Materials for DIY Crucifix

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savedbychrist

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Has anyone here tried making a crucifix? How did you gather the materials (especially the Corpus)?
 
When I make rosaries, I either buy new crucifixes from a company like

https://www.rosaryparts.com/

Or I go to my box. Because I do repairs and make rosaries, people often give me broken rosaries. I will save them and fashion them into new rosaries.

For larger crucifixes where the corpus is missing, like something to go on a wall, I have purchased them from sites like Etsy or Ebay.

Edit to add:

You could also work with a wood carver, a jewelry maker, a sculptor, or learn to make them yourself from something as simple as polymer clay.
 
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Various companies sell corpuses in different sizes. Those who buy them generally are making their own crucifixes from wood or tile or whatever and putting the pre-made corpus on the finished crucifix. If you do Internet searches on “corpus crucifix” you will likely find some of these.

Edited to add, here’s an example of a corpus (with an additional INRI sign for the top of the crucifix) being sold to people who make their own crucifixes.


You also might be able to find old corpuses in places like thrift stores or on Etsy. Sometimes the crucifix breaks, or the corpus falls off an old crucifix, so there’s just an old corpus for reuse. My mother had a wedding gift crucifix that Jesus eventually fell off of, and she could never bring herself to put him back on because it would have required putting the little nails through his hands and feet, so she just left him off.

You could also try modeling your own corpus out of clay, or whittling one out of wood. I have a leather crucifix and the guy who made it cut a Jesus figure out of leather and glued him to the leather cross.
 
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I think you can buy a type of modeling clay that is impregnated with metal, like silver. Shape the clay, heat it, and the clay melts away, leaving the metal figure.
 
That cartoon always puts me in mind of a priest of my acquaintance, who finally solved his problem of a frequently breaking crucifix by using screws instead of nails to affix the corpus. 😱

(He was careful to orient the Phillips screws as ✝️'s rather than ❎'s)
 
I think you can buy a type of modeling clay that is impregnated with metal, like silver. Shape the clay, heat it, and the clay melts away, leaving the metal figure.
I never cease to be amazed by the things you learn about when you’re least expecting it — things that you never gave a second thought to before, but that make perfect sense and you wonder who in the world had the idea to invent something like that.

This is a brilliant idea! Made my day.
 
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