Hi everyone, and welcome to Bob's Wood Stuff.
I have a pretty interesting project for today.
My roommate was gone for 10 days, so I ate all of his bananas.
And then I thought, "Should I text him, should I call him, should I just buy more bananas?"
And then it became pretty obvious what I needed to do.
[intro music]
The first thing I did was cut a bunch of lengths of 2x4, about the same length as a banana.
This is 9 inches.
It's not quite as long as the banana with the stem, but that's okay, I'll add the stem later.
And then I just traced the banana.
I'm gonna use two different bananas, because I don't want them all being exactly the same.
I also need to remove these stickers and put 'em on parchment paper, to save them for later.
This will be very essential to the realism of the fake bananas.
Now I'm gonna cut out the rough shape of all these bananas with my bandsaw.
Once I had my rough shapes cut out, I used a marking gauge to mark where I wanted
all the bevels on my bananas.
On some of the curves I had to use a pencil instead of a marking gauge.
Then I clamped it in my vice, and I cut kerfs with my Japanese pull saw,
to get to the depth that I wanted to on each of the bevels.
On my first banana I didn't do this, and this ended up saving a lot of time
on all the subsequent bananas.
The goal here is to cut it to depth on two adjacent sides,
going to the marks that I made for the bevel.
Once I was done cutting those kerfs, I used a chisel to chop out most of the waste.
You can see here I am splitting the wood, and that's not great
but I'll be cutting this part off later, so it's not a big deal.
After that I used my Japanese saw to cut off the corners at the ends of the banana,
to help establish the shape before I start shaving it.
Then I switched to my large slick chisel for paring down some of the waste.
This worked really well, because the long handle gives me a lot of leverage when I am
making shavings.
It also helps that it is very sharp.
Now I'm just paring down more of the waste, and trying to establish a shape that I want
on the banana.
And also get a kind of smooth surface.
Once I pretty much got to the depth that I wanted and got rid of all my saw kerfs,
I started to use the drawknife to establish the actual bevel surface,
and to smooth out the whole thing.
This was a little bit tricky because of the shape of the bananas.
I ended up going uphill with the grain sometimes and downhill other times.
I had to alternate between using the bevel up and the bevel down, based on what the grain
would allow.
After I was done with the drawknife, I used the spokeshave on some parts of the banana
to smooth it out.
Now I am finished with the rough carving on all four of the bananas.
I took some 7/16 in dowel that I had, and put it in my vice, to cut off sections to
use for the stems of the bananas.
The length didn't need to be exact right now, but I wanted it longer than was needed, so
I made them about four inches long.
Using a 7/16 inch brad point drill bit, I drilled into the ends of the bananas, so I
could attach the dowels in there.
One end was intentionally left wide so I could drill into it.
I put masking tape on the ends of the banana, and around the dowels,
so that when I glue it any extra glue doesn't get on it.
And then I sanded down the ends of the dowels so they fit better in the holes.
I want a bit of extra space, so there is room for glue in there.
Then I used a V gouge to carve out some grooves in the end of the dowel.
This will give the glue a place to go and make it stick better.
I squeezed some glue on the dowels, and then brushed it on with an acid brush,
and put them inside the bananas.
Then I used the mallet to make sure it was really tight.
Using a small file, I started sculpting the joint where the stem meets the banana.
This will make it look smoother and more realistic.
While I was doing this, I also filed down the stem itself, so it wasn't totally round,
and was more hexagonal like a banana.
Here you can see the difference between the sculpted joint and the un-sculpted joint.
The sculpted joint looks a lot more natural than the other one.
Using a spindle sanding attachment in my handheld drill, I put the drill in my vise, and I spindle
sanded every bevel on all the bananas.
This helped to get rid of most of the tool marks left from carving, and also smoothed
out the shape.
Then I used a couple foam sanding blocks to smooth them out even more.
The foam blocks are good because they contour to the shape of the object.
I decided to coat the entire banana with some kind of glue.
So here I'm testing wood glue versus Elmer's glue,
to see which one gets a more plastic-y texture, and which one is thicker and stronger.
I also want to seal in the grain of the wood.
I drilled four holes into a 2x6 at an angle, so I could use it to hold all the bananas
while I painted them.
The wood glue performed best in my testing, so I brushed Titebond II on the whole banana.
While it was drying, I brushed it with strokes parallel with the banana,
to establish subtle grooves on the surface, and imitate the texture of a real banana.
On the first two bananas, the moisture from the glue raised the grain a lot.
So on the last two bananas, I decided to spray them down with water, and raise the grain,
so I could sand it down before applying the glue.
After all the glue had dried, I rubbed all the bananas with 0000 steel wool to smooth
out the texture of them before adding any paint.
Then I applied two coats of spray primer on all the bananas.
To get my yellow color, I cut a piece out of a banana peel, and took it to the hardware
store to have them paint match a sample.
This worked out very well, and the sample only cost $3.
Then I started brushing the yellow paint onto the bananas, keeping my strokes parallel with
the direction of the banana.
I applied two coats of this yellow paint.
Because the paint matching worked so well with the yellow,
I took a brown piece of banana peel to the hardware store as well.
Then using a very small paintbrush, I started painting blemishes on the bananas.
The first thing I did was cover up any tool marks left from the carving process,
and any paint drips from the painting.
Then I started painting the ridges, and anywhere else I thought a blemish might appear on a
banana, referencing a real banana frequently.
I used a combination of dry brushing and mixing the paint with water, to get the shades I
wanted and to blend it so it looked realistic.
Gradually I finished the rest of the bananas.
At the point where I had most of the blemishes painted on, the project got a bit strange,
because they started looking like real bananas, instead of something made out of wood.
Even though I knew they were fake, my eyes told me they were bananas.
Then I decided to make a third color, by mixing the brown with the yellow,
and with a lot of water.
And then brushed it on to add more texture.
This allowed me to add more subtle details like slight bruises and texturing to the bananas.
Once the painting was done, I thinned out some matte Polycrylic with denatured alcohol.
Then I brushed three coats of it on the bananas, making sure to keep my strokes parallel with
the bananas.
I took the stickers I had saved earlier, and sprayed the back of them with Super 77 spray
adhesive, and stuck them onto the fake bananas.
I drilled some holes into a block of beech, to hold up the bananas as if they were in
a bunch.
Then I cut off all the excess from that block.
I started carving out the top of the block, because it would be very difficult to get
to after attaching the bananas.
Then I marked out some waste sections I wanted to get rid of, and cut them out on the band
saw.
I painted the wooden block yellow, because I wouldn't be able to get to this spot after
the bananas are attached.
And then I added the brown color on as well.
To attach the bananas, I mixed some two part 5-minute epoxy with some of the brown paint,
because I wanted it to look opaque.
Then I brushed it on the stems with a chopstick, and inserted the stems into my block of wood.
Once that epoxy had dried, I flipped the bananas over and did the same thing with the other
side, to fill in any remaining voids.
Then I started to chisel off any excess from the block that I could.
At this point it was very hard to carve, because a bundle of bananas is pretty much impossible
to clamp in a woodworking vise.
I removed some excess material on my belt sander,
and then I used a triangular needle file, to file grooves into the stem mass.
I wanted it to look as if other bananas had been torn off of it, and to do this I needed
it to have a fibrous texture.
Then I rubbed the bananas down pretty thoroughly with some steel wool to knock off any shine
that was left.
The top of the stem bundle was much to smooth and didn't look real,
so I used a Dremel with a carving bit to route out some areas,
and make it look more like a fibrous end grain than a smooth surface.
At this point the bananas were looking pretty real,
so I placed them on the counter top and I waited for my roommate to find them.
What, these are fake?
I ate your bananas, and I spent all week carving realistic banans out of wood.
Are you serious?
Yeah.
What the f___?
Heh heh.
You're a lunatic.
Is that for real?
Yeah.
You really made this?
Yeah, I carved 'em and I painted 'em.
They're made out of 2x4s.
Did you glue 'em together after you like made 'em?
Yeah, I made like a thing, like a piece of wood with holes in it, and then, like the
stems are dowels, and I epoxied it in there.
I was gonna tell you to eat 'em before I left.
So this project was really fun, and it turned out well.
I had hoped that: 1) he would think that they were real bananas, and 2) he would think that
they were his bananas, and be fooled long enough to pick them up.
And this all worked out perfectly.
He thought they were completely real, until he picked them up and was very confused.
And that's what I was going for.
So I would say that Operation Banana Scam was a success.
If you enjoyed this video, please subscribe to my channel.
It helps me make more videos, and makes more content like this possible.
Thanks for watching.
[outro music]