Recycling the Barn

I made something for the first time today in a long time.  I haven't done anything useful with my hands in ages. I've been thinking though, about doing something with one of my favorite quotes by Emerson for some time now, and cruising around on Etsy has been inspirational.  I wanted to have the quote up in my room, but I didn't just want to print it off and frame it.   I wanted an actual piece of something with it on it.  Today, I decided I would see about making something to fulfill that desire.

I started with a piece of old oak barnboard from the collapsed structure on the north side of my property.  I poked around out there, and even though most of the siding was stripped off it two years ago before it fell down to help make the Red Field cabin, I was able to find an interestingly-shaped piece and extract it from the pile.  I took my grandfather's hand sander and went after it to clean it up a bit after I got all the old nails out.  When I got the roughness and dirt off, a beautiful pattern of graining appeared where the board had been planed.  I don't know enough about such things to know if these are hand-planing marks or the marks of one of the old sawmills that ran around here, but it's not the sort of thing you see on modern wood.  When I put the final coats of sealer on it and bring out the detail in the wood, it's going to be gorgeous.

I sat down in the floor with my calligraphy lettering book and some paintbrushes and lettered  in my quote.  That took me about an hour and a half to do.  Trying to do some of that fancy lettering with a paint brush on a rough board surface might not have been the best of all choices, but I think it came out okay.  I should have put the paint in a squeeze bottle and done it that way.  It would have given me a "pen nib" to work with instead of the spreadable brush fibers.  Oh well.....

When I was done lettering, I looked at the piece and it was missing something.  I thought about the quote, and I knew I'd like to add some symbol of knowledge, but I knew that I wanted whatever I added to be something from the barn, something in keeping with the style of the board.  It came to me quickly to cut something out of the tin from the roof.  I've seen lots of things in catalogs and at craft shows where people have taken old license plates and so forth and done projects, so I decided why not try to do something with that roofing tin?  I went and borrowed a pair of tin snips from my father and came back with the plan to cut out an owl for my piece.

I'm glad I formulated the world's simplest owl pattern.  Good LORD.  Scissors and paper, it ain't.  There has to be an easier way to cut tin.  Otherwise, how do all these craftspeople do it?  I got the owl done, but it took me at least an hour to get it there.  Once I was satisfied with the shape, I hand shaped it to give it a little dimension and started applying some color other than that already present from the rust.

 The owl is drying now.  Once all the paint has had a chance to cure, I'll assemble it and do any last minute touchups or corrections.  Then I'll seal the whole thing.  I think it's going to look pretty good considering this is my first project of this kind ever.  I like the look of the owl, especially.  I may try to do more to recycle pieces out of the old barn.  I like the idea of giving things from it new life.  It feels good.