Post #168765 by SCTikiShack on Wed, Jun 29, 2005 4:04 PM

For those who sell their work, we should consider ourselves lucky being tiki artists. It is easy to sell something that people want and currently it seems like there is a great demand for tiki stuff. Customers will often wait months even years to get their orders and they don't balk. I guess it is bad to rush the artist. Thank god many clients feel this way.

However, not all customers are easy to satisfy. Recently I got an e-mail from a lady in So-Cal requesting a rush delivery. She needed one in two months as a present to her husband. Since I have a rather large backlog and time is scarce, this was almost an impossible task. Fortunately, I was in the process of making one for a repeat customer that would fit her needs perfectly. I knew its rightful owner wasn't in a rush and wouldn't mind waiting another six months.

This is the tiki that I had in mind for her. Unfortunately, she wasn't into the tongue. Bummer, now I had to start over from scratch and bust some ass.

As a direct result the poor animals up in the mountains had to put up with several hours of extreme chainsawing and generator fumes. Below is what my creation looked like after the chainsawing stage. I sent an image to its potential new care takers, but the purchaser still wasn't sure if she wanted it. This person was a little worried about how she was going to raise enough money, before delivery time, and keep it a secret from her husband.

After sanding away until my fingers were numb, the tiki below is starting to look up to par.

Now finally, she decided to buy and sent me a check. I was stoked because I had neither the desire or the time to create her another one from scratch. However, she had one more request, that I carve a heart with their names in it; written in Hawaiian. Having gone through business school it was always drilled into me that you have to give customers what they want,to be successful, so I did it. To respect the privacy of this individual there will not be a picture of this, but I think that it came out great.

Below, you will see the finished product. This bad boy stands around 5 ft tall and is sealed with a marine varnish/ polyeurathane combo. It is rather unstable, due to its less than small diameter. I am relived that this tiki is going to be adopted to a good home. They are going to give him(her) a killer vantage point atop their backyard waterfall.

Currently, I am in the process of making a tiki coffee table using three small tikis connected at the base with a beautiful redwood burl. I will post some pictures after I get back from vacation. Thank you for reading my legnthy topic. I may not be able to reply to anyone until July 20th, so please don't think that I'm a rude jerk.

Will