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I made another intarsia eagle and used it in a project which required wood burning of letters. This eagle is from a pattern in a book by Kathy Wise. Her instructions say to expand it so the final eagle is 22" wide. I wanted an eagle that is 12.5" wide, so I did not expand the pattern very much. Also, I cut the pattern into only five pieces, using oak for the head and tail feathers and using walnut for the body and both wings. I adjusted the thickness of the pieces by adding a shim to the head and sanding the wings and tail feathers on a belt sander. I shaped the wings, body, tail feathers and head with small files, small knives and a hand held rotary tool. I wood burned the eye. That was new to me on this project. Thanks to GrandpaJim for his suggestion about wood burning. I bought the basswood plank at a hobby store. I like the way that basswood looks, especially when it has bark attached, but there is a special challenge associated with the bark. It tends to flake off pretty easily. Fixing it seems to be a two-step process. First I used super glue gel and super glue liquid to reattach sections of bark which had detached or looked like they might detach. Then I coated the bark with shellac which soaks into the bark and seems to have some properties of glue because it helps the bark stay attached. Fortunately shellac does not look like glue. I also used shellac as a top coat for the entire plank and the eagle after gluing the eagle on. For wood burning the letters, I put the entire verse onto my computer then flipped it horizontally. I transferred it as pdf to a USB stick and printed it at a local copy shop. When the letters are printed on a LASER printer, you can transfer them to the wood as a pattern with a wood burning 'transfer tool'. Unfortunately heat transfer will not work if you print on a dot matrix printer. It has to be laser. It takes time to transfer the pattern this way, but it is quite effective. That makes wood burning the letters much easier. After wood burning the letters, I glued the eagle to the plank with super glue (gel) and some wood glue. I applied shellac to the eagle, the plank and again to the bark.

I made two wooden eagles using pretty much the same pattern. For these two projects I used my own pattern, rather than a professional pattern. I wanted a simple pattern that required only 4 pieces of wood for each eagle. Here are the two final eagles. The first eagle is 8.5" wide x 3.5" high. The second eagle is 10.5" wide by 6.5" high. Eagle 1 - final Eagle 2 - final Pattern for Eagle 1. Pattern for Eagle 2. Notice it is slightly modified. I drew more feathers on the eagle's left wing, which is on the right side of the pattern. All the 'in progress' photos below were taken while I was making the first eagle. I used the same steps making the second eagle. I used two kinds of wood: walnut for the wings and body, oak for the head and tail feathers. First I glued the pattern to the wood using light duty spray adhesive. Then I cut the pieces on a scroll saw. This shows all four pieces cut, but some are too thick. I sanded them for the correct thickness on a belt sander. Next step was shaping. For this step I used a Dremel rotary tool, but mostly files and sandpaper. Shaping the eye, beak and area around the beak was very challenging. I glued the parts together. Please be aware that I did not set them on this plywood board while gluing or while glue was drying. I put them on a plastic sheet. I filled gaps with sawdust mixed in glue. I was able to make dark filler with walnut sawdust and light filler with oak sawdust. After the glue/sawdust mixture dried, more sanding was required. Next step was painting talons, beak, and eye. I have since learned that wood dye works pretty well for intarsia pieces. Next time I hope to use dye, in order to get better colors. Last step was two coats of shellac as top coat.

This project combined four steps. If you would like more information about any of these steps, let me know. 1. Make an octagonal frame and background. 2. Prepare a pattern for an eagle. 3. Make a wooden eagle to fit the octagonal frame. Dimensions of this eagle: 8.5" wide, 3.75" high. 4. Wood burn a verse onto the background. Glue eagle and frame to the background. I also added a sawtooth hanger to the back of the frame.