1-15-2012-click on images to display larger-bear carving -3

    well right now it is jan. 14 th, and it is middle of winter, and of course you are asking what significance that would make as it would be easier to take pics as i was actually carving a bear out. it is to damn cold. could have done this story last week when weather was nice. but looking through my pics figure this will do for tonights discussion. 

    the tree this carving is out of has considerable history. it was at one time a christmas tree i hauled into the house in a large washtub , ball and all , and we used it for christmas one year and then took the tree out and planted it . it did good for several years, then suddenly it died before it ever reached maturity.

    i also run heavy equipment and was running a large excavator digging a pond here on the farm as well as cleaning up some old trees taken down by a tornado that ravaged  the farm and provided me with a lot carving material. this tree was one i was taking down and i just plucked it out roots and all and drug it out to field and just about cut it up for firewood but decided to take the log out of it . and so it lay around a lot longer. times were ok but mom's birthday caught me by surprise again no real present of any worth. one thing about being a carver,  it is good for giving presents . at least better than being a mortician . at least when i bring a hunk of wood back to life it looks like something. a mortician has a zombie at best and a corpse usually. so there are advantages to being a carver. it is nice to give handmade gifts as these. 

     so i decided to carve her a welcome bear and place it our y in our lane , where it splits us from where we used to have neighbors. it was about half way back our lane. 

    for tonight i will describe what i was doing as i carved this bear. 1st pic is a pic of my old dog bud and babe sitting on my bench. she is sitting there because she wouldn't leave me alone and i was trying to teach her to stay. well it worked long enough to get the pic. normally i start at where i want the head. i locate the head so that the nose is in line with the longest side of log round. here i had to pick the crotch and decide which way i wanted to face the face. i already had in mind using the branches for arms so i had to have most bulging part sticking out. a few minutes thinking of how you ae going to proceed cutting at this point can save a lot misery. think of proportions and how long each part should be as best you can. i mentally cut it in my mind before actually laying a chainsaw to the log. this makes me confident in knowing how i'm going to proceed. and if your mind isn't wrapped around a vision , some people draw lines on the wood. maybe shave the bark off outside and then take a magic marker and mark where the mouth is eyes etc.. and at first you are going to block the carving out. 

    blocking you are getting the cheekbones , the snout and he neck carved in not going to deep. always keeping in mind you can take it off but you can put it on . it is one place where a little goes a long way. but at same time you will have areas of excess wood. between the legs, at the top of the shoulders. learn to take some blocks off in these places . so i get the head pretty well roughed out . then i just start cutting out the arms in this case normally with a regular bear i would work down the bear cutting and roughing out the general out line. 

    once i have cut most of the excess out . i grab the carving saw with the smaller tip as it is called a dime tip. meaning it is the size of a dime at the end . it is a hardened bar w/ a 1/4 inch chainsaw chain allowing smooth pointy cuts offering great detail. i then carve out eye sockets . and it is just balance of cuts from there. you do one thing to one side , go to other side and do the same thing. stepping back take a break and straighten your back. look at your carving. one side needs to look like other. smiles can be crooked , and eyes not set equally  will give it character. this isn't to bad unless eye is where belly is supposed to be. you might have a problem. and this is like the warning i gave you on last blocking out procedure . take small cuts till you learn . take your time and learn to look. don't get discouraged and see it through to the end. no matter how bad. your first is usually glorified firewood. but it is one under your belt. next is always easier. and you are always learning.

     so again you do this balance thing all the way down yenging and yanging your way down to the base. it is always nice to leave a base on your first couple of bears as it is hard to get them to stand . well normally my bears look like it would be a pleasure to be ate buy them . i mean who couldn't resist a smiling bear welcoming you into his den. come here little kiddie step inside , lets have something to eat. they are not real bears and accuracy isn't important unless you are really into that. most people would rather believe in yogi bear anyhow.you will have plenty of time to be perfect later. at this point you need practice and and have some support. contact online forums like the united chainsaw guild forum and at anytime you have a question feel free to ask or leave a comment.  i will get back to you as soon as i can. and if you think you want to try this as a vocation or as a hobby, then contact me or a carver in your area. watch them if they let you ,or you can come watch me. i will rent you the equipment if you would like to try. this is an alternative to dropping 500 dollars and finding out this may not be what you want to do. if you were to rent the equipment off me then , i would include safety training and have you signing a waiver . sorry would have to. not really into renting my equipment out but realize how much it costs to get started and it is quite expensive to just try. and i have the equipment to take it from start to finish and can instruct you as you go along. after you try it you can buy your own equipment. 1out of 10 people who try carving are going to be able to do it. and 1 out of 100 will be really good.

    enough for today will get into finishing techniques tomorrow. 

   

   

1-14-2012-click on image -chainsaw carving 2

 you are asking yourself ,' now how does that crazy farmer  think he is going to tie in a horse on a treadmill and a pretty girl and the amish mafia all together , and relate it to chainsaw carving.'
   well figuring you might ask that question i guess i will have to tell you since i figured you probably would ask , since i put you up to it. and here is how. i was carving at the tusc. co fairgrounds in dover, ohio , and took a break and walked on down the fairway and noticed the treadmill and the horse. trying to leave the amish out of the pic i took a pic of the horse just as the girl walked by, and later thought how strange the pic was. im a big person and the horse totally ignored me and yet was watching the girl walk by as if he was scoping her out. i could have walked up and thunked him on the head and he couldn't of cared less  the amish were there for a good purpose to raise money to donate to charity. the horse was plodding along on the old treadmill turning the drive shaft that is making home made ice cream. this they sold in containers. really neat green answer to getting things done. horse seemed content to just plod along, people were happy and ice cream was good. way life should be.
     anyhow as much as i like to wander when i did these carvings i needed to get back and carve. was really neat carving in public, and i did it for awhile. to say i made a bunch of money would be mistaken as when you consider how long it takes to get ready for a show, spending time with customers explaining what it is you do , and how you do it. actually carving watching for people to make sure you have a safe operation and trying to put on a show for them. after all that is what they come to see. its kinda like a stock car that continually wrecks knocking off a fender here and a fender there until he has one of those little clown cars , and with this analogy you will see that as a carver we do the same thing . we knock a little wood here and make a wood chip shoot across parking lot, make a lot of noise look like you know what you are doing. this is the thrill of carving in public. big money to be had by some person, man or woman who chooses to take up carving as vocation.
    there is a lot of art to the craft . as with any art form different styles are as numerous as the tools used to carve with. and when you are done , is it any different than hand carving? sculpting is sculpting , irregardless of whether you use nothing but your hands as they are tools themselves. a tool being anything to facilitate or ease the toil  of the job needing done. you need to eat , your hands help you. you can eat with out your hands , but this would be harder. so hands are a tool , and everything  else would be equal .whether a sculpting knife or a chainsaw, you are still easing the burden of  creating what ever.
    chainsaw carving is used by a lot of major artists to create beautiful works of art. it wasn't the tools of michaelangelo but i am sure if the technology was around he would have had an apprentice hacking away at some log. some of the fine art museums , and some artists think that chainsaw carving has a carnival like , folksy  feel to it. and there are a lot of guys carving some bad stuff out there. and i imagine some may say the same about me. i try hard and as katherine hepburn would say" i give it my best and if that isnt good enough then they will just have to wait till i can do it better", would hope that other chainsaw carvers feel the same and a lot do.
    imagine a little about logs tonight before i go. i like pine. oak is nice but it is hard, wild cherry is fun, but still like pine around 2 feet to start , and another big buttt log to sit it on and at a convenient height, so that you can reach the chainsaw to the top of the sculpture and not have to lean to low. to carve the  base of the carving. this wood should be relatively free of knots. i need to warn you about knots as knots will be harder as the wood is turned perpendicular to the normal grain of the wood. in stead of cutting across the grain you are now ripping lengthwise  to normal grain causing the saw to be more likely to pop out of saw cut.and this bouncing could lead to kickback. knots can be carved and as with knots and any carving , you go slow and be safe till you can get the feel of the saw.
    and what is the feel you ask. figured you would ask that. well it is a confidence that you would have all facets  covered . you are safe and confident.  you know what you are carving, others around you are safe , and you enjoy what you are doing. you are creating , turning firewood into bears, and trees into toothpicks.
     and in summary of what i most want to impress upon on any'wood be' carver or anyone who wants a carving done. do not carve on live trees. and don't cut a tree down to make a carving. anything you create could not have been as lovely as what you just cut down. stump jobs do not last as long as individual statues. all my wood i use is recycled wood. or wood from trees that had to be taken down . and let it age before carving. a couple of years is good . stand on end if possible or lean against something. but make sure it is secure. and kid proof. a log can kill if it falls on a child. it takes about forty years to get a log big enough to carve, be conservative with your wood, and make beautiful product.

1-13-2012-click on image-carving 1

      well tonight is a stab at chainsaw carving. these are all previous pics of me when i was able to carve, but my back problems are taking their tole on me . can not go as long and pretty much have to be up to feeling pretty good to pick up a chainsaw. it would be a great vocation for some aspiring artist to learn art.it teaches you to work in three dimensions, and being able to shape and form things in your mind  it is dangerous and sometimes i think you need to cut about 50 truck loads of wood to learn chainsaws and understand what they are capable of. in terms of safety , and to learn how to handle chainsaws in general.
      then again , a lot of the safety things you would normally do , when carving you do them. the main difference is you are paying complete attention to what you are doing.  not only for safety sake but also because you would end up with a much smaller piece of firewood. you can carve with a regular chainsaw as long as it is light to start off with. would recommend a small echo or stihl. doesnt have to have a carving bar to start, and might be best to learn with a regular bar. and would recommend a hard nose narrow tip as opposed to a roller tip. the smaller the radius of the tip, the more detail can be achieved.  if you are a beginner , a low profile non aggressive low kickback chain should be used in either the 1/4 , or 3/8 low profile is good. you dont need a lot of power to start either till you get the feel of the saw and what it is capable of. the main thing is the chain brake works and you need other safety equipment too.
     other safety equipment would include ear plugs( very important-long term exposure to high pitched motor noise will make you deaf. ), safety glasses to prevent wood chips from flying into your eyes. you as a beginner should wear a cut protection in the form of safety chaps or logging pants w/ kevlar protection. after you get to know it all then you can do with out. also gloves might be another option you might want to invest in. they have gloves that help isolate vibration . log term it can cause you nerve problems.
      as with regular chainsaw use,kickback is your biggest problem. at not time do you want to be in the position to eat a chainsaw full of running teeth. you will lose. never put your face anywhere close to the bar or directly above the bar. do not stand over the log you are cutting. as kick back can send the bar directly at you. it happens so quick you can hardly control it. spend time and understand how kick back happens. now when you get to understand proper way to handle chainsaw , safety and proper starting procedure, and have experienced cutting through logs then you might be able to think about doing a carving project. , this will be tomorrow nights discussion.

1-12-2012-click on image -farm market

                                                                                         

       today being the 11th of january. and looking through my archives found a couple of pics i thought were worthy of mentioning as it applies to an item i heard today and have been hearing quite a bit. that is the need of farmers to fulfill the need for locally grown produce. organically grown is experiencing a growth period as people become more concerned about what they are eating . a variety of items can be found at roadside markets ranging from hand crafted items like carvings to produce , plants , and used household items. the flea market is another source for local farmers to market their produce. it takes less fuel to get to market, and produce is less subject to chemical fertilizers and chemical pesticides as well as herbicides that make the soil sterile. now we have genetic engineered corn and we all have ate products made with genetically engineered corn as it is now everywhere.
    recently i read an article that told of a farmer who planted a field of corn beside a neighbor who used genetically engineered corn , and was told that he needed to sign an agreement to sell all his corn or be sued for stealing the patent rights of the corn. monsanto was behind this .

Monsanto's Harvest of Fear | Politics | Vanity Fair

    dont know if this is exactly the article but it tells somewhat the same story. now as a farmer you have to be aware of where you plant crops so as to not infringe on the patent rights of a seed company. it only makes sense to buy locally when you hear stories such as this. more smaller farmers growing organic pesticide free and herbicide free crops is what we need to break the backs of large agri business concerns who have unlimited power of life and death in their hands . as food is our  most important commodity we all need . 

    a farm market was an integral part of malabar farm when the farm was in its hey day. vegetables would be brought in from field and washed and cooled in spring waters in troughs along the road side where they had covered shelters to protect the produce and the workers selling it from the sun of summertime. my understanding is that sales were brisk. i have also sold produce along the road i would buy from local farmers and resell for profit. i was overwhelmed as it became a chore to keep up with demand of good produce. it is a short lived season. lately my focus has been on raising red raspberries and black berries  for a pick your own operation.

1-11-2012-click on image- the rest of the story

     
       today being jan. 10th. 2012, and here is the rest of the story as paul harvey would have said. the tractor and the dog pic is about the same place as i was when the plane went down. the dog is bud named for one of cosbys kids in his series on tv. anyhow bud was a good dog. stayed with me many years and i finally had to put him down. as i was enabling him to live. carrying him around. it was tough. like to think i am over it but don't think i will ever be. anyhow one day i was having a particularly miserable day and i had taken the tractor to the back field to fix the fence the cows tore down anyhow i had parked the tractor up the hill and set the brakes. i started down over the hill in a drizzling rain , pulling the fence behind me and i noticed bud wasn't with me and i looked all around the field, and he was no where in sight.. i looked up the hill and there he was sitting on the tractor looking much like he was on here. i always wished i had a picture of him on that tractor that day , and so i staged this pic of him. second is an indian i sold for a fair amount of cash. the feathers are fake .
       the pilot in yesterdays story lived and things calmed down and eventually they closed down all operations in the woods up there and didnt do anything for years, then we heard that another government agency had taken over, and they posted signs on the sprayed property saying public hunting. hunters would park at our farm and head up the access road and hunt deer and whatever else they could shoot that moves or doesn't move. an annoyance at best. , and then that woods was always a mushroom hunters delight. all the time , the government agencies knew all along radioactivity of sufficient strength to kill small pl;ants and animals was sprayed there, but no cautionary signs have ever been posted on the property or studies that anyone locally knows about to determine the site is safe.
       instead to hide the paper trail and all emotional guilt the department of forestry in their infinite wisdom dedicated this sight a public hunting area. to top it off  things get worse as they take major cuts in the woods, lumbering out virgin timber and selling it to marsh lumber in new philadelphia , ohio, to make paneling out of. now if you are spraying radioactive material in a suspended liquid over treetops and it would normally fall onto the leaves till the plane crashed and screwed the whole thing up. the leaves would suck up the radiation preventing it from actually reaching the forest floor. this uptake would permanently lodge the majority of the radioactive material in the fibrous wood pulp. as kids about a year after the crash the supervisors at the site would pay us a penny a piece to find dead animals and bring to them . we found some , but no major corpses were to be seen. anyhow i feel the wood stored it all till they logged the woods repeatedly totally restructuring and obliterating the forest floor in the area of the plane crash.
     so now they are on a 20 year cycle of harvesting trees and raping what ever natural resources they can from area. and what ever the muskingum watershed conservancy doesnt get , then the hunters who scour the woods in search of the glow in the dark bambies , that frequent the area, manage to get . mushroom hunting is still popular. and they now have the ability to drive and park in the woods as opposed to using our farm. im still concerned about water quality , and not quite sure how deer eating nuts from trees are fairing. or any of the small plants and animals are doing in comparison. kind of late to do anything but warn people and i guess that is what this is all about. it is a tragedy, that they used radioactivity to test in our backyard, but this was early 1960's and they were still learning what the effects of radiation were both good and bad.now if you can imagine that marlite manufactured paneling and this paneling was sold around the united states and around the world when it could. a lot of that may reside in your own house. so tonite when you go to sleep and you turn off the lights , if your paneling glows green you too might be one of the lucky ones to understand how shit happens.

reprint from 1-10-2012

Reprint from old Story of the Plane Crash

   

     This is a reprint that I have edited of an old story i told before on 1-10 2012,  and will now slip into my chronological order  of jobs I have had in my life. As I say every job you have had has some kind of story to tell. If nothing else it's the people you meet or events that happened that make up your memory of that time, This happened to me when i was 5 and I had told it before but it wasn't really edited very well so I have went back through and hopefully  haven't changed it to much. The drawings I did are drawings of the scene as I remembered it, only with some artist enhancement . I wasnt able to view the plane till almost 6 months later, as they were protecting it because of the radiation. It was my brothers that snuck me in to finally see it from a back way, unknown to grandpa who would have had a fit, But this is what it looked like then. I just added the balloons for effect. the pictures are kind of grainy but are from pencil renderings I did and scanned to the computer. Hope you enjoy.

1-10-2012-click on image - my first job

     Today being the 9th of january and we squeaked out another really nice day and they say we might get another before we are done. Todays story is an extenuation of yesterdays story. If you hover over the picture with your mouse you can enlarge the pics to see more clearly.
    Well what these pics represent is a period of when I was helping my grandpa  and a bunch of scientists as they were preparing for an experiment on the farm adjacent to ours and  in the same research area as I had mentioned before. And it was in this area one day I watched them fill balloons full of helium and suspending them on strings till they were above the tree tops. There were strings of green balloons as well as red and blue, and they seemed to be in rows all through the woods. These woods were old growth , tall dense trees , some running 90 -120 feet in the air and some virgin timber. It had a forest top so dense it was dark throughout the forest floor with hints of sunshine barely visible through the tree tops. Even the balloons as they disappear through the tree tops could hardly be seen from on ground. I watched as a team of men circling the helium tanks would fill one balloon after another, and finally I asked one of the guys I knew, just what was going on there, And in a matter of factly way he explained to me that the balloons would serve as a  guide to a plane that was spraying radioactive material over the woods. Each color stood for a pass the plane was supposed to make for complete coverage of the woods. I being only five at the time and not really understanding radioactivity asked what it was, and he told me it was stuff to make animals sick. That the reason they were spraying the material was to test the effects of radiation on small plants and animals.
   Anyhow the next day rolls around and we all head to top of our hill where we would have a good view, we being my grandpa I and host of government workers I had never seen before in suits and ties. and that we would  be down wind from the spraying operation, but with a good view ,(which is never a good idea to be downwind from any spraying operation and might be responsible for this third arm growing out of my back). Anyhow  my grandpa and I was at the tractor as in second pic,  We were watching as the plane flew in over the tree tops and circle around for next pass.as he did,  he would finish his spraying and would make another wide circle lining up on balloons in his one engine single seat plane, and we watched as he made his last pass skirting low to the trees,when we hear a cracking noise just as a  government employee snaps a picture with a big bellowed camera.   You hear the engine sputter and the plane disappears through the tree tops and more cracking and banging as the plane goes down snapping limbs and wings off as it hits the forest floor. Everyone up there looks at each other in disbelief and one stuffed shirt looks at me. and points his finger at me  and says get him out of here. Grandpa didnt have to say anything as I turned and headed to the house. Looking back I knew I saw more than i should have.
      Havoc was still playing its hand as they could not get to the pilot to find out how he was. there were only 2 guys with special moon suits that could walk into the pilot . The stuffed shirts had one walkie talkie and guided the  ground men to the crash site where they extricated the pilot and took him to our farm and loaded him into an ambulance and whisked him away. In the meantime the fire department , state police and sheriff set up camp around our farm and roads next to the woods to keep people out. A reporter was arrested trying to sneak in and was charged with trespassing. In the end  the pilot lived with just a broken jaw as in first picture and this is how the plane landed with a tree coming up through center of cockpit and catching him under chin. He dropped over 100 feet through trees and was one lucky man. more on this tomorrow. these pictures are drawn by me based on my observations after the crash. The second is my remembrances  of  the exact crash . I was 5 yrs old at time at the time of the crash. Drawings were made on date as on drawings itself and i have had them in my possession for some time. .

        today being the 8th of january and hope to finsd all you well. i am doing ok , and the day was unseasonably mild. we have been having a warm winter, but really nothing out of ordinary. seems like all you do is keep looking over your shoulder as you know the ugly side of winter can come at you in a moments notice. ohio.
       above is the rooster oil painting i did and is pretty well finished . going to do a weathered board frame around it and hang in kitchen as i  always wanted one.  the other pic is of my grandpa as he was working for the forestry service i believe around 1962. he was a foreman and the other guy is ron whipkey , his boss and soil engineer responsible for testing. they worked on the property adjacent to ours . we lived on a fairly good size farm in tuscarawas county in ohio, and grandpa only had to drive up a farm road to work. we would occasionally visit him at work and then it seemed i was there all the time when i was really young.
there was different projects they did there. and will attempt over the next couple blogs to tell a story . complete with drawings of an incident that happened there when i was young. in this pic above they were measuring water as it percolated through brown forest soil under simulated rains. this was called a weir and it was dug into hill by hand. being careful to make sure the soil was undisturbed on the uphill side. then they would string piping through the woods and set up spray bars and create an artificial rain in middle of sunshine streaming through the trees. creating rainbows as you looked up through the mist into the sun. in the middle of this rain was an instrument called a tensionometer which measured the water tension of the soil. and these had to be read at different intervals. you would don a raincoat and head into the mist. at five years they had taught  me how to count and was reading tensionometers  as well as watching artificial rains and measuring water. what an opportunity for a young child to grow up in the shade of those adults. couldnt wait till i was in first grade.
       since it was my first real job. i was paid by one of the engineers for my work as he was passing out paychecks one day to other employees and he said he had something for me. and sure enough he opened up the tailgate of his push button chrysler and there was a mountain of day old cupcakes. best paycheck i ever had. i wasnt expecting it and it was something we never got as although we lived on a farm we were to say the least poor, as my real dad had taken off and left us with nothing. cupcakes looked really good to me then. imagine the us government hirng a kid 5 years old and paying him with cup cakes. back in the good ole days, when you could do that.