Elephant keyring

I love making personalised gifts for people! My Dad is a huge fan of elephants and has so many different models and types that he has collected over the years. I wanted to make something special that was a bit different from previous wooden elephants he already has and settled on a small elephant keyring.

This was a small add-on present, to go along with the COG puzzle I also made for his birthday last year. I started with printing out an image of an elephant, which I cut out and glued to some mdf to use as a template and test for the size and shape.

I then transferred this onto a scrap piece of pine and used my coping saw to roughly cut out the shape.

Once I had the rough shape, I used files and sandpaper wrapped around a pencil to further refine the shape. Due to the curved surfaces I did this all by hand and took my time to make sure the trunk was nicely smoothed. I also cut out the shape of the ears on an offcut of walnut.

I cut the walnut piece in half to slim down the amount that the ears would stick out and then glued them onto the sides of the elephant, making sure to align them correctly on each side. I used my Dremel and a small round bit to add an eye on each side.

I had sanded the elephant all over, rounding over the ears slightly to make the edges less sharp. I increased up through the grits up to 240 and then applied some Danish oil to protect the workpiece and bring out some of the colour of the grain.

Once the oil had soaked in and dried overnight, I wiped the workpiece down to remove any sawdust. I drilled a small hole in the top of the elephant’s back and screwed in a small keyring chain.