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 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

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 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