back to carving

Tank of Gas Tuesday

    After a day of rain and not being able to do much besides rest up, I did manage to get some yard mowed and do some more carving. Today I may hit the carving hard and see how much I can get done. Today I will explain the subtle differences and hope you too can see the change.

     I turned the log some more and was able to define the bear face and the eagle head as I continue to work on the side of the log. It doesn’t appear to me so far that I am over penetrating the log in any position. I am trying to remove as much material as necessary on the top of the totem to reduce the weight once the wings are added. I am always trying to keep the center of gravity low. At the same time I try and carve the bottom heads so that they take full advantage of the log width adding weight to the bottom of the carving conversely lowering that same center of gravity artificially at the same time. So in effect I am explaining to you how to artificially lower the center of gravity of the statue in general. How you carve and what you carve is limited by the static structure of the carving no matter the medium. It is still based on the strength of the material, the forces of nature and individual effort.

      Felt tip markers will not help you with this but experience in carving helps. Just have to think of it as a weeble . And of course everyone knows weebils wobble but they shouldn’t fall down, especially ones this big. My goal is to have as safe a carving as I can. Lowering the center of gravity is the only way to do this. This will not be enough for this statue and it will still need to be anchored to the base to be completely safe and this all depends on how maintenance on it is performed. Left to dry out, or anchors allowed to rot will surely affect the safety of structure and at that time may be best to lay on its side to assure no one gets hurt. Fortunately the person receiving this totem has the means to make sure no one gets hurt and I am sure it is in his best interest to prevent it.

        At this point I would like to take a look at the source of the wood and that is from the Mineral City, Ohio tornado that took out the fire station and after doing that proceeded to the area where I was asked to remove the trees downed by that same tornado. In this case I readily accepted the logs as I was able to secure wood that was already downed and was appropriate as salvageable wood. I brought home a couple of truckloads of wood from that one area. I am not sure that using wood that has been twisted such as you get from a tornado as it lifted huge trees more than a couple feet in diameter clean out of the ground, exposing huge root balls. This causes the logs to twist in a spiral till enough uplift causes the tornado to twist the logs up out of the ground or topple over. The tree tops were scattered randomly in a direction indicating spiral winds. I believe when this happens it causes internal stresses on the wood not able to be seen by human eye.  A couple of carvings so far have cracked more than usual and I hope it isn’t because of the tornado but feel it may have an effect on cracking. Still in retrospect I still think it is an excellent source of salvageable wood, and in reality is still probably the largest natural source of wood in general as most weak trees are taken down by storms eventually.

details of fish 

    I can fix most cracks but it is harder to fix some. I have a carving of a Santa that is going to pose a problem to repair the cracks that have developed and I will show you that crack damage and eventual repair so one can get an idea of what is involved.  I plan to write more on it tomorrow after I take pictures and explain in detail the crack and how to fix it. I plan on including pics on actual repair to be included as I simultaneously also continue with the daily carving of the totem. Just a plan we will see. If nothing else to but to inform readers of what is involved in a carving will go a long way to educate art enthusiasts that what we do as carvers is a little more than grabbing a chainsaw and hacking away at a piece of wood till we get a bear. It is practiced that way a lot in chainsaw carving as I know of carvers who mass produce. But then you have that in the fine arts and especially in modern arts. There are some real artists who put thought into what they do. Maybe at some point I will be one, just know I try hard to do what I am doing the right way. Maybe what I write will help someone someday.  

pics of flowers in bloom on the farm