In My "Spare" Time: February 2020

Year 20, Week 01, Day One (week 1043)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
01-18-20 Saturday

This week is the celebration of my starting wood working back in January 17, 2000. This year it is on Friday, while in 2000, it was on Saturday.

Before the year of 2000, I was writing stories and building scale houses for a model railroad layout. Dad kept asking me to take up carving, and I had no interest at the time. One day I decided to try it. I borrowed one of his knives and a piece of wood and carved a man with his arms down his side. The brim of the hat was supposed to go all the way around, but kept breaking. It ended up looking like Charles De Gaulle, a famous French leader near that time.
Dad had gone through a period in learning to carve where you could see the shape of the block of wood he started with, as he was doing more like relief carving on all surfaces rather than shaping. I had made the decision that I would dig deep into the wood with my carvings.
Dad did a carving style popular at the time where you have tall cowboys, their legs straight and arms at the side. The head was made separately and stuck on, turned to a different directions. I wanted the appearance of movement from the beginning, legs bent, arms crossing the body, in almost any position except straight.
Dad had a really good way to teach me carving. I would finish a carving and he would pat me on the head and tell me to do another, is the best way to describe it. Other than having his stuff as examples and showing me how to make my own knives, Dad really never taught me how to carve.
It was not until the last couple years of his life that I saw how good a carver he really was. He had taken classes at national symposiums around the country from some of the best carvers in the world.
He made some clay platters with 3D faces of my nieces and nephews. He had planned on using them to go-by for some carvings, though that never happened. The faces were instantly recognizable as to who they were. On the other hand, with my fairy carvings, I as lucky they looked female.
In 2003, I got a lathe and that took up a lot of my carving time. I would turn for many weeks, then carve for many weeks. Each time I swapped, it felt like I was returning to an old friend. In later years, I have done more turning that carving, though I did a series of vases with faces carved into them, usually using the dremel for that carving. Most years I have carved only Christmas ornaments.
In my carving, I concentrated on the knife. I avoided chisels because you had to have so many of them to do anything and you also had to know when to use each one. I figured if I learned the knife I would fully understand when it just would not do the job. I did find that in some cases a chisel would solve a few of my carving problems.
Dad was in a carving club for retirees and one guy would come in with a different, brand new, chisel every time they met. I concluded that they had the belief that if they had the right chisel, it would allow the figure to come out of the wood, rather than the actual act of carving creating the figure. Many of the people there were there more for the social atmosphere than to do the work or learning. That is also why I decided to concentrate on the knife. I had to get results from one tool and only one.
I have since also used the dremel or other power for much of my carvings. I am not a purist, where “all work must be by hand” or “Only use specific tools.” I worked from the idea that whatever gets the job done is to be used, though my first thought is the knife.

Wood working as a hobby has been satisfying, even when something was not going right. I am glad I learned how to do it.

Since September, my schedule changed and I ran out of time to write my blog posts. I was working in wood, but just unable to have the time to post about my activities. In December, I ran into a chain of somewhat interrelated health problems and am just now getting over them. During that period, I was accomplishing just a little, to absolutely nothing. As you can see by the date this note is posted, I am still way behind.

This year, I worked hard on getting some ornaments made. Last year, After Christmas, I had started some Steam engines and some Balloons. This year I made more of them and got them ready.
I decided I could make some hearts very easily. I could do them on a stick, getting the heart shape and then slicing them off into individual hearts. The first ones was out of a Two by two. I cut one corner off about half way down, then used my knife and dremmel to form the center dip of the heart and the two rounded upper lobes. I sliced them off at twice the thickness they should have been. Later I sliced each of those in half, losing a couple in the process. I later painted them and lettered them with peace, love, joy, hope, before I dangled a pair of them from the ends of a shaft. The results were good. I then took a three by three and did the same process of shaping and then cutting. I painted and lettered them with part of a biblical phrase. Being big, they are not as great an ornament.
I used a similar process to make some books. I carved the edges in to give it a cover, and cut a groove dead center across it and curved the pages into the groove. I also shaped the back of the book to show a spline. On the back of the book, I lettered “the greatest story ever told.” On the inside, I put “joy to the world” “peace on earth.”
Over the past 4 years, I have attempted to come up with a way to make rocking horses. This year, I made a serious effort. I cut them out of two by fours, and angle cut the sides, hollowed out between the legs and rockers, and otherwise tried to shape them. There is a difference between a “rocking dog” and a “rocking horse” and making that difference show is harder than it looks. I got to one point and simply gave up. I painted them and let them go at that. They are not horrible but they are also not spectacular. I know I could do better but it was just not in the cards this year.
The Christmas Office party came and I had to make some cards. The night before, I came up with a design idea. I painted it that night, and the day of the party, I used a pen to letter and finish the painting. They were horrible but they did the job. I had a fireplace with stockings on one side, and a teddy bear on the other.
I then had time to do the second batch of cards and took a little more time. I had a window on one side and a teddy bear on the other, but I had more time to color and shade the bear. I did not care for the results, but I did get them done in time for Christmas eve.

Finally, I had an idea to make some boats. I had a few ideas of how to make it. One, I cut the sides on an angle and on the other, I cut the two by two to remove one corner. Neither design was perfect, but it showed the concept would work. I now see there are ways to make them better, One is to carve the top deck. Another is to have some straight at the top near the deck. Also two masts look better than just one. When I get around to making more, they will look a lot better. I took some card stock and painted it white and cut it so it was like a triangle sail on both sides of the mast. I can do a really good job on these when I get back to them.

In all, I started my ornaments back in October and still had to rush in late November when the time to have them ready caught up with me. It was a successful period of time, though.

I hope to soon get back into woodworking. I have some stuff to do around home before I get to work wood, and I am not ready to start them.

We shall see how this year goes.

The birds in the bottom right were a test idea for ornaments. I might still make them, but they were too hard to make this year.

Upper right was some natural edged goblets and a pumpkin I made during this time. the pumpkin started as an experiment to make a ball. once that worked, I decided to make it a pumpkin. Later I tried to hollow it out and messed up.