Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Turned Pens

Here is the picture of the two pens I turned for a friend at work. The wood is Myrtal wood from the Oregon coast. I took 3 sets of pictures, and the others are even more fuzzy.

I also made a box to hold the pens from Myrtal wood and purple heart. As soon as I can get Photoshop to open I'll add a picture here of the second box I made. I made two at the same time. Note that the first one does not have purple heart under the hinges (that was added to fix a boo-boo.) The finish on the box was wax, nothing else.

As the text on the picture points out, I had trouble getting the images to be visible 'cause of the glare from the flash. I tweaked them, and yes purple heart is purple in color. In reality the background is a light tan/yellow color.

Enjoy. Be careful of the splinters.

Friday, November 30, 2007

Mannheim Steamroller

I'm at another concert. Wonderful Christmas music. I'm glad I was able to come. No wood working tonight.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Angels



Here are two angels, one carved, about 12 inches tall, and the other is a picture made from cut wood and paint. Barb painted the picture, I cut and assembled it. Both are for the auction. I'm thinking about carving an angel for home, and this would be a good design. The designer is Shawn Cipa, and he has had his work shown in the Wood Carving magazine. The Santa on the front cover is a Shawn Cipa design.

The carved angel was made from sugar pine, a good alternative to basswood.

I like the Santa that Cipa designed for the cover of Woodcarving Illustrated, so I may tackle that next.

Be careful of the splinters.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Waiting

I'm at The Melting Pot during Happy Hour waiting for Barb before we go to the Micheal Allen Harrison concert at the Snitz. May post more pictures of carvings later.

Great place to stay and wait.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007



I finally took some pictures of 2 more carvings and a picture that Barb and I made. The small Santa is 3 1/4 inches tall. The hanging snowman ornament is 6 1/2 inches tall.

Both are carved from Basswood and I painted them with acrylics. They will be taken to my place of work for our annual Holiday auction to raise money for the dinner. I can post prices later.

I used wire for the snowman arms just for durability. Other than the gloves on the snowman, each are carved from a single piece of wood.

I'm still working on getting better pictures.

Wood chips are real, and they help make dreams become real too.
Enjoy.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Carved Snowman



This is a picture of my carved snowman, a Shawn Cipa design. I'm donating this to the holiday committee to raise money and help pay for our party. In addition, the tall Santa was painted by Barb from a pattern I cut out. You can gauge the difference in height by looking at the light switch in the background. Note I turned the flash off to take the snowman picture. That cut a lot of the glare out from the white surface. I have also carved a small snowman ornament that only is as tall as the upper hand of the snowman you see here. The snowman has now been sealed and I'm debating whether to antique it or not.

This is all for now. I'm getting tired of the computer as I had to work on it all weekend. I support computers all week and the add another 12-18 hours on the weekend. Could explain why I'm getting less carving done on the weekends.

Be careful of the splinters.


Wednesday, November 7, 2007

In the shop.



Ok, I did what most people do, start a blog and not post anything. I've been carving and turning pens. The carving pictures were fuzzy so I'll take new ones later. I have a picture of my new lathe in my shop. On it is mounted a pen turning that was attempted with a molted wood. A little more brittle than I like. I took a close up of the turning so you can see where it fell apart. I may try again with this wood later, as there is a trick for turning brittle wood, but I need to do 10 pens fairly quickly (Christmas gifts for work staff.)

I've already grabbed some other wood and started a new set. The wood for this pen on the lathe was questionable so I only prepared one to see what would happen. I already have made a pen/pencil set made from Myrtle wood this week, but that picture was fuzzy too. I've got to work on my technique. I'll try posting that one later, too.

Been pushing for a separate shop, so I can get more space than I have in the garage. Keep looking and I'll post how it's going.

I currently have 3 pen blanks drilled and drying tonight. I use epoxy to hold the wood and brass center tube together, then turn the wood to 1/16 of an inch or less, larger then the brass tube. The wood itself is not strong enough to hold together, it is there because wood is good.

Enjoy, and be careful of the splinters.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Late Saturday Night

It is a late night. Not too much happening. Thought I'd try and post from my Blackberry again. Did get my trestle done, painted and rehung. It looks great, picture coming soon.

Thursday, August 9, 2007

From the Bus

Thought I'd try and post this while on the bus heading home. Not relly a lot to say, other than it seems to be working.

The sun finally made it out again. I am going to dig up some paint for the trestle tonight, to at least get ready for the weekend. I may then run down to the driving range and beat some balls up after that, so I can avoid 'Big Brother'.

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Working on the trestle

I got all of the perpendicular boards cut and mounted across the top. The horizontal boards dried out pretty fast, and all of the tight joints are now loose. I'll paint them next, maybe this weekend.

Meanwhile I started on a new project. This is a holder for my large carvings so I can use a mallet on them. The design is simple, and I'll post it when it is done, along with a picture of the bust that I worked on in the carving class. I'm using myrtal wood for the holder, cause I need to use a hardwood and I have a lot of that around.

Let the chips fly......bye.

Wednesday, August 1, 2007



Here's the picture of the trestle in its current form. I'm still waiting for the wood to dry out.
The end shot is to see the way the wood ends have been cut, the second shot is to see the overall look. Again, I still need to put 2x2 pieces across the top (after it drys out). I'm willing to bet the long boards were trees less than 30 days ago. I probably should have edited the pictures first.

Enjoy.

Sunday, July 29, 2007

Well, the trestle is over half done. The supports are up and the long boards. The next step is adding 2x2s from sticking out from the garage. I'll try to grab a picture tonight. It's looking good, though we are debating on the color to paint it, white or the dark green of the trim.

Fitting the supports to the garage was a pain since the exterior molding is not flat. I trimmed it close with a bandsaw and used a file to create the curves.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Barb and I saw trestle over the garage of a neighbors house, so now I am building one. I stopped and talked with the neighbor to see how he built it. The hard part was figuring out how he attached it to the garage door frame. I had come up with some ideas, and one of them proved right.

He used metal angle brackets to join the supports to the wall and painted them to match. From the street you can't tell they are there. That will be my next project, given some time. With luck I'll work on it tomorrow night and Friday.

Although Friday I do need to take some time and go get a driver for my golf bag. It's time I started using one instead of a 3 wood. I may ask about a utility wood at the same time.

Catch you later.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

The new Harry Potter book came out, so I picked up a copy on Saturday night after Barb and I saw the movie "No Reservations". The movie was nice, most of it seem sad, and parts were a little slow until later in the show. Definitely a 'chick flick' but I enjoyed it anyway. No action, violence, sex or bad language, but a nice story.

I picked up HP about 9:30pm, read until 1am, then read from 7am until 4:30pm, with several minor interruptions (bringing in the groceries, petting the cat, lunch.) I won't talk about it here, but the book stayed in context, though was long in places. About 750 pages.

I redid my comcast web site, so take a look there for pictures.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007



Okay, this isn't really me, but it is one of the ugliest cork heads I have carved. I'd show more, but I've already given them all away. I have requests for a few more. I busy with other projects so they may need to wait.

I have a wood turners meeting tomorrow night. Here is link to their website:

http://www.cascadewoodturners.com/

Here is an egg I turned for practice last night. It was from a cherry branch that has spalted (rotted) a little.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Another beginning

Two nights ago I tried to update my comcast site and ran up against a 25M file size limit. Since it mostly is pictures of my family, for other family members to see, I was disappointed. I'll rewrite the front end to show only current pictures (this year) and post the link. This site is to help me write a little, maybe a little more often, so you can know what's going on.

As stated in the title, I work with wood to relax and to get real. Tonight I turned an egg from a spalted cherry branch I had. No finish, as this is a practice piece. I'll see if I can use my Blackberry Curve to take a picture and post it here.

If all this works, I'll try to become a bit more regular on my posting. I hope you find it interesting, and occasionally entertaining.