Big bird, Condor

preprius · September 13, 2021

I live near a Condor reserve area. Pinnacles National Park. This is one of the sites where they steal the eggs that the condors lay, so the condors will lay another egg. They hatch and raise the bird in captivity but release them when the are old enough. Humans captured all known California condors in 1966. There was like less than 50 of them.

Now there is over 1000 of them. Every one of them is gps tagged.

So i decided to make a easy scroll saw outline and inlay the white wood aspen for the under wing.

The local vet does work on wildlife and does work on vultures. So I will donate this to him.

Behind the wood piece On the wall is the picture I stuck to the wood to be used as pattern.

Because the inlay fit flush only from the back, it looks like I turned the head the other way.

Size is about 8 inches wing span. Wood is 0.75" thk Poplar for the bird. Aspen 0.5" is white pattern on wing.

General finish water based stain brown on poplar then satin coat. Only satin on aspen.

Actual wingspan of Condors is about 10.5ft.

Lesson learned...

1) poplar needs prestain conditioner. I did this after the inlay was cut.

This caused wood swelling and inlay was very tight.

Fix: precondition the wood before cutting. Both woods the aspen and poplar.

2) using poplar caused more work due to staining, pre conditioning. the wood slightly bowed after conditioning which caused sanding on flat surface to sand off the stain on edges.

Fix.. don't use poplar. Use dark brown wood that stains well.