One of the best tools I every bought was a jigsaw. It's not a conventional girly apparatus and my then man friend wondered why I hadn't bought a new handbag instead. But he's gone now and the saw isn't.
I had picked up an old pallet by a dumpster because I just knew I would find some use for it. (It was in worse shape than the photo here; this pallet was delivered to me last week by someone who wants me to recreate the wooden soldier my discarded piece of junk became.)
I had a heck of a time separating the wood. I wanted as much length as possible and didn't care if the nail holes showed so I painstakingly (and painfully--you don't want to know how many splinters I removed from my fingers.) pried the nails out and managed to get one solid length of wood.
Next I drew a quick pattern for a toy soldier, being careful to use as many straight lines as possible. (I figured that would make sawing easier.) Then I freehanded the drawing onto the wood with a piece of chalk (which I made last year and will make again this summer.)
The cutting was simple and fast. And yes, I wore safety glasses. (Love that saw.)
A quick smoothing with a piece of sandpaper glued to a block of wood removed the rough spots, then it was a coat of primer (that stuff dries fast) and then the acrylic red, white, yellow and black paint. I added some gold for the epaulets but it doesn't show up well. When the whole thing was dry I covered it with a coat of poly from a half-used can of the stuff I bought from the Habitat for Humanity Restore.
Done.
I wired the finished product to my screen door for Christmas one year and gave it away the next. Afterward I made three more. Here they are. (And I cheated on one of them. The pallet for these had only two good slats and since I wanted to finish these quickly, I bought a piece of castoff, slightly warped pine for a buck ninety.)
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