Japanese Lantern Restoration

Just about done with all six sides of this Japanese lantern lid and what we've done is we've worked out our eight-inch circle on the top with a nail that pivots in the center point and I think that's close enough. So our next step is to start working on the button that goes on top of this Japanese lantern. We've got the lid to the Japanese lantern roughed out pretty good. We've taken our compass and marked our eight-inch circle and this is an eight-inch octagon which was cut out of a square piece for some possible future project so it's going to work well for this project. What we've done is we've taken our compass from the center point and marked it eight inches and we've done the same thing on the reverse side. So we're going to cut all the way through and make it round and in order to hold on to it we're going to use this vise. It'll sit in here and get clamped up tight and then we can work on it from both sides. So that is our next step. So there's lots to do on this piece. What we also have to do is once this is rounded and we're going to do this, what, I don't know how many times, eight times and this will be round and then we're going to mark it here and we're going to draw a smaller diameter here and we'll probably cut this flat because what we want to wind up with is a piece this round like this and that'll sit right on top of that cap. So it's square now. We'll mark it to where this curve touches this line and then we'll cut straight across in one rectangular plane and then the rest is just going to be cleaning up with a chisel. The button cap is going to go on the lid for the Japanese lantern and I'm shaping it with tools, basically just a couple of tools, cutting it around and then to really finish it off I've got a couple of files that I use. This is just a wood file and I think We're going to go all the way around. There's going to be a little bit of material removed here. So it has just a slight sort of cupping effect. Not straight, but kind of in a little bit. Then after that, once we get shaped, we have to decide how these are going to be. There's going to be a scalp design that comes in here, almost like the scales on a fish. So we'll have to work that out and see how that goes. We're doing the final form work on this this little button that goes on top of our Japanese lantern lid and I want to show you This round part of the file really comes handy for this shape. So that's how that goes. It's kind of a tedious process. We've finished rounding the button for our Japanese lantern lid and what we've done is we've taken a protractor and we've marked off 30 degree increments. We're taking 90 degrees divided by 3, 30 degrees and we've made these lines and we've made little marks on the edge and what we're going to do is take a piece of plastic that was cut out of a soda bottle with the utility knife and scissors. You have to be careful with the utility knife. A pair of good scissors and so now what we need to do is we're going to take this plastic and line it up with the center mark and the mark at the bottom. We're going to go all the way around like that and then we're going to come up a certain amount. I'm not sure what. It's probably going to be something like that and we're going to make our scallop design. This will give us a nice symmetrical all around so the crest on the next one we're going to have something like this. We've marked off segments that we're going to cut into our scallop design and we're not quite sure where these lines are going to be so what I do is I just I just draw it until it looks like it's right and then take a compass and from the center point I'm going to mark the crest of all the next layer of scallops so that I know that's where the top is. That's where this scallop crests right on this line and once I mark it all out I'll start cutting it. So that's where it's going to go all the way around. It's sort of a tedious process but carving can be very tedious. We finished the button on our Japanese lantern lid and we just kind of put a little rosette on top. Our next step in this project is to and I've cut here to give it that curled up look so the next step is to make this limestone look like a piece of gray granite. We got lucky we went out to the scrap yard looking for something to test to sample test our colors on and I came across a piece of granite that was out there. Okay I've mixed up some of the palest color that we had and that looks like a pretty good match for a base color. I'm going to start on the button and I've elevated it so that you don't get globs of paint sticking this thing together because you don't want it stuck together. Now limestone is like a sponge with water you can really see how this is just sucking it in but we got the perfect day for applying the finish on this limestone. It's nice and warm the sun's out we've got two coats of the lightest color washed on I think we're going to put a third coat on and then we're going to try and match what we have to look at here and you can see there's a lot of blue in this stone. Well now we've mixed up our flesh color and what we've done it's just gone around it and did that. Okay the next step in this faux finish I've just taken some black paint I'm going to use a whisk broom and I don't know how this is going to work but we're going to try it just random like mother nature. Okay now we've taken some metallic gray and some clear and we've made a different color gray I didn't have any water-based color so you got to do what you got to do you know but this brings a little more gray into it I think our blue got a little too blue so what we need now is we need to come over with another wash of a really pale gray.