Holding Crosses ...

One of our church members is currently on a mission to make holding crosses and I visited him in his workshop. Holding crosses are irregularly shaped to fit into your hand in a tactile way.
He has a template of the “holding cross”, and has set up a production line. He has a variety of wood in his stock but generally uses pine, mahogany or ash. The process of creating each cross starts with using the template to draw the shape on the wood, he then cuts round the drawn cross on his band-saw, this gives him the cross which he then puts in his vice and using a file and sandpaper he smooth’s the edges to take the roughness away, finally he turns on his belt-sander to make sure the face and back of each cross has no sharpness about them .                                                       
When I visited him, he had already completed 100 which had been claimed by the congregation two weeks ago which surprised him, and now he is halfway through another 50!!  He finds making the crosses very therapeutic and is pleased so many people want them. 
Each cross takes about 6 minutes to make from start to finish, so the first 100 took approximately 600 minutes which works out about 60 hours which is two and a half days.
Something a bit different today....
Thank you to all the people who looked in on my derelict Thursday blip yesterday ... I am so excited to have been favourited !!!! Thank you :)
Take care  :)