By Roy Ellery
People can’t resist picking up my log books and looking through them. Sometimes I’ll write a story to accompany the scenes, but often I’ll just let the images tell a unique story to each viewer.
After purchasing a new scroll saw, I needed to create something to test the saw’s capabilities. I had a jacaranda log lying around and decided to slice it on the band saw. After cutting some designs on each slice with the scroll saw, I reformed the log. The first log was pinned at the corner and you had to rotate the pages like a fan. Later, I realized there was no reason why I couldn’t bind one edge like a book.
My log books usually feature little gnomes that live inside trees. For this project, I use a 5″-diameter jacaranda log cut to about 5″ long. Jacaranda is native to my area, but any wood with a uniform light color and good bark retention, such as basswood, will work.
Scroll down to page through and see the clever scenes in this book.
The full step-by-step article originally appeared in Woodcarving Illustrated Summer 2012 (Issue 59).
