I made these urns at the request of my parents. I lost my mom in December of 07 and my dad in January of this year. Both urns are made from mesquite with desert ironwood accents.
The short fat urn is my dads with an carved ironwood bear attached to the lid. The bear has a fish in his mouth. My dad loved to fish. I think he had more fishing tackle than most sporting good stores. I bought the bear in a Mexican imports store. This urn is about 12 or 13 inches in diameter and eight or nine inches tall. The wood came from a tree being taken out to widen a street in Phoenix.
The tall urn is my mothers. The colored bead in the finial represents one of her favorite colors. It is eight or nine inches in diameter and about 12 inches tall. The wood for this urn came from a relatives ranch in Wickenburg, Arizona.
This photo was taken by a professional photographer. I traded a hollow form for the photos.
Rev. - I was real careful to figure out the measurements when I made my mom's urn. I estimated she weighed less than 150 lbs when she pasted away. I Googled cubic inches to cups (1 cubic inche = 0.0692640693 US cups by the way) to find an easy way to measure the volume of the urn. I put 10-1/3 cups chicken feed (my wife has two chickens) in a gallon plastic pitcher to get a visual of the size I needed to make. I used that as my testing agent to know when I had hollowed enough and then I hollowed some more just to make sure I had enough room. As it turned out, I could have probably fit two of her in there.
For my dad's, I had a hollow form already roughed out that was way bigger than I needed for him. I didn't use my chicken feed measuring system for his urn. It wasn't real scientific but work out great.
thank you Paul. You are a great asset to WR. You share your knowledge and your heart with us. I greatly appreciate what you've done and shared. Keep your memories alive. 8-)