I work construction and the company I now work for had me carve a gift for a church we were adding onto. I welcomed this with open arms, carving on company time and doing what I love to do, this is unheard of!


Little did I know at the time that the church wanted this carving to be on a 40’L radius wall with 16’H to bottom of the first window. Ouch! I had to fill an area of approx. 8’H x 12’L to keep things in proportion. They also wanted me to use their three word mission statement, Welcome, Grow, and Believe. I chose to carve three wooden linens using their mission statement with symbols of those words. By doing this could spread the banners out to fill space and I could handle the pieces in my shop.





I made these linens out of 8/4 butternut which helped speed the carving up and saved my company money. I used a gel stain which helped me darken some areas for more contrast. For the finish I used a wipe on finish to help eliminate runs.

This entire project took me 13 weeks of 40hr. per work week.