Back in 2022, a teacher at Elijah’s school approached me with a special project opportunity. The old wooden cross on the school property had fallen over. She had saved a chunk of it and wondered if I could make something from it.
The piece she saved was an 8×8 that was maybe 15″ long. I finally landed on the idea of making a nativity set out of it and I based the design on a set that Mom always put up around our house while I was growing up.
I carefully sliced the wood into ~3/4″ pieces. Then I drew the whole thing on the computer first and used the CNC to cut out all the parts. (That turned out to be a good move since I ended up making more of them.) I cut it out of regular pine first to refine the design and then nervously used up the reclaimed wood to make a set. The final step (after endless hand sanding) was applying 5 colors of stain to the various pieces and gluing them together. I made a quick video of the process so the school could use it as marketing for their upcoming fundraiser/auction.
The set made from the school cross sold for over $700 at auction! Since I had another complete set made from regular pine, I finished that one as well and gave it to my parents as a Christmas gift.
Fast forward a couple years and I keep thinking about this project and how it would be nice to have our own set so I pulled out the files and cut another one. Most of the effort is in the hand sanding and the staining. I didn’t sand this one quite as much as the others partly because I’m lazy and partly because I wondered if a slightly more rustic look would look good. I think it came out well and it will be fun to have it up around our house at Christmas.
I might revisit this in the future. I think it would be fun to make a fancier version that uses five different species of wood and no stain. I’m curious if that would look good or if the quality of the wood would detract from the simple design.