Very Large Last Supper Portrait

This is another pattern I got from Charles Dearing. I have already done several versions of The Last Supper. However, when I seen the size of this one, I had to doing if for no other reason but to challenge myself. A challenge it was too. I really enjoyed cutting it, but am also glad it's done. I learned an important lesson on this project. Swinging almost five feet of material on the scroll saw is pure hell on a bad back.

That's right, you read that correctly, close to five feet. The actual size of the cutting is eleven and a half inches tall and fifty seven and a half inches long. That's four foot, nine and a half inches. Add an inch all the way around that for the frame and you have one massive portrait. I had to dig deep in my mahogany pile to get long enough material to make these frames.

That isn't the whole story though. I had to adapt the pattern to the wood that I had available at the moment because I didn't have the money to go buy more material. If you go to Charles's photo album, he cut it even large. He is the designer of this pattern, and he cut it over five feet long. So if any of you scrollers out there want a challenge, Charles sells this pattern for less than ten bucks if you dare to try it.

I stack cut this three high like I do all my portraits. I always try to finish cutting within one day's time. I use luan plywood for my portraits, and if I leave the masking tape I use under the pattern on longer than a day it messes up the top layer of veneer on the top cutting. Needles to say, this one definitely took longer than a day. It messed up the top layer of veneer even worse than normal.

So that top layer I was just going to scrap it out to the fancy firewood pile. My wife had other ideas. She wanted it painted and hung in our home. So that one got a grey paint finish and is going to the house.