Post #226266 by Bay Park Buzzy on Tue, Apr 11, 2006 9:43 PM

Adventure 11:
After #8, I was upset that my copy looked so little like the original. I figured in the future it would be impossible for me to successfully carve something that I can only see in my mind if I cannot replicate something that I can actually see with my eyes. For #11 I tried to do as accurate a recreation as I could from a photo in my album of tiki images. (scavenger hunt hint-not from this site this time) It was a simple design and I've seen several copies?, interpretations?, around the San Diego area. I think it's a design that an individual local tiki maker is mass producing and selling all over the county. He has another design I've seen in two different stores on opposite sides of the county. At one store he had about 18 of the exact same design done on two different size logs. One was about 3 1/2 feet tall and the large one was about 5 1/2 feet. Each log was the exact same height and diameter. Every last one was carved with the exact same design that was the exact same size. He probably uses a stencil and does them in lots, assembly line style. They did vary slightly from one another in that the eyes and details were painted in differing colors. I think that I counted 14 small ones and 4 large ones all lined up when I drove by. About two weeks later I happened by and I didn't see any of them out front. I pulled in and walked through the entire store looking to see how many tikis the store moved in the last two weeks or so. There were none anywhere. They all sold. About a month later, I drove by again and noticed another lot of tikis had arrived. It was about another twenty of the exact same one. This time there were no large ones-just three rows deep of the same replicated small one. Another month later I drove by again and there were only two left. Since then I've seen one more large load of the same tikis that are presently down to only two. If you're the guy who does these and you're reading this, get to work dude! PB only has two and the one left in Leucadia was all stuffed in back and dusty. Oh yeah, I'm also sorry Mr. Local Tiki Maker Guy that I tried copying at least two of your tikis early on in my tiki making journey. If I ever sell them and then meet you I'll pay you a licensing or franchise fee or whatever. If you want to sue me, could you please wait another year until my brother graduates from law school. Otherwise I might have to resort to mass producing attractive and popular, high volume selling tiki designs to cover my legal expenses. I'll have to ask my brother if you can copyright a tiki or if anyone has ever tried. If no one has tried yet, I call dibs on all similarities of the easter island design theme and all Mr. Local Tiki Maker Guy's designs-that way I can just sit back and wait for my royalty checks to roll in-I could probably just hire a crew to make all my copyrighted intellectual property items. Even more money for even less work-sign me up!
Anyway, if you skipped all these words before this and just want to know what the picture is- it is of #11 drawn out on a 3 1/2 foot tall, 8 inch diameter Mexican fan palm, from a design "inspired" by Mr. LTMG.

First round with the chisel. the mouth needs to be hollowed more and everything needs to be cut deeper and be defined better

Right before last going over and sanding

burned and finish sanded, no sealer yet

What I learned from this one:
#1 If I really try, I can make something look like the original
#2 Recreating isn't as much fun as reinterpreting
#3 You don't get black ash on your clean wood if you don't touch it with your dirty hands
#4 Zinsser spray on Bulls eye shellac rules for this application: I sprayed it lightly over the burned areas first so that when I applied the brush-on shellac later, it didn't get black ash on the brush and transfer ash into the clean spots.