After that, set it down on a scrap piece of plywood and make light passes as you slowly rotate the scrap would around to reach all sides of the reindeer. I decided to use Varathane spray-on oil-based polyurethane in Satin finish to give the reindeer a rich, warm look, which I figured goes well with the holidays.īegan each coat by holding the reindeer in a gloved hand and lightly spray finish on his belly and antlers – both areas that are a little hard to reach when he is standing on his own four feet. A bit of mineral spirits on a rag will also accomplish the task at hand.Īfter that, select a finish to apply to your reindeer, keeping in mind that a spray-on finish will be far easier than a paint-on or wipe-on option. Once they are all sanded and smooth to your liking, use an air compressor (if you've got one) or canned air to blow away the fine dust. I also glued a piece of sandpaper to a thin strip of wood, making what was effectively an emory board or nail file, to really fine tune areas that were too tight to get in by hand, such as around the antlers. Getting into some of the areas, such as between the legs will be too difficult by hand, so you can wrap your sandpaper around a dowel to create a make-shift manual spindle-sander. If you also want to make your reindeer super smooth, do as I did and progress through the sanding grits, going as low as 60 grit to clean up all the bandsaw lines, then progressing up to 400 to get a super smooth finish. I realized it was going to involve a lot of hand sanding if I wanted these super smooth, as a Dremel is a little too rough for the job. I chose to sand mine perfectly smooth, however, to remove all traces of the bandsaw blade. Leaving a trace of the bandsaw lines behind to make them more rustic is certainly acceptable – just depends on the aesthetic you’re going for. You definitely don’t need to focus on making these perfectly smooth. Now it's time to sand, sand, sand – but only if you really want to.
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