Carvings Currently On My Bench

Here are some of the things I am working on right now.

The first is a Santa Carved on an old weaving spool.  There is a front and a back to this one.

Here is what I started with.

Then There is the largest Santa I have attempted so far.  He is classed as an Old World Santa or St. Nick.

Then there is the large Icicle Santa

And a Snowman Ornament

These have been laid out but not begun yet.

My next post will take you through the process from design to carving to finish.

Go make some wood chips

Bruce

My Carving Station

About a year ago I convinced my wife to turn our office into a craft room and move our office into one of the guest bedrooms.  Our house is about 2400 sq feet but it is not the best arrangement but we bought it for the area and the neighborhood.  While it was new when we bought it 9 years ago we have slowly been improving it and replacing most of the builders installations.  This update has turned out to be very timely as we are now suffering through an extremely hot summer.  Having a place inside to sit and carve, read of do other crafts is great.  My carving area is a rotary cutting mat some tool totes to hold my knives and a small shop vac.  Pretty straight forward but comfortable and air conditioned.  While I have the power carvers I don't use them much.  I tend to stay with my knives and a small assortment of chisels.



The set of chisel's on the left is a Power Carve set from Woodcraft.  The set at the back is from Grizzly Tools and the ones in the pouch are the expensive ones and are made by Flexcut.  Since I have all the equipment to sharpen my chisels to my liking I have not spent a lot of money on them.  The tools from Flexcut are the exception but they are scorps and are difficult to sharpen so you want a set that comes very sharp and then keep them that way.

These are the knives I do the majority of the work with.  The one on the left is a folding knife by Boker and the most expensive of the bunch the one on the right is a knife that I made from an old steak knife and a piece of mesquite.  Most of my knives are Flex cut with Two German made knives rounding out the field.  I have tried some others but find that these hold their edge the best.

Go make some wood chips

Bruce

The Tale of A Perfectly Good Spoon

Carved Wooden Spoons
Now the problem with an addiction to wood is that everything that is wooden is fair game for improvement, remodeling or just plain messing with.  Here are some of my carved spoons (and one spatula).  All of these came from a local kitchen store and then I went to work on them.

This next spoon was carved from scratch out of Mahogany.  This one has already been claimed by Pam.  This type of spoon is known as a Welsh Love Spoon.

As always if you click on the picture it will enlarge in your browser.  All of the spoons are of my design.  If you are wondering the yellow mat they are on has a one inch square grid and is a cutting mat for rolling cutters.  However these work very well as a carving mat as they don't damage you knives if you accidentally cut into them.

Bruce

What Can You Do WIth A Scrap of 1X4

Any one who knows or lives around a wood worker knows we just can't part with a piece of wood bigger than sawdust.  Pam will attest that I suffer from that affliction.  So I had a small piece of clear pine.  Nothing special about 6 inches of a 1x4.  What to do with it?  Well carve it of course.  Now Pine is not the easiest wood to carve.  But how can it help but behave when it is being carved into a Santa.

Same problem but a piece of  2x4.  Same answer.

This primitive Santa is from one of my wood carving magazines.  So always consider what may be hiding in those little pieces of wood you don't know what to do with.

Bruce

New Life For A Tree Branch

Sorry for the lack of posts for the last few months.  I have been helping an old friend remodel her house.  However now with the summer well upon us and the heat mostly unbearable in the afternoons I have again begun retreating to my craft room.  The following is one of several posts in the next few days.

While I enjoy carving in general (truth be know making just about anything in general).  I seem to be happiest if I am re purposing some item that would otherwise head to the land fill.  Recently it was a branch from our Catalpa tree.  It had an interesting shape and seemed to be calling out to become a walking stick.

I have never attempted to carve catalpa before.  It is not a commercially viable wood to my knowledge.  It did put up a bit of a fight but after changing the profile (sharpening) of my knives it seemed to work OK.  I decided it would make an interesting Santa Cane.

The wood is actually pretty well suited to a walking stick.  It has a nice resilience and it is pretty light weight.  At just over 36 inches this is most suited to walkers rather than hikers.  I have a Bradford Pear limb and a Bald Cypress limb that will me my next victims in the walking stick category.

More to come.

Bruce

Wooden Cross

I have been finishing up some projects that have been on the bench for a while.  One was this wooden cross made for an old friend.  The base cross is Aspen.  The middle cross is Easter Red Cedar and the top is Turquoiseite. The stone on the cross is I believe pink adventurine.  Cross is rougly 13 inches tall and is ment to hang on a wall.

More Later
Bruce

Hand Carved Pinon Pine Bowl

After taking some time off to help my son move and to accompany Pam on some spring break excursions I broke the carving tools back out and tried my hand at a wood I have never carved before.  Pinon Pine is mostly used for burning in Chimineas as the smoke (and it produces a lot) is reputed to repel Mosquitoes.

I found a piece at a local firewood sales.  Everyone else goes there for firewood, I go to find unusual native woods to experiment with.  Now Pinon is a very sappy wood and has a strong pine fragrance.  I new it would not be good for figures but thought it would make an interesting bowl.   I was right.  I save some of the bark and made the bowl conform to the natural shape of the log I had.  It has a very interesting green and yellow coloration to the grain.  Just goes to show you never know what is hiding inside a piece of wood.  In this case a neat rustic bowl.

Since I carved this bowl from green wood I will let it sit for a few weeks and cure before I put any kind of finish on it.  Right now I plan to use a shellac to finish it.  Hand rubbed of course.

More Later

Go make some sawdust.

Bruce