Oak and walnut altar and tabernacle stand


lwroten

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It has been a while since I have posted anything, but I wanted to put up my latest project. I have built a few pieces of furniture for my church. I donate the time and my tools, someone else donates the wood, church buys anything needed special for the project. This was my biggest project so far. They wanted a chapel altar and a tabernacle stand. I pretty much had a free hand at the design, so I incorporated a lot of features that I have never had the opportinity to try before. Veneer, inlay, raised panels, and CNC carving were all new to me on this project. I acquired the use of a CarveWright CNC router for this project, so I included some carved trim and they wanted images carved into the front panels as well. I can pick out a few issues with my carved images, but they don't seem to bother anybody else. The entire project is either red oak or walnut (excluding the plywood). The columns were built using a 22.5 degree lock miter, then glued and strapped with some inexpensive tie-down ratchet straps. The top is a couple of pieces of 3/4" thick and one piece of 1/2" thick birch cabinet grade plywood with an 1/8" thick red oak veneer. The crosses, that are inlaid, are 1/8" thick walnut. All of the veneer was made by re-sawing oak and walnut boards. The base is solid red oak. A piece of 6/4 on the bottom and a piece of 5/4 on top of it. The miters on the base are held with Festool dominos (another new tool that I borrowed to do this job) and epoxy. The panels and trim are also walnut. The whole thing was stained with Minwax Cherry 235, and finished with several coats of wiping poly. The top and bottom are both around 200 pounds and the top was too wide to fit through a standard door. I decided to build it so it could be assembled on-site with just two people. I put locating pins in the base and a shallow dado that the panels would sit in. There was also a matching dados in the columns, as well as a hole in the center base of the columns that slid down on the locating pins. When the panels and columns were in place, I pulled it all together with pocket hole screws. Not the joinery method that I would have preferred, but it was the only way that I could think of to make it easy to assemble in the field. I did stain and urethane some plugs to fill the holes, so you hardly notice unless you are sitting beneath the altar... Also, I installed a nearly hidden door in the center of the altar top. It is where the relic is placed and it is held in place with a magnetic latch. All in all I think it turned out pretty good and I now have a few new router bits to use on future projects.

 

The whole project took me about a month of weekends and evenings. I posted the entire 30 day build on my blog if anyone wants the boring details. http://lwroten.wordpress.com/tag/church-altar/

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Altar Layout.pdf

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Easy Joe U.. I 'm not ready to be a relic.... yet!  Though I'm getting close!   That's a beautiful alter extremely well executed.... You gotta be proud!

I am proud of the altar, but I learned a lot on it that I would do differently the second time around. Mainly little things that only I notice...

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Can someone explain briefly, the relic in the alter? Oh, I'm sorry, beautiful job Iwroten.

Thanks, a relic is either a piece of the saint or a piece of their personal belongings. Could be a piece of cloth from their clothes, a few hairs from their head, ashes, even a bone.

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