I gave you a peek at my latest woodworking project:

One of the ladies I worked with at my previous job will be retiring this week. When I was still working with her I had showed her a picture of something in my family room, but she had zeroed in on my clock:

This was a Christmas gift from Jay a few years ago. She absolutely loved it and said that Jay could make her a dog clock for her retirement gift. A few weeks ago, I asked Jay if he could draw up a dog clock for my friend. I told him that she loves spaniels, so this was what he came up with:

Jay sent a picture around to show a few people and his mom thought it was for her. Well, it wasn’t that hard to do another one, so he quickly ran the program again. Thus, I am working on two dog clocks.

I wanted to go for more of the natural wood look, so I did a natural stain.

It brought the grain out a little more, but the dog was still getting lost. So I asked Jay to cut another piece of pine and rout out some lines so that I could test stains.

After these dried I consulted with him and we picked the darkest color on the right.

What a difference that makes! A few coats of poly and that dog will be winning ribbons for Best of Show! I liked the other dark color on my stain sample, though, so I decided to stain the other dog with it instead of making them the same color.

You can’t see a big difference in color, but when you look up close you can see a big difference in the wood. It has a lot of varied patterns and some weird grain stuff going on. Despite all of that, I think that they turned out really nice. Maybe once they are completely dry I can set them up for a non-glare picture.