More New Work

While waiting for my new LEDs and my alcohol permit I decided to work on some older pieces that I had put to the side, waiting for inspiration. This new work is the other half of the board I used to make the piece below, "X," that I completed over the summer. The images aren't very good (I could sure a Nikon D90) so you will have to take my word for it that this is a spectacular piece of curly maple. As a result, I wanted to be careful that I had a good idea of what I was doing before ruining the remaining section.
As it turned out, I didn't have a very good idea what to do with it. I started shaping it in a way to emphasize the grain pattern, forming a point at the top, but then I realized I didn't know how to finish the ends so I put it down.

In starting over, I decided to add some cherry stripes, so I cut it into 10 sections (I decided I like the random width design better than the regular widths) and glued it back up, slowly in section because 19 pieces, over 4 feet long, are too many to glue up at once. Unfortunately, the glue up was even more difficult because I had already started shaping the wood, making it harder to align each section. In doing this, however, I decided that I should accentuate the circular grain pattern in the bottom half by carving it out, but then I realized it would work better as two separate pieces.

I'm still shaping the section above but it is starting to look pretty good. I'm trying to slowly flatten out the top relative to the bottom. I think it will look good with painted stripes, although I think I'll leave a couple (a few?) of the stripes clear. In the piece below, I'll paint it according the the grain pattern, rather than the stripes, slowly changing the color as it moves to the center.