May 23

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Daniel D. Brown PhD, 2022

“Power. I have it. They don’t. This bothers them.”

Buffy the Vampire Slayer. All natural wood color, no paint or stain.

After a brutally long work day filled with breast cancer, it’s nice to sit down and post about some fun slayage! I’ve been a massive Buffy/ @sarahmgellar fan for many years, having watched it all many times. Tori Angelini (@toricangelini) and I had a bunch of little interactions over the past few years over random woodworking/art things. But then she let it slip that she’s a massive Buffy fan too, and our conversations sorta snowballed into randomly sent Buffy/geeky things (I seem to have a lot of entertainment interests in common with her hubby @matt.angelini as well). She and @tam_a_ryn also bonded over hot sauces, and she even sent us some hot sauce along with a bunch of her wood/epoxy ornaments for Christmas.
Anyway, I knew I had to do something for her in return, and I wanted to wait long enough for it to be a total surprise. I first thought about making their little one a baby rattle. And then I thought maybe a simplistic Buffy piece for her and an “Appa” for Matt. But the more I thought about it, the more I knew I had to do Buffy and make it rad. I mean Tori is an obsessive fan. A fanatic, even! You should ask her about her experience having a “Cameo” conversation with James Marsters AKA Spike. Kudos to Matt for getting her that! 😂
So I settled on this design I roughly based on the season 1 DVD cover.

Note: I’m intentionally leaving out Joss Whedon discussion in this post. It’s obviously been disappointing. But Buffy still rocks in all her campy, angsty glory.

Made from Bloodwood, mahogany, purpleheart, pine, basswood, ebony, holly, elm, European cherry, and walnut. I think it turned out five by five.

Mar 15

Boba’s/Jabba’s Palace (#3), Daniel D. Brown, 2022

I’ve been meaning to make an actual post of this for a couple weeks. Long story, short: I lied about not liking this watercolored-sycamore background. It was intended all along as 1 of 2 pieces, the second of which would be given to Luke @cyclocrosscutter. A long time ago in a galaxy… well… here, Luke surprised me with a badass purpleheart and walnut Mjolnir with hand-routered details (swipe). He said I had to make him an intarsia in exchange. So I actually made two versions of Boba’s/Jabba’s Palace. If you look closely at the stories from this build on my profile, you can see that there are actually 2 of each piece. Luckily he’s not that observant. I decided to give him this one, mainly because I figured it’s a bit different from his own work. He could slap a few pieces of different colored wood together for the sky as easily as I can. But I felt like this one was a bit more “artistic”. Everything else is the same, except the palace itself is made from lombardy poplar (not related to construction “poplar” you find at big box stores, which is actually tulipwood) instead of sycamore. And the frame is different because this was all I had that was long enough (it’s roadside walnut firewood salvage). Go to his page to see it hanging on his wall of awesome geeky scrollsaw art.
PS please don’t ask for similar trades. It stressed me out trying to figure out what to make him 😂😂. I’m not sure it matches Mjolnir in coolness, but at least it does in time invested!

Mar 15

Boba’s/Jabba’s Palace (#2), Daniel D. Brown, 2022

Jabba’s/Boba’s Palace.
All natural wood colors (no paint or stain).

Note: I’ll be posting multiple versions of this. This one has good lighting/color. But you can’t see the totally superfluous lights, which I’m glad I added! (See previous post).
Built from purpleheart, bloodwood, mahogany, chakte viga, yellowheart, yew, sycamore, walnut, bocote, crab apple, wenge, hickory, Lombardi poplar, and maple.
This was a replacement for a smaller, simpler version I made a few years ago. I think practice has paid off a little. I started this thing 3 months ago, and I’m so glad to be done!

Dec 21

Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Daniel D. Brown PhD, 2021

“Spider-Man: Miles Morales” is finally complete! Over 250 pieces of wood from 5 species, hand-cut on scrollsaw. No paints or stains – only natural wood colors (except the web). Built from bloodwood, wenge, walnut, purpleheart, and holly. The web was cut from high-density polyethylene (HDPE).

This piece is based on the final shot in the @insomniacgames Miles Morales game (it’s amazing!), which I screen-grabbed myself many months back. The moment I saw it I thought it would make a great wooden piece, though it took a while to convince myself I could pull it off. I initially intended to include a background with Peter’s version of Spidey swinging behind him as well. But once I realized how complex and time-consuming Miles would be, I decided on a solo no-background piece. This work took almost a full month to complete. Ihave no idea how many hours total, but it was in the many dozens. Obviously I took some artistic liberties with the suit; I really wanted to include some purpleheart.

I made the blurred New York street background just for fun, from an in-focus photo from the Wikipedia entry on William Street in Manhattan (credit “MusikAnimal” Creative Commons license 4.0)

Dec 12

Chewbacca, Daniel D. Brown, 2022

Chewbacca! What a wookie!
Ever since I made “Punch it!” a few years ago (piece showing Han and Chewy on the falcon with programmed lighting and sound), I knew that I wanted to make a more complete “solo” Chewy some day. I decided to go with sequel trilogy Chewy since the previous piece was from the original trilogy. His “aged” fur is also a bit more dynamic, which I figured would play well with multiple woods.

I designed this piece by combining a couple different photos of @joonassuotamo posing as Chewy on magazine covers. The design alone took quite a few hours. However, when I started this project I did NOT know it was gonna take me a full 14 weeks – and I’m glad I didn’t, as I almost certainly would have said “e chu ta that!”

This work came out to 653 individual pieces of wood, all cut by hand on a scrollsaw. I have to give a huge shoutout to all my @saburrtooth rotary bits – I could not have shaped and sanded all these pieces without them. All the wood is natural color, except for the irises of his eyes, which were stained blue. 16 species of wood were used (below), some of which were interesting reclamations, such as the 1970s era African stinkwood chair I’ve mentioned in several projects (it’s an endangered tree and no longer available). A lot of the wood was scavenged and milled by me from firewood and storm-felled trees.
All in all, I’m incredibly pleased with how it turned out. It was impossible to tell beforehand if the color/wood choices were going to actually look alright in the end – there were just too many pieces to fully visualize it. It isn’t perfect, but I think it does the job!

Not for sale and I don’t take commissions!

Woods: catalpa, walnut, elm, mahogany, stinkwood, wenge, holly, ebony, limba, bloodwood, purpleheart, yellowheart, chakte viga, maple, rosewood, leopardwood