Susan Alexander’s “Let’s Talk Carving” Issue 8

  This Ain’t Your Grandmother’s Bird­house!

Please refer to and fol­low all man­u­fac­tur­ers’ direc­tions.

What I love about wood­carv­ing is that you nev­er know where it will take you – geo­graph­i­cal­ly, phys­i­cal­ly, philo­soph­i­cal­ly, or sculp­tural­ly. There will always be some­thing, around the next bend, that you nev­er could even imag­ine.

While attend­ing Rick Jensen’s bark pow­er carv­ing class, at Gene Webb’s School of Wood­carv­ing, I saw a carv­er, in the back row, qui­et­ly carv­ing a mon­strous piece of bark. His name was Howard L. Atwood.

Howard hails from Asheville, North Car­oli­na and has been carv­ing since 2008. His bird­hous­es have been con­sis­tent award-win­ners. One of his entries won a first prize of $1,000, plus two-nights at a bed and break­fast, includ­ing din­ner! Howard told me his bark carv­ings have been great­ly influ­enced by Carv­ing Illustrated’s 2014 Carv­er of the Year, Rick Jensen. After watch­ing Rick’s DVD, Carv­ing Mag­i­cal Tree Hous­es, Howard decid­ed to take Rick’s bark carv­ing class. That was sev­en years ago. Howard has tak­en Rick’s class every year since then.

Rick Jensen’s DVD, “Carv­ing Mag­i­cal Tree Hous­es”

The size of the bark, used in these pho­tos, is approx­i­mate­ly 24” high by 20” deep and 18” wide. Rick Jensen glued up more than 8 indi­vid­ual pieces of bark for Howard’s bird­house.

One of Howard Atwood’s “Ulti­mate Bird­house”

It’s those per­fect cir­cu­lar open­ings that caught my atten­tion.

The unique roof line brings your eye to the nest.

The side view shows per­fect pro­por­tions to the sculp­ture.

The nest shows Howard’s atten­tion to detail.

What intrigued me, beyond the beau­ty and grace of these bird­hous­es, were the per­fect­ly round open­ings. How did Howard cre­ate them with­out leav­ing that lit­tle hole in the wood that comes with a Forstner bit? Howard advised that he mod­i­fied his Forstner. First he went to his bench grinder to remove the point, and then he con­tin­ued to low­er the point until it was flush, using the two stone bits pic­tured. Good think­ing, Howard!

Mod­i­fied Forstner Bits — Before and After

High Speed Carv­er & Stones Used on Forstner Bits

You can view more of Howard’s carv­ings by vis­it­ing his web­site: www.AandAcrafts.com.

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A quick reminder:

 2015 Inter­na­tion­al Wood­carvers Con­gress
Sec­ond full week in June
Jack­son Coun­ty Fair­grounds
1212 E Quar­ry Street
Maquoke­ta, IA 52060
www.awcltd.org
Ques­tions: Lar­ry Yud­is: 563.676.8264
Car­ol Yud­is: 563.505.2700

The 2015 Inter­na­tion­al Wood­carvers Con­gress is a week-long cel­e­bra­tion of the wood­carv­ing arts. Activ­i­ties dur­ing Con­gress Week include:

• Carv­ing Com­pe­ti­tion in over 85 sep­a­rate cat­e­gories
• Open to the pub­lic wood­carv­ing show – Thurs­day through Sun­day
• Edu­ca­tion­al sem­i­nars (5-day, 3-day, 2-day and 1-day class­es avail­able) that cov­er a vari­ety of carv­ing and relat­ed sub­jects, as well as sem­i­nars for the non-carv­er
• Silent Auc­tion – Sun­day after­noon
• Mas­sage Ther­a­pist avail­able through­out the week
• Annu­al Awards Ban­quet on Sat­ur­day evening
• Two-Hour Judges’ Cri­tique Ses­sion – Sat­ur­day and Sun­day after­noons
• Annu­al AWC Mem­ber­ship meet­ing

Hope to see you there!

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E-MAILS

Sub­ject: Carv­ing all 44 Pres­i­dents

I received the fol­low­ing email and pho­tos from Ron Karo, New York. Ron isn’t a carv­er, but he knows great carv­ings when he sees them. While trav­el­ing through Ten­nessee, he came upon two of Gene Webb’s Pres­i­den­tial bust carv­ings and knew he had to have 42 more. I couldn’t share all the pho­tos Ron sent me, but if you click on the Gene Webb’s School of Wood­carv­ing link that should be locat­ed bot­tom right of this col­umn, you can see all of 44 of the pres­i­dents.

Here is Ron’s email. 

Basi­cal­ly, I’ve nev­er met Gene. We hap­pened upon his work while dri­ving through the moun­tains on our way to Dal­las.

There we found [and pur­chased] the two orig­i­nal pres­i­den­tial carv­ings of Oba­ma and Bush Jr… Upon our return to upstate NY, we con­tact­ed Gene about carv­ing all the pres­i­dents. He agreed. Over the next two years we exchanged pho­tos, car­toons, sculp­tures and his­tor­i­cal images culled from the web and books. We used these to design the busts.  Now all are done…all 44…….one is bet­ter than the next. They are tru­ly ter­rif­ic. He [Gene] is the best carv­er alive.

Ron Karo

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Ever pick up a piece of drift wood at the water’s edge? Bet it wasn’t as large as the drift wood John Car­riere, from Aus­tralia, found on the beach dur­ing a lunchtime stroll. John’s drift­wood weighed in at over 90 lbs. Next month, I’ll share how John got the wood home (a jog­ger helped), how he treat­ed the piece and what he ulti­mate­ly decid­ed to carve.

Carvers help­ing carvers … all the way from Aus­tralia. Does it get any bet­ter than here at WOM? Real­ly??

Until then, gen­tle read­er, may your wood be plen­ti­ful and your tools stay sharp. Take care, carve lots, and always remem­ber to smile.

Peace,
Susan.