Not Quite Wood

It is almost Halloween and I needed to carve a pumpkin. My wife said I shouldn't have used myself as a model for the face. It didn't take long, but pumpkins are notorious for rotting quickly after carving. This one I needed for tonight. Note that I did not hollow this pumpkin out, just carved the face.

Enjoy, but be careful of spooky spirits.

Jigs for more Santa's

I carved another Santa last night, but instead of just showing you the Santa, I've included pictures of the jig I used for cutting the base shape. The initial design came from Wood Carving Illustrated magazine. I built a jig to cut a 12" 2x2 in half, corner to corner, on the bandsaw. As you can see from the picture I took a 2x4 and made 2-45 degree cuts to create a trough to set hold the board stable. I then attached the 2x4 onto a scrap piece of plywood. I feed this slowly into the bandsaw less than ½ of the way into the jig keeping to the center as best I could. With the jig still in place, I powered off the bandsaw and clamped the plywood to the table. After that I slid a 2x2 into the blade and the result is 2 pieces cut corner to corner.

I the cut one of the 12" diagonal pieces into 3 chunks and you can see one of the resulting Santas. Pretty cool.

Enjoy, and be careful of the splinters.

Santas Already

Here are two Santa's I carved during a woodcarving retreat. These were done from Basswood eggs. The larger one took about 2 hours to finish, giving me an hour to carve the next one. After I got home I textured the smaller of the Santas beard, mustache and hat brim using a small v-tool. The eyes were each painted, after which I coated them with BLO and painted them with acrylic washes until I got the tone I wanted. One of these will go to my auction at work and the other will stay home.


Enjoy, and be careful of the splinters.

Another Carving

I'll be giving this one away today or tomorrow to a friend, so here is a final look. I used a pattern in a book for the design. I'm also going to carve one for me as I like the design and the way it turned out.


Enjoy, and be careful of the splinters.

Mama's quilts

While these aren't wood stuff, Mama made these Halloween quilts and I wanted to show them off, so here they are.

Finally, here is a Fall lap quilt to crawl under when it gets cold. The temps are already into the low 40s at night and this quilt is comfortable. We've both already tested it out with a snooze.

Bottle Stoppers - renewed

I found a couple of bottle stoppers that I carved about 5 years ago and decided that I didn't like the way they looked. Too square and blocky, with no character. I re-carved them leaving the ears, nose and hair lines, at least most of it. The front ended up with a whole new look. While I prefer to use a linseed oil coating for most of my work now, I left enough of the original paint on these that I needed to repaint these also. The looks are about a 100% improvement, so I'm happier with them. Oh, yes, I would still do things differently if I started over, but I don't always have time for that and fixing them presented a nice challenge. Neither of these had been seen by anyone, as I kinda hid them away until now.

Finally, another post

Yes I know, it has been a while. My excuse is I was gone most of August. But I did get a little done. I planted grass in front of the shop, and it is just starting to come up, at least a couple of blades. I finally put wallboard around the electrical panel to fill in the gaps from when I had the panel replaced, just shy of a year to do it. My big brother helped. See the picture.


I finished carving a sun that I had been working on for about 2 years. Painted, but not yet sealed or hung. I need to add a hook to hang it. It is bright, but it is the sun. For those that don't recognize it, the sun is a Shawn Cipa design.


I went to the Carving Rendezvous put on by the Salem, Oregon Capital Carvers. I spent the day there learning from people that like to teach, with a lot of people that like to carve. I included samples by Dave Disslbrett from a class I took there. I had a great time and it was nice to talk and listen to people that enjoyed carving.

For now, enjoy, but be careful of the splinters.