any worse than the pulp spawned by Novalis.
Vox...
Nice. Are you still using lumber from pallets?
Dim,
Yup.
Vox,
Unfortunately, doing that level of research would first require access to diocesan Not completely impossible, but it would be like herding cats. Second, I would have to take time off work for the project- say, a year's sabbatical, and while my contract does allow me to take a sabbatical every few years or so, I do it without pay, so I would have to get paid from another source while doing the research for the book. The most likely source of money would be the diocese, just as they gave a large advance and allowance to the hisotrian they comissioned to write a biography of Michael Power, but he was a professional hisotroian and I don't see the diocese handing over that kind of money to an amateur historian, no matter how interesting his prose. I mean, I'm giving it away, and almost no one is interested.
May I suggest then that you take what you have done and put in a book form and register it with Creative Commons?
Then, find a sponsor.
There are some monied Catholics in this town...
Beautiful!
God bless,
E.C.
Bear,
The home altar is beautiful!
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