Croquet Anyone? ... Sculptural "Simplicity" in Wood

    As I have continued to try to explore and organize the myriad of "must save" treasures squirreled away in my studio, I again came across some items that I thought "belonged together"....two antique croquet balls and the other half of a wooden bowl blank remnant that I used in a much earlier piece (see my blog post for 9-28-13).  I envisioned the 2 wooden spheres suspended over the center of the inverted arch of the blank. In order to execute my vision I was going to have to refine & refinish the eventual wooden base for the sculpture and then determine how I would suspend the spheres over the inverted wooden arch. 
  The bowl blank remnant is made of cherry wood and has a strip of maple and Padauk halfway up on

Bowl blank remnant trimmed & sanded

Holes drilled & mahogany board glued & screwed

Croquet balls' bottoms sanded & centers drilled

each end. My first task was to remove the uneven ends of the various glued sections and the glue residue so that all of its sides were flat, and then I thoroughly sanded all surfaces. I decided  to use a 1/2" oak wooden dowel to support the wooden spheres. This meant that I had to drill holes at the same height through both vertical ends of the arch (a challenge!). In order to strengthen the thinnest part of the arch I attached a 1/2" thick 5"x15 /34"  mahogany board to bottom of the the base. The next step was to drill holes in the spheres so that I could

Assembled with dowel & coated with butcher's wax

eventually be able to thread the wooden dowel through their centers. First I had to sand one end of each sphere so that I could center the drilled holes and the balls could be lined up together more accurately. After gluing the two balls together, I re-drilled the holes and checked to make sure that the dowel would pass through both smoothly.  The final step was to position and glue the 2 spheres at the center of the rod, glue the rod in place over the arch, and finish the piece with a coat to liquid butchers wax. Very happy with the result.  As I envisioned it!

"Simplicity"