No paint or stain just different natural wood species! The body is Maple, the stripes are Wenge, the snout and mane are Walnut, and the mouth and ears are Cherry. I also used different thicknesses of wood to create some depth—1/2 inch for the body, 3/4 for the head, and 1/4 for the back legs and tail.

This was a fun one I wanted to do for Savanna since Maddy was getting the new side table. I had an idea for a zebra using maple (very light) and wenge (very dark) wood. I used AI to help come up with a visual design. Unfortunately AI still seems very lacking at vector manipulation so I spent several hours converting the concept image to a usable SVG. After using the bandsaw to resaw some blanks to the various thicknesses, I cut everything out on the Shaper Origin from smallest to biggest. Once everything was cut and cleaned up, I assembled the individual pieces (body, head, back legs, ears, tail). Then I rounded the relevant edges on each piece and sanded before gluing the big pieces together. Because the head was so heavy, I decided to add some splines in the back connecting the head to the body for added strength. I didn’t want a Dumb and Dumber moment with our pets’ heads falling off. After a final sand, everything was finished in Rubio Monocoat Pure to let the rich natural wood tones come through.