Nathan McCully's Projects

Wood Creations - by Nathan McCully

Nathan makes Famous Projects
Check out some of his works of art.....

Also see McCully Wood Art

For info: dean@dmccully.com or whuzzles@regathon.com

Nathan's other awesome FURNITURE and woodworking projects
One of Nathan's masterpieces - an awesome bench glider/rocker for Piedmont Hills High School's Drama Department

Nathan's amazing SIGNS
Nathan's original Piedmont Hills High School PIRATES Sign... he has made many others since...

Nathan's famous wooden jigsaw PUZZLES.
His famous Orca puzzle

And his famous Bunny with Babies

Furniture & Construction Projects <top>
Nathan builds lots of furniture and construction projects. In fact Nathan received the coveted Honors Award from the East Side Union High School District Industrial Arts award for some of his creations.

	Folding Desk Mission College Creative Project Dr. Higgins - Literary Analysis YouTube Video A hand-made folding study-desk, with a special wood-burned top with references to items cited by Reyna Grande in her book "The Distance Between Us."
	Shakespeare's Cupboard Mission College Creative Project Dr. Starner - Shakespeare YouTube Video A hand-made "cupboard" once possibly owned by Shakespeare himself (or probably not, who knows.) Each cubby hole contains a jar of items from one of 8 Shakespeare's famous plays. The Bard lights up and glows in different collors.
	Sedna - Godess of the Sea Mission College Creative Project Dr Starner - Mythology YouTube Video A hand made puzzle based on the Inuit legend of "Sedna,Goddess of the Sea." Note the sea mammals, which according to legend, were created by the Sea Gods from Sedna's fingers. The YouTube video is the play Nathan developed to explain the story of Sedna.
	LaRose – the Drum Circle of Life Dr Starner – English 1A YouTube Video A really cool drum with removable icons of various aspects of the story of LaRose. The drum has stretched goat-skin. Be sure to watch the really cool video of Nathan's presentation. An Interview with "Wolf Blitzhair" YouTube Video
	Nathan built a "Toy Box" for his Grandma Joy. A hexagon box with a cover. And a cool wood-burned top with the ocean, a dolphin, the sun, and JOY.
	South Bay Yacht Club Bench - yes Nathan designed and built this bench, and hand carved the SBYC plaque out of 35 year old redwood salvaged from an old bench at the yacht club.
	Sub Irrigated Planters for Mount Olive Lutheran Church in Milpitas. Yup, Nathan designed and built these awesome planters -- a big water reservoir in the bottom of the planter means the planters don't require watering for 3 months!
	In addition to building stuff, Nathan sometimes takes a chainsaw to old poisoned creosote-soaked pilings in Alviso, as part of the marshland restoration project. In this case, Nathan chainsawed 22 1950s-era pilings that had to be removed for habitat restoration
	Nathan is darned good with a chainsaw! Here he is removing decades-old derelict sheds and long-abandoned docks at the South Bay Yacht Club.
	SBYC PLANTER - Nathan's big planter for the South Bay Yacht Club. Note the hand-painted burgee (flag)
Fish Credenza - Nathan's masterpiece, his famous Fish Credenza, a gift for Mr. Fredericks, his carpentry teacher at Piedmont Hills High School in San Jose. The door front features a scrollsawn copper shield, reminiscent of the old "Chinese Wedding Chests" of olden times. The logo is Mr. Frederick's personal logo.

Mr. Fredericks loves his credenza. Note the Pirate's skull in the upper left. That's Nathan's too! Note that the copper shield is the teacher's personal logoNathan cut the logo on a scrollsaw, removed the fish and painted them gloss black, then replaced the "blackened fish".
The drawers feature fancy finger joints. The drawer pulls are bronze fish

Benches for Piedmont Hills High School "To Kill A Mockingbird" Yup, Nathan's signature projects are his 2 benches for the PHHS Drama team, one a 4' wide "glider/rocker" bench, and another 3' wide stationary bench. The benches were custom designed specifically for the play. Amazingly, he finished the 2 benches in just over a week. Nice work, huh?

Adirondack Chair Nathan built an adirondack chair as a gift for Mr. Frederics his carpentry teacher. He also spray painted a chair for Mr. Wilk, his retiring English teacher. Cool pair, huh?

Adirondack Chair

Oak hardwood floor patching.

Nathan patched a huge ugly hole in his dad's hardwood floor at his 80+ year old house in Michigan. The original white oak floors would have been gorgous, when they were installed, probably 8 decades ago. But along the way, some anonymous previous owner cut a big hole right in the middle of the dining room floor, probably for a wet bar or similar. When they moved out, they "filled" the hole with cheap plywood, stapled ugly vinyl on top of the plywood, and called it a day. Over the years, subsequent owners nailed 3 more layers of (ugly) subflooring and vinyl on top of the previous layers. What monsters would do such a thing, without at least removing old layers of vinyl and underlayment. Either way, when we eventually ripped up the vinyl and plywood, we were stunned to find gorgeous white oak flooring, long protected by 4 strata of disgustingly ugly vinyl. But when we ripped up the transition way between the kitchen and dining room, we were aghast to discover the big hole that some (evil) previous owner had chopped in the otherwise gorgeous white oak floor. Patching the hole was Nathan's job. It took Nathan a lot of measuring, cutting, trimming, fitting, sanding, rinse lather repeat, to repair the hole. But when the new oak strips were painstakingly fit, and installed, and sanded, and stained, and sealed, Nathan's work was indistinguishable from the 80 year old flooring, and would surely have made the original craftsmen proud!

South Bay Yacht Club Floor

The 1906 era 100+ year old floor of the "board room" on the 2nd floor of the South Bay Yacht Club, in Alviso (North San Jose), California, was in very bad condition. The "board room" used to be a cigar-porch that was open to the elements for around a decade, until it was enclosed sometime in the 1910s. It is not clear when, but possibly when the floor was first laid down in 1906, or maybe later, somebody decided to "face nail" 6 penny nails into the beautiful old growth redwood slats, leaving innumerable hammer-divits and rust marks in the redwood floor.

Every few decades over the last century, various club members had slapped on at least 6 or 7 layers of paint over the nailed redwood. Carpet was laid on top of the floor about 20 or 30 years ago, and had become badly food/wine stained over the decades. So the club decided to pull up the old carpet, exposing the 7 layers of old paint. The club was going to take the easy way out and just slap some vinyl or Pergo on top of the old floor, and call it good. But Nathan asked the club to let us experiment with striping the old paint, sanding, and sealing the floor. The club reluctantly agreed, and a tedious and challenging refurb process began. We ran into tons of problems, most related to re-seating and scraping etc the the rusty old face nails. But we also ran into headaches when replacing a center board in the middle of the room that covered a complicated porch extension that was rebuilt out of sistered-together beams that had been cobbled together after the 1983 floods in Alviso. Plus, with 6 or 7 layers of paint applied every few decades for 100+ years, stripping techniques that worked fine for one layer of paint, wouldn't even touch the layer of paint underneath. So we had to use everything from infrared heat strippers, to 3 different types of chemical strippers, to multiple sanding techniques, all in and attempt to preserve as much of the original redwood as we could, while also preserving the rust-stained nail look of the face-nailed slats.

At the same time, Nathan decided to strip and refinish a badly gouged solid maple table that had been salvaged from a school, and had been ravaged over the decades by students cutting projects with Xacto knives etc. Nathan stripped the table and sprayed 5 or 6 coats of water-born polyurethane, sanding between coats. The glorious old solid maple table looks better than new with a super-glossy top coat.

After months of trial-and-error, and more splinters and sore knees than I want to think about, and more carbon-filter masks (which hopefully kept the lead paint ingestion to a minimum), Nathan's floor was gorgeously well done! Bravo, Nathan! Hopefully the gorgeous restored floor, and the amazingly glossy solid maple table, will last well into the next century!

Mantle - A chimney fire several years ago burned Nathan's dad's mantle. The insurance guys dragged their feet for months, promising to send a crew to replace the mantle, but nobody ever showed up. But never fear, Nathan jumped to the rescue and rebuilt a brand new mantle

Sunrise Window. Nathan's dad's "Sunrise Window" in the attic had been rotting and falling apart for years. No wonder since the old window looked decades old and had long been exposed to many miserable Michigan winters. But after many decades of service, the poor old window disintegrated in a big storm, and fell into the attic making a big glassy mess. But Nathan jumped in, pieced the broken frame together, traced the original onto a couple of big sheets of plywood, and made a brand new replacement sunrise window. The new version looks even better than the original version.

Adirondack Bench. Nathan developed a scale model of a collapsable Adirondack bench/chair as a prototype for a design for his carpentry class. Nathan hopes to build a full sized model some day soon.

Nathan built a towel rack for the Piedmont Hills High School staff locker room.
No kidding, the letters are inset solid marble letters that Nathan cuts on his diamond-blade ring saw. Cool, huh?

THEATER REHEARSAL BOXES
Nathan spent most of his spring break building 8 amazing "rehearsal boxes" for his high school drama department. The boxes are used for quickly prototyping set layouts, emulating furniture, stuff like that. Then finshed products were sprayed with multiple coats of battleship gray paint, sanded between coats, and finished with 2 coats of polyurethane. They should last for many years.

Rehearsal Boxes

Nathan McCully - SIGNS <top>
Yes, Nathan makes amazing back-lit signs too! Many of these signs are installed all around his high school.

Yeah, Nathan makes signs like this ... super glossy -->

Back-Lighted "Pirates" Sign
For Piedmont Hills High School
His original sign for Piedmont Hills High School's "Pirates"
Yeahhhh, Mister Fredericks, Carpentry Teacher Wizzard Extraordinaire!

PHHS Class of 2016
Pending

PIRATES GOT WILK?
Made for Nathan's English 2 teacher Mister Wilk. Mr Wilk loved the gift!

Rotary eClub of Silcon Valley
Delivered
Nathan used a special diamond-blade "ring saw" to cut 4 solid marble "eClub" logos as gifts for the chartering of the Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley.

The final product was awesome, and listed all 2 names of all charter members.

Option 1: Class of 2016
Pending

Option 1: PHHS PIRATES

Pending

Encourage Institute Sign
Delivered

Not back-lit, but one of Nathan's first, though more intriguing projects to date, was a sign he made for EnCourage Institute for Teaching and Learning in his hometown of Grand Rapids Michigan. Nathan selected 10 different species of hardwood, 1 species for each letter. From the left, the book and stars are Cedar, the "E" is Cocobolo, the "N" is Purpleheart, the "C" is Cocobolo", the "O" is Rosewood, the "U" is Basswood, the "R" is Walnut, the "A" is Mahogony,' the "G" is Zebrawood, and the "E" is Maple. The metaphor is that every child the EnCourage Institute works with, in fact every member if society is very unique, has unusual characteristics, and sometimes requires different techniques to interact with. But when working together, all members of society, just like varied hardwoods, come together to form something magnificent.

BIOLOGY This is a very special sign containing 7 solid marble skulls! Yes, Nathan uses a special diamond blade saw to cut skulls out of slabs of solid marble, then he embeds the marble skulls into the sign. The skulls are back-lit, for an eery glowing look.

BIOLOGY - Special Darwin Edition
Pending

BIOLOGY - Special Darwin Edition
Pending
Even cooler -- Darwin AND Solid Marble SKULLS!

3-D Beethoven

Delivered
For Beth, our favorite art teacher in Michigan. Primer yellow paint on the left. Final black-on-red version below.

Pirate Music
Pending
For Piedmont Hills High School

Dr. McCully- Lighted sign for University of Georgia's Kinisology Professor Dr. Kevin McCully. Did Nathan capture Kevin's snarly grizzled look?

For Mr. Romero's Econ Class
Mr Romero loves his note cards. So Nathan made a "Got Notecards" sign.
Mr Roero is also a Seton Hall Alumni, hence the Seton Hall "Skull" instead of a standard PHHS Skull....

ENGLISH - Shakespeare
Ms. Moneymaer's English Class. Note Shakespeare's quill pen feathers.

SOCCER Hmmm, skull and cross feet? Yup, Piedmont Hills High School Soccer Team! Delivered to Mr. Sellers the soccer coach

Arrrrrrrt - Pending

PHYSICS
Pending
An Older Einstein

PHYSICS
Pending
A Younger Einstein

CHEMISTRY
Pending

FORENSICS
Pending

HISTORY
Pending

THEATER
Pending

ENGLISH - Edgar Allan Poe
Pending

ENGLISH - Mark Twain
Pending

MATH
Pending

FOOD
Pending

KRAZY GEORGE! - Nathan used a jigsaw to cut out an amazing 5 color stencil for signs to announce
Krazy George's arrival at the San Jose July 4, 2015 "Rose White and Blue Parade".

PARADING with KRAZY GEORGE!
The Krazy George signs were the hit of the parade as Nathan lead his Boy Scout troop in LEADING the San Jose Rose White and Blue Parade on July 4, 2015. Yup, they walked in front of the parade, passing an estimated 25,000 attendees, making way for Krazy George who was 20 feet behind in a big fire truck.

Nathan McCully - PUZZLES <top>
Woodworking Designs
Nathan's Wooden Jigsaw Puzzles!

BIRDS

Penguins

PENGIE BABIES!
Adorable pocket-sized Pengie Babies -- some of Nathan's most popular works!

Funky Penguin with Baby

Puffin

HUMMINGBIRD
This is a beauty, perfect for hanging in a window or on a wall.

Wise Old Owl
Just about any color you can think of...

Smartie Pants Owl

MARINE MAMMALS - Non Cetaceans

Nested Elephant Seals
Based on Nathan's first trip to see Elephant Seals at San Simeon when he was 8.
Note the nested baby and mother

Elephant Seal
Just plain old pair of seals -- before they had babies...

Sea Otter & Pup

Platypus
In Progress

FISH

Shark
One of Nathan's most popular works

Icthyosaur

Seabass
In process

Megladon
In process

AMPHIBIANS & RELATED STUFF

GREEN TURTLE
Available in many colors

FROG
With a hitchhiker

MARINE MAMMALS - CETACEANS

Dolphin and Baby

Dolphin and Stand

Orca Whale with Baby
A perenniel favorite

Orca Whale
WIthout baby -- but with a scuba diver!

Minke Whale

Narwhale

This one has no baby

Humpback Whale

Also available in many exotic hardwoods. Here's one made of zebrawood:

And mahogony.... (note the embedded baby) Look closely... the baby and mama have hearts!

Right Whale

Sei Whale

Sperm Whale

Finback Whale

Blue Whale

Pilot Whale

Bowhead

Whimsical Whale with Moose Head
Nathan's SCUBA instructor loves whales, and loves moose.
So she couldn't decide whether she wanted a moose puzzle, or a whale puzzle.
So we had a little fun creating 1 puzzle with features of each.
Eek, I hope to not run into one of these while SCUBA diving!

Baby Whales
Adorable pocket-sized critters

DINOSAURS

T-Rex Dinosaur Skeleton

Parasaur

T-Rex
In Progress

Brontosaur
In Progress

DOGS

Border Collie Dog (Sam)

Bull Dog

University of Georgia
Bull Dawg

Terrier

FURRY CRITTERS

Rabbit with Nested Bunnies

Yeah, that's 3 little bunnies nestled inside mama. Nathan cut this puzzle ouf of exotic quarter-swawn 3/4" zebrawood. Nathan rounded over all external and internal edges with a "flap sander", then Nathan finished the puzzle with non-toxic salad bowl finish and wax. This one is a work of art, for sure!

Squirrel