Mannheim Steamroller

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.