Pendulum Board

Here is another one of those items that I thought I had posted about, but that I can't find on the blog. I made this pendulum board a few years ago.

It is made from a piece of 1/4" hardboard, about 12" square. It has several coats of black paint on it, to give it an old lacquered look. Then I used sand paper to weather the corners a bit.

The design was made on my computer, partly from elements lifted from the Rider Wait tarot deck, and arranged in a significant pattern for use in reading the perturbations of a hanging pendulum. It is a form of divination.

The design was printed out and then photocopied onto 11"x17" paper. I hand tore the edges around the design to make it fit onto the board and so it would have a deckle edge that would blend seamlessly with the wood.

I coated the board with gloss polyurethane wood finish, which served as finish for the board and also as an adhesive for the paper. Then more polyurethane on top of the paper. The paper was thoroughly soaked with polyurethane, which is what made it turn an aged yellow color, and also how it is decoupaged to the board.

Once dry, I drilled small holes near the four corners and inserted upholstery tacks into the holes, using CA glue and friction to hold them in place. Lastly, I added some thin cork pads to the back side.

I made about a dozen of these in my initial batch, and I sold about ten of them in my shop. I have a second batch in production.