A Nice Cache of Walnut!

I got lucky again this week when I found 18 feet of local walnut cut by the town and left lying for - well me! But if I didn't take it, I'm pretty sure it was going to wherever the town dumps trees. I plan to carve and turn these pieces. I'll post when I figure out what to do with it.

Harvesting Burls

A few weeks ago I noticed a fallen tree (maple, beech?) with 7 huge burls. I contacted the owner of the property and he was happy to let me take them. All I have is a small branch trimming chainsaw, but with some help from a buddy, we were able to get it cut up and brought back home - in two trips! I made a few small spoons from some of the smaller pieces. I hope to have a lathe soon and these will be exciting to turn.

Tweaking and Twittering

I'm still messing with name changes. My goal is to get my name and the products I make out there to the public a little more. I am splitting off with my Etsy shop form a cooperative with my daughter. She needs to find her own path and I need to have a shop that is just my carving work. So the new Etsy shop is The Sunday Woodcarver and this blog is now in support of that and called The Sunday Woodcarver Blog, though you will still find it with the old address. In addition I will be updating my facebook page to show the shop name change and I'm now a Twitter-er. I guess these are all the things you need to do these days if you want to sell anything. The trick is to have it all work together and make sense. Word to anyone who wants to go this way: think it through. Make sure you choose and image and name that you can live with. It's hard to make changes. I'm sure it won't be long before tools like Twitter, facebook, YouTube, blogging and selling will all be one thing, but for now, we have to learn how to pout them together so they work well for our purposes. I just want to get past all this and moving things from one shop to another so I can get back to carving and posting. By the way, if you're interested, you can follow me on Twitter @don_dailey.

Variations on a Theme

Pictured below is a favorite subject of mine - a woodland gnome. This one is named Kavish. I think this is maybe the 7th or 8th one like him carved over the past year. They have all found good homes, so I keep making them. His basic scope and scale is always the same ( I start with a pattern from an article in WCI magazine), but each one is different in many ways. After carving one or two, I started making him in parts - separate head, body and legs. Kavish was carved from one piece. There are benefits to each method. The reasons I sometimes carve discreet parts is partly to be able to use smaller, scrap pieces of wood (it takes a 4" X 4" X 10"+ block to carve this in one piece) and It's a little easier to handle in pieces... easier to paint too. But the work it takes to get the head to fit the body is a down side. I thought I'd be able to turn the head a little for some "attitude", but the beard limits that and besides, gnomes are peaceful and don't exhibit a lot of attitude! The benefit of making the one piece is I can hold him in a vice for much of the roughing stage, which I really like.

The variable features, that which really makes each one unique is in how I approach the facial features, the tools I use and the method of applying texture to the boots. Each successive gnome I carve gives me a chance to try slightly different eyes, noses, ears and facial hair. Since no one really gets a good look at these elusive characters, the details are up to me and quite forgiving of accuracy. Painting also varies and I have improved quite a bit in that area as well. The color palette hasn't changed a lot - he's still wearing red and blue, but I have a lot of fun trying to get the perfect face and beard colors and shadings. He'll be up for sale on my Etsy shop.

More Walnut Spoons

I was able to get a few more nice spoons from the free walnut I found, part of a discarded shipping pallet. Here are photos. Take a look at some of the previous posts to see a video showing the process of making them. They are going up for sale in my Etsy shop...

Salvaged Walnut Spoon

Following my last post about found wood from a shipping pallet, I made this walnut spoon. I still can't get over the fact that I was able to generate something of beauty from what most people consider garbage. Enjoy and please feel free to comment.

Treasure in the Trash

I am always on the lookout for wood that others might deem garbage or firewood and use it to make something useful of beautiful - or both! If you aren't a maker of such things, which is most people let's face it, you would not only not see it as something that could be carved or planed, but not see it at all. This pallet was left on the sidewalk by a delivery truck for sanitation to pickup, but as a full 4X8 wooden pallet, that was not going to happen. I forgot to mention there are lots of foreign objects in found wood (nails, rusty screws, dirt, pebbles) so use with caution, especially protect your eyes when cutting it up and be cautious not to damaged sharpened tools. I don't know what I'll make from this little treasure, but I'll post it when I do.

Be sure to check out some of my other carving videos on my YouTube channel - UltraD52