Archive for October 2012

September/October 2012 WOM

Vol16Issue5Banner

 

Wel­come to Issue 5 of Year 16 of Wood­carv­er Online Mag­a­zine.

Our Front Page pho­to this issue is:

Lynn Doughty’s

Artistry in Wood 2011 Win­ner for

Best of Cat­e­go­ry M — Caricatures

Rise & Shine II

Pho­to: Marc Featherly

 

LynnDoughty's "Rise and Shine"

Lyn­nDoughty’s “Rise and Shine”

 

Hel­lo carv­ing friends -

This issue of WOM includes a report and pho­to gallery of the win­ners at Artistry in Wood 2011. AIW ’12 is only a few short weeks away, and if you have nev­er attend­ed it is well worth the drive.

If you are a Face­book mem­ber, take time to vis­it the Carvers’ Companion/Woodcarver List Face­book group. This pro­vides a place on FB for carvers to post carv­ing pho­tos and to chat about carv­ing; it also serves as a com­pan­ion to the Wood­carv­er List­serv. Come on by for a vis­it! Click HERE or on Face­book search for “Wood­carv­er List”

In this issue:

Report and Pho­tos GalleryArtistry in Wood 2011

Call for San­ta and sea­son­al carv­ing photos

Part 3 of Find­ing and Col­lect­ing Cot­ton­wood Bark by Alex Bis­so

One Tree Project by Dan Blair

It’s going to be one of those days by “Ol’ Don” Biurgdorf

Bonus pat­tern — The West by “Ol’ Don” Biurgdorf

Pete LeClair’s Jarrel

 

Call For Front Page Carv­ing Pho­tos We’re always look­ing for great pho­tos of great carv­ings for the front page of WOM. If you’d like your pho­to to be con­sid­ered, send it on in. Please include the back sto­ry, mate­r­i­al and fin­ish info, size, etc. Send to womed­i­tor AT comcast.net

Arti­cles and sug­ges­tions for arti­cles are always wel­come. Feel free to send sug­ges­tions and request. For infor­ma­tion on sub­mit­ting arti­cles for pub­li­ca­tion, click HERE.

WOM Editor Matt Kelley

WOM Edi­tor Matt Kelley

 

From Pete LeClair

Pete LeClairPete LeClair’s Jarrel

Pete LeClair’s project this issue fea­tures that great swa­bie: Jer­rel

Jarrelmaster

Jer­rel

 

Pete LeClair is a well-known carv­er and teacher, author of three carv­ing books and a mem­ber of the Car­i­ca­ture Carvers of Amer­i­ca. You may learn more about Pete at his page on the CCA web site. Be sure to tour the rest of the CCA pages when you have a moment. In addi­tion, you may email Pete at pet­ele­clair AT comcast.net. Pho­tos copy­right 2001 — 2012 by Pete LeClair.

This pat­tern may be copied for indi­vid­ual use only; repro­duc­tion for resale is pro­hib­it­ed with­out express writ­ten permission.

From “Ol’ Don’s” Drawing Table

OlDonFrom “Ol’ Don’s” Drawing Table

Ol’ Don” Burgdorf con­tin­ues his reg­u­lar series of pat­terns for WOM with this bonus pat­tern - The West.

To print the pat­tern, click here; the pat­tern will open in a new win­dow, and should print on 8.5 x 11 paper. For Print­ing Hints, click here.

The-West

Ol’ Don” Burgdorf is a carv­er and artist from Hohen­wald, TN. Don’s fea­ture “Doo­dles ‘n Notes for Carvin’ Folks” appears reg­u­lar­ly in Chip Chats, and his pat­terns are now found in each issue of WOM and Carv­ing Mag­a­zine. He has sev­er­al pat­tern port­fo­lios on a vari­ety of sub­jects avail­able for down­load from his web­site. For infor­ma­tion about the port­fo­lios and oth­er cus­tom ser­vices Don pro­vides carvers, click here. Some of Don’s “Chat­ter­ing Chip­pers” pat­terns can also be seen at the Wood­carver’s Porch pat­tern page.

Ol’ Don now has rough­outs avail­able for some of his pat­terns. You are invit­ed to vis­it Ol’ Don’s home page, or email him at ol’­don AT artofdon.com

Copy­right 2011–2012 “Ol’ Don” Burgdorf. This Pat­tern may be copied for indi­vid­ual use; repro­duc­tion for resale is pro­hib­it­ed with­out express writ­ten permission.

From “Ol’ Don’s” Drawing Table

OlDonFrom “Ol’ Don’s” Drawing Table

Ol’ Don” Burgdorf con­tin­ues his reg­u­lar series of pat­terns for WOM with It’s gonna be one of those days.

To print the pat­tern, click here; the pat­tern will open in a new win­dow, and should print on 8.5 x 11 paper. For Print­ing Hints, click here.

It's-Gonna-Be-A-Bad-Day

Ol’ Don” Burgdorf is a carv­er and artist from Hohen­wald, TN. Don’s fea­ture “Doo­dles ‘n Notes for Carvin’ Folks” appears reg­u­lar­ly in Chip Chats, and his pat­terns are now found in each issue of WOM and Carv­ing Mag­a­zine. He has sev­er­al pat­tern port­fo­lios on a vari­ety of sub­jects avail­able for down­load from his web­site. For infor­ma­tion about the port­fo­lios and oth­er cus­tom ser­vices Don pro­vides carvers, click here. Some of Don’s “Chat­ter­ing Chip­pers” pat­terns can also be seen at the Wood­carver’s Porch pat­tern page.

Ol’ Don now has rough­outs avail­able for some of his pat­terns. You are invit­ed to vis­it Ol’ Don’s home page, or email him at ol’­don AT artofdon.com

Copy­right 2011–2012 “Ol’ Don” Burgdorf. This Pat­tern may be copied for indi­vid­ual use; repro­duc­tion for resale is pro­hib­it­ed with­out express writ­ten permission.

Finding And Collecting Cottonwood Bark, Part 3

Find­ing and Col­lect­ing Cot­ton­wood Bark

By Alex Bisso

Part 3 — Tools for Col­lect­ing and Cleaning

 

I use a num­ber to tools and equip­ment to safe­ly col­lect and process bark:

Gloves – The out­er crust on cot­ton­wood bark can be very hard and abra­sive and good gloves are impor­tant to avoid dam­age to your hands.  What­ev­er gloves you use, they are like­ly to wear out quick­ly if you han­dle a lot of bark.  Heavy cloth work gloves seem to hold up fair­ly well and are far supe­ri­or to gloves made of soft leather.  Soft leather gloves feel good but are quick­ly ruined when han­dling bark.  Stiff leather work gloves hold up for quite a while before holes are worn in the fin­ger tips.  One of my favorite type of gloves is a woven mesh glove that has a ribbed rub­ber coat­ing on the palms and fin­gers.  These are very com­fort­able, espe­cial­ly in warm weath­er, and wear sur­pris­ing­ly well.

16-toolsGlovessm

Gloves Used To Col­lect Bark

Flat pry-bar and medi­um sized crow­bar – My main tool for remov­ing bark from a dead tree is a flat pry-bar.  Some­times how­ev­er it will not pry the bark far enough from the tree to free it and then the thick­er crow­bar comes in handy.  The crow­bar also can serve as a ham­mer to dri­ve the edge of the pry-bar into a bark crack to get it deep enough under the bark so it can be pried off.  Although I do most of the bark clean­ing at home, the flat end of the pry-bar is use­ful for remov­ing a lot crud from the back of the bark in the field.

Exten­sion lad­der and/or pole – I have found that these come in very handy when you find that there is good bark that is loose­ly attached to a stand­ing tree and high­er up the tree than you can reach.  This can be a haz­ardous oper­a­tion so it is impor­tant to posi­tion your­self and/or the lad­der behind and to the side of the area of bark that you plan to pry or push off the tree.  Some­times when you push on a piece of bark you just knock of that piece, but some­times when you push on a piece a huge slab (could be 2′ wide x 10′ tall or more) comes crash­ing down so you have to be care­ful.  Wear­ing a hard hat while doing this is also a good idea.

18-ToolsReachsm

Lad­der and Long Pole

 Tools for trans­port­ing bark out of the woods – My favorite tool for this is a light­weight but strong, wide, shal­low gar­den cart as it allows me to haul a very large amount of bark through fair­ly rough ter­rain.  I fill the low­er part of the cart with small­er pieces which fit there and then start lay­ing larg­er pieces length­wise over the front and back edges of the cart.  I typ­i­cal­ly stack the bark on the cart in this man­ner up to 2.5 feet over the top edge of the cart.  Then I use sev­er­al bungee cords hooked under the edge of the cart and over the bark to the oth­er side to hold the bark in place dur­ing trans­port.  I also have a heavy can­vas army duf­fle bag with shoul­der straps that I like to wear when hik­ing through an area look­ing for sources.  This allows me to pack some select pieces out if I find any­thing good.  I have also used this to pack out bark from loca­tions that were just too hard to get to with a cart.  If I find some real­ly good bark a long way from rea­son­able access I some­times bring a rigid back­pack frame to the loca­tion to pack bark.  The one I have has a frame at the bot­tom that makes sort of a shelf that sup­ports the bark.  To load it, I lay the back­pack frame on the ground, back up, and care­ful­ly lay the best pieces of bark across the pack, stack­ing on it as many as I think I can han­dle.  Then I use both bungee cords and nylon straps to secure the bark to the frame.  To get it on my back I nor­mal­ly have to hoist the bot­tom of the frame up on a stump or log to hold it up as I get the straps over my shoul­ders.  Some years ago I used to do a lot of this but as I have got­ten old­er I find it eas­i­er to accept that some bark is just too hard to get out to be worth collecting.

15-toolsCollect&haulsm

Cart, back­pack and duf­fle bag used to haul out bark

 Get­ting it home – a pick­up truck would be nice but since I do not have one I haul my bark either in the back and on top of my Chevy blaz­er or in a 4′ x 8′ x 2′ sides util­i­ty trail­er.  Many times the loca­tions where I find good bark are quite far, up to 150 miles, from where I live.  I do not mind going that far if I have locat­ed a real­ly good bark source in an area that far away (usu­al­ly done on a trip for oth­er pur­pos­es) but when I do go to col­lect it I want to get as much as I can at a time so the Blaz­er and util­i­ty trail­er are essen­tial tools for me.

Bark Clean­ing Tools – Most bark has lots of shred­ded cam­bi­um lay­er mate­r­i­al and oth­er crude on the back side that needs to be removed and a lot of bark is also dirty on the out­side and should be cleaned before stor­age and use.  I do some clean­ing of dirt and waste mate­r­i­al off the back of the bark in the field with the wide, flat edge of the pry-bar but most is done at home.  If the weath­er is warm enough, I usu­al­ly lay all of the bark that appears to be real­ly dirty out on the grass in my yard and spray it with a hose and jet noz­zle.  Bark pieces knocked from stand­ing trees usu­al­ly does not require this step.   After a day or two for dry­ing I move the bark to a loca­tion where I clean any loose mate­r­i­al from the back side.   My essen­tial tool for this is a machete or bolo knife (and gloves of course).  I have a cou­ple of bolo/machete type knives that I got on e‑bay that are ide­al for the job because the cut­ting edge of the blade is curved such that it fits in the inward curve on the back of the bark.  While I am doing this I also slice off any bark from the front that is bad­ly delam­i­nat­ing and not sol­id enough for carving.

This year there was exten­sive flood­ing along the rivers and lots of bark was coat­ed with a thick lay­er of silt.  Although I hosed bark more thor­ough­ly than usu­al, when clean­ing the back of it I noticed that it was still quite dirty and will need fur­ther clean­ing before carving/finishing.  This is some­thing I rec­om­mend be done with each piece of bark before it is carved and a good way to do it is in the sink or tub with liq­uid soap and a scrub brush.  This will not hurt the bark and will make it eas­i­er to carve and fin­ish.  When it is too cold to water blast the bark I some­times lay it out on the lawn and just sweep it with a broom – one pass of sweep­ing from each direc­tion.  I have also found a hand brush or whisk broom to be use­ful to clean cob­webs and dust off pieces of bark as I select them for use or sale.

14-toolsCleansm

Bark clean­ing tools

Com­ing up in Part 4 — Bark Clean­ing and Storage

 

Alex Bisso with a Cottonwood Monarch.

Alex Bis­so with a Cot­ton­wood Monarch.

 

Alex Bis­so with a Cot­ton­wood Monarch.

Alex Bis­so is a wood­carv­er, and col­lec­tor and sell­er of cot­ton­wood bark and oth­er found wood. To view some of Alex’s carv­ings and cot­ton­wood bark sup­ply at Be So Good Wood, click HERE.

The One Tree Project

The One Tree Project

By Dan Blair

(Edi­tor’s Note — A ver­sion of this arti­cle orig­i­nal­ly appeared on the FC2 List.)

Ever heard of the One Tree project?  If you do an inter­net search on it, you will prob­a­bly be as amazed as I was to see that it is much more than just a local activ­i­ty.  In fact, it has grown to become almost a world-wide endeav­or.  I was impressed to see how many places around the globe have been (or are cur­rent­ly) part of the pro­gram.  There is a lot to read about it online, and I admit I haven’t tak­en much time to enlight­en myself with all there is to know about it.

Winter Phase Rainbow:Steelhead Trout03

Win­ter Phase Rain­bow Pattern

I first became curi­ous about the One Tree project when I was invit­ed to take part in a com­pa­ra­ble project here in south-cen­tral Alas­ka.  The gist of the idea is to take just one tree and see how many dif­fer­ent items can be craft­ed from it.  In the case of the One Tree  project I joined, the tree was a tall birch tree that had to be removed to make way for the widen­ing and recon­struc­tion of a road.  I signed up and asked for a two foot + sec­tion of the trunk that is rough­ly 12 inch­es in diam­e­ter.  From the 30″ log they gave me, I split off most of one side to make myself a flat sur­face onto which I could trace the pat­tern for a 24″ win­ter phase rainbow/steelhead trout.  I intend­ed to cut out the trac­ing on my band­saw and then rough out the rest of the fish with the Lancelot Carv­er in my Maki­ta 4″ grinder.  OOPS!  Bummer!

Wet wood does not band­saw well.  Even though I had been dry­ing this piece for five months or more, it was still quite wet inside.  Long sto­ry short, the blade bound up in the soft build-up of wet saw dust and.…  “WHAM!!!!”  Bro­ken blade.  I could have shut down and head­ed for Sears for a new blade, but that was a 10 mile round trip tak­ing more time than I thought I had to spare.  Instead, I just attacked what was left with my Maki­ta and that rotary chain­saw carv­ing tool.

After rough­ing out the shape and basic fea­tures of the fish, I began the sand­ing process by using disc sanders in my Fore­dom tool.  Much of the sand­ing gets done that way when I am work­ing on the big­ger pieces.  And after that, I refine the sand­ing by switch­ing to my soft-sander, the drum with “soft” foam rub­ber back­ing which can accept flat sand­pa­per in just about any grit you choose, oth­er than the very coars­est sort.  (I most com­mon­ly use 80 and 120 grit.)

Winter Phase Rainbow:Steelhead Trout02

Win­ter Phase Rainbow

To give you a bet­ter pic­ture of just what it is that I was carv­ing, imag­ine the log stand­ing upright on its widest end.   Con­sid­er that as a stump that a beaver, a log­ger, or the wind took down, and on which there is still a large spear of wood pro­trud­ing sky­ward.  Then pre­tend you have caught a BIG tro­phy trout and are look­ing for the ide­al way to dis­play it for pic­tures before tak­ing it home.  *!!!!*  Why not hang it, head up, from the top end of that snag?  Hey!  That works for me.  And so I did.

The next process was to make the birch stump look weath­ered.  For that, I went back to the Maki­ta with the chain­saw and shaped the spear to a point and roughed in the creas­es and cracks that one would expect to see on weath­ered wood.  Before I fin­ished the look of old wood on the upright por­tion, I primed and air­brushed the fish the way I nor­mal would have except that I had to mask off the area that was not fish before the paint­ing began.  Once the fish itself was paint­ed, I could use a con­ven­tion­al brush to add the col­ors com­mon to old and weath­ered drift­wood, etc.  It worked!

Winter Phase Rainbow:Steelhead Trout01

Win­ter Phase Rain­bow Finished!

Here is the fin­ished carv­ing.  I hope the results will encour­age a lot more foks to get active­ly involved in their own One Tree project.  I high­ly rec­om­mend it to all of you in hopes that you will encour­age your own carv­ing clubs and orga­ni­za­tions to look into hav­ing a One Tree project of your own at your next big get togeth­er.  I think it is a great idea and numer­ous One Tree projects around the world seem to agree.  Check it out and see if you do too.

Good luck and good carvin’.…

Dan B ~ FC2 founder/moderator

 

Dan Blair is founder and a mod­er­a­tor of the Fish Carv­ing 2 (FC2) Yahoo group.  See more of Dan’s instruc­tion, tips and pho­tos at Fish Carv­ing A2Z, and Fish Alas­ka, oth­er Yahoo groups

Artistry in Wood 2011 Gallery

Artistry In Wood 2011 Gallery

Pho­tos by Marc Featherly

Click each of the fol­low­ing links to vis­it the var­i­ous Gallery pages — when com­plete, close the gallery win­dow to return here

AIW 2011 Gallery Page One Link

AIW 2011 Gallery Page Two Link

AIW 2011 Gallery Page Three Link

AIW 2011 Gallery Page Four Link

AIW 2011 Gallery Page Five Link

Artistry in Wood 2011

Artistry In Wood 2011

A MEMORY REVISITED


by Don­ald K. Mertz

The 2011 Artistry in Wood Show, Day­ton, Ohio is now a dis­tant mem­o­ry.  Like all mem­o­ries that stick in our minds, it is one to be revis­it­ed again and again.  The details of the mem­o­ry may have fad­ed because of being over­whelmed with 225 exhibitors fill­ing over 300 dis­play booths dis­play­ing wood carv­ings and wood work­ing projects.  Vis­it­ing the 2012 Artistry in Wood Show Novem­ber 10 and 11 will refresh the mem­o­ry and make new memories.

Since 1981 AIW has grown into the nation’s pre­mier show­case for art in wood, be it carv­ing or wood­work­ing. 4,800 vis­i­tors attend­ed the 2011 show to be amazed and enthralled with the cre­ativ­i­ty epit­o­mized in the great vari­ety of wood sculp­ture and fine wood­work­ing projects.

AIW stays true to its mis­sion of pro­vid­ing a venue for wood­carvers to show­case their cre­ativ­i­ty in an aes­thet­ic and wel­com­ing exhi­bi­tion hall as well as hav­ing top notch carv­ings entered into com­pe­ti­tion. Some of the best carv­ings one will see dur­ing the year are show­cased at Day­ton by carvers of mer­it from 22 states and Cana­da.  Most carv­ings on dis­play are also for sale to the col­lec­tor and gift giv­er who are look­ing for that one of a kind work of art. Also at the venue are top qual­i­ty ven­dors of carv­ing sup­plies, tools, wood and books to meet every carver’s need.

Entries into com­pe­ti­tion in both the wood­work­ing and wood­carv­ing divi­sions were not only beau­ti­ful works of art but were of top qual­i­ty.  The judges had their work cut out for them with mul­ti­ple cat­e­gories con­tain­ing sev­er­al class­es in each cat­e­go­ry to eval­u­ate with thor­ough aes­thet­ic and tech­ni­cal scruti­ny.  Judges in Wood­work­ing divi­sion were Roger Hor­nung, Jim McCann and Lary Sanders. Wood­carv­ing divi­sion judges were Vic Hood, Stu Mar­tin and Wayne Shin­lever. 
Win­ners in the Best of Show in Wood­carv­ing Divi­sion were:

  • Fred Zavadil (Wind­sor, Ontario, Cana­da), First
  • Ter­ry Brash­er (Peters­burg, TN), Second
  • Sandy Cza­j­ka (Troy, OH), Third

In the Wood­work­ing Divi­sion Best of Show win­ners were:

  • Jay Kinsinger (Cedarville, OH), First
  • Jim Dupler (Indi­anapo­lis, IN), Second
  • Richard Reese (Cen­ter­ville, OH), Third

Free Demon­stra­tions occurred both Sat­ur­day and Sun­day to pro­vide instruc­tion­al infor­ma­tion ben­e­fi­cial to carvers and wood­work­ers.  Demon­stra­tions were pre­sent­ed by Cheryl Gus­tat­son, Jack Miller, Floyd Rhadi­gan, Dave Arndt and Scott Phillips (long­time friend and sup­port­er of AIW).

Wood­carv­ing Illus­trat­ed host­ed in their Spit-N-Whit­tle booth a num­ber of one hour demon­stra­tions by Tom Hin­des, Floyd Rhadi­gan, Rick Jensen, Jim Willis, Jan Oege­ma, Bruce Nicholas, Vic Hood, Ter­ry Brash­er, Bruce Henn, Bob Stadt­lander, Don Wor­ley, Bob Bier­mann, Desiree Hajny and Don Mert.

As impor­tant as the carv­ing aspect is for the show, even of greater impor­tance is a char­i­ta­ble dona­tion of $5,000 to Unit­ed Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Ser­vices, which to date after thir­ty shows totals $120,000. Added this year was a $500 gift to Part­ners Against Crime.

Next in impor­tance seems to be recog­ni­tion one carv­er each year with the Ron Ryan Award, announced dur­ing the Sat­ur­day night banque.  The 2011 recip­i­ent was Lynn Doughty of Jay, Okla­homa. The Ron Ryan Award hon­ors some­one each year who embod­ies the encour­age­ment and advance­ment of wood­carv­ing as Ron Ryan did in his life­time.  The ban­quet itself is like a fam­i­ly reunion of carv­ing friends who gath­er after a fun-filled day of meet­ing thou­sands of vis­i­tors to enjoy a meal, share in a raf­fle of choice donat­ed gifts, and every ban­quet par­tic­i­pant receives a donat­ed door prize.

West­ern Ohio Wood­work­ers host­ed a children’s hands-on work­shop in which 260 chil­dren made over 450 projects from kits sup­plied by the WOW mem­ber­ship. Smiles were on children’s faces as they car­ried home a wood project they put togeth­er with the help of WOW mem­bers.  More impor­tant­ly, each child cre­at­ed in their hearts of mem­o­ry that will hope­ful­ly launch each child into a life­long pas­sion for mak­ing things with their own hands. Dur­ing AIW’s two day show, mem­bers of WOW were also mak­ing toys for kids who are patients at Children’s Hos­pi­tal.  This “Smile a Minute” activ­i­ty assem­bled 287 toys that put smiles on chil­dren in the hospital.

The Spe­cial Exhib­it of high end wood­en trucks, trac­tors and heavy equip­ment was cre­at­ed by Scott Hamil­ton who gra­cious­ly shared his astound­ing dis­play to the amaze­ment of exhi­bi­tion visitors.

Revis­it the AIW mem­o­ry by vis­it­ing the www.daytoncarvers.com home­page which con­tains a video about the 2011 Show pro­duced by web­mas­ter Car­ole Williams. There is anoth­er two part video pre­sent­ed by Wood­craft that can be found on the “Artistry in Wood” Page.  Scott Phillips of The Amer­i­can Wood­shop PBS pro­gram and long­time sup­port­er and friend of AIW nar­rat­ed the video pro­vid­ed by Wood­craft.  Wood­craft also donat­ed a gen­er­ous raf­fle prize at the banquet.