Hurricane Activity

We're bracing for Hurricane Irene.  Everything is tied down, camping stove, lanterns and flashlights on standby. Worst case situation - no electricity for a couple days, at least I have my muscle-powered knives and gauges here and I can while away the windy hours with some carving projects. Maybe even catch up on my backlog of painting. Nice to have a low tech hobby. Stay safe everyone on the Eastern seaboard.

Shop tip - cord labels

Here's a little quickie shop tip. It's so simple yet so handy. I forget where I picked this idea up from, but I filed it in the back of my mind, knowing it might come in handy one day. Lately I have been using more power tools than I have outlets near my workbench and I find it annoying to have to guess which cord I'm unplugging, especially since I switch between tools a lot. Besides being a really useful idea, recycling the little tabs from bread bags fits in with my philosophy of give things most people throw away "an extra life".  I have this 4-gang box suspended above my bench which I prefer to bending down every time I need to change a plug. Plus it keeps cords from getting tangled where my feet like to be.
This idea works really well in my office too!

Site of the Week - Chip Carved Eggs

Gary's finished eggs

Well, this is not exactly a Site of the Week post since it's been several weeks since I've posted at all. It's been a couple of hot weeks and I haven't felt like doing much carving. I have been researching a lot of projects to work on and I decided to order a couple basswood eggs and see what I could make out of them. In browsing Google images for inspiration, I found a number of interesting chip-carved eggs. Although my original intent was to carve some small, egg-shaped Santas (which I still plan on doing) these chip-carved eggs are quite intriguing. This one in particular, called Chip Carving Basswood Eggs by Gary at The Carver's Edge site caught my fancy. The site itself is somewhat underwhelming, with a lot of pages "temporarily closed", but the layout techniques are well worth studying. I might try simplifying some of thee designs for my first couple tries. We'll see how that goes. maybe I'll do a video to document my experience, though it will most certainly not be a tutorial. Stay cool.

The Gnome is a Lady

Well, a customer who purchased one of my gnomes asked if there was a female gnome. I thought about that and realized I have yet to carve a female figure of any kind. So I decided to give it a whirl. I'm pretty happy with the result. Here are photos before and after a coat of paint.

3 Olde World Santas

Here are my Olde World Santas from my previous video, using the corner carving approach made from a blank cut on the band saw jig I demonstrated in my last post. This is a very interesting style of carving that is much more dramatic than most I have seen. Quite a few carvers have tried this one and I've seen a number of very different results. Anyway, here are mine before and after a paint job. enjoy!

Sunday's Are Different Now

When I started this blog, back in October of 2010, I had made a decision to do more carving. It seemed a good idea to work at it on a more regular basis, so I decided to sit an carve a minimum of once a week, every week. I chose Sunday and hence the name of the blog. But since then, I have carved much more than once a week and now it's a rare day that I don't carve or paint a carving. The results have been quite remarkable. I have become a much better carver! That was the goal, but I never expected so much improvement in such a short time. I don't mean this as a boast, but as encouragement to those who, like me, love the art and craft of wood carving and want to be able to carve more and more challenging projects.

So how have my Sunday's changed? Now, they are days for me to set aside "production" and experiment, develop new ideas and video some of my work. I've learned a lot this year and continue to do so. I hope that never ends.

Rip Jig for Band Saw

This jig is useful for ripping blocks safely on the diagonal. This one is a big improvement on my old prototype.