Thank you all for your comments! There are several features on this that I feel like I didn't do as well as I should have..... joining the arms to the body, not gluing up but just making them fit and look natural. They are awkward looking no matter how you view them.... I blame myself for being so fed up with working on her that I hurried through that part instead of putting her aside to think on it for a while. If she had not been a gift that I was trying to finish so it could be given, I probably would have set her aside for a few weeks or so to come back with a fresh view.
Her face turned out better than I had hoped for when I started....doing a female face that's supposed to be pretty, scared the crap out of me! But now that it's done, I see that her face is still a bit square.
If she were going to a non artistic person, I wouldn't fuss at myself so much but our son in law is an artist too.... He WILL see these things, but he is a sweet heart so he won't say anything about them.
Lynn, I will have to try that technique for joining limbs to the body, next time I need to do that. I did use a 2 part epoxy that carves well, to join the arms...they were also pegged with dowels as you can see in some of the earlier pics.
She is actually doweled in 3 places because the main glue joint for the 2 blocks of wood I put together for her torso, began to separate. Never had that happen before. I threw her on the drill press, drilled 2 holes from side to side, one through her head and one through her waist area, slathered up a couple of dowels with wood glue and hammered them through the holes, re clamped the blank to close up the separation as much as I could and let it set over night. Came out in the morning and cut the protruding ends of the dowels off.
I had also pre drilled the hole from side to side, in the shoulder area and corrisponding holes in the shoulders of her arms. When I finally was ready to attach the arms, I put wood glue on the dowel (one dowel runs all the way through to attach both arms) and lots of the epoxy on the flat surfaces to be joined. I wanted it to gush out when I pushed them together so that I could use the excess in the armpit area to blend into the torso better and make up for the fact that I didn't have enough wood there... it has been a learning experience, to say the least. But the dowel ends are visible and that was planned. I figure the old figureheads were joined by dowel too and that, along with the antiquing, adds to the character.
Thanks again for all the comments.
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