Post #227922 by Bay Park Buzzy on Fri, Apr 21, 2006 3:51 PM

The Story of Tiki #14 or more appropriately titled "Buzzy Fights Back: The Story of How Buzzy is Motivated in His Carving by The UFC.(In this chapter, I try to justify the continuance of the mentioning of the UFC on my thread by rhetorically providing examples of how the UFC and carving are inextricably entwined with one another within my addled brain. I'll show a bunch of pictures too, so if you do not care about the UFC, scroll down until you see a picture of three logs. By this point in the chapter, I will have shifted from fighting to carving. Everyone else, read on!

Last Saturday, Heavyweight Tim Sylvia beat Andrei Arlovski for the title. The last time these two met, Sylvia lasted less than a minute. After avenging his previous loss, he immediately called for a rubber match between the two, and then he called out former champion Frank Mir. Had Mir not recently lost to Cruz, he definitely would have faced Sylvia next. After Sylvia ruins Monson(my prediction) hopefully Mir will have beaten anyone, so that Sylvia-Mir 2 becomes a reality. Sylvia's desire to overcome his previous defeats caused me some further reflection on this matter. I think back to other great champions and their motivations. After Light Heavyweight Chuck Liddell beat Randy Couture in their second fight, he immediately called out Rampage Jackson. Rampage is the only fighter to have beaten Liddell and not had him return the favor later on.(on Rampage's website, he said he's signing on with the UFC cause that's where the $ is. $ and Liddell)Liddell wanted to remove the only black mark on his record after avenging his only other losses to Horn and Couture. Welterweight champion Matt Hughes was disappointed recently when George St Pierre beat BJ Penn. He would have rather faced Penn, he said, because he already beat GSP and had nothing to prove. His main concern was beating someone who had previously beaten him. All these champs, the best in the business, want to right their previous mistakes. They draw upon it for motivation and are inspired to better themselves. Going into each loss, I'm sure that they believed fully that they would win. They would have to. At that level you have to think that you are the best, or at least capable of being the best, to ever have a shot at actually being the best. I never heard a champion say before a fight, " I'm actually not ready for tonight and I don't like my chances, but I'm gonna go out there and hopefully get lucky and somehow win."
Some day I want to be a champion. A champion carver. Right now I'm working my way up through the circuit. I've already had a couple of losses early on, but I've learned from them, become better from them, and have moved beyond them. Well, actually, there was one fight that I previously lost and want a rematch. I feel like tiki #5 was a battle in which I lost. It did not turn out the way I wanted it to and I now wanted to make it right. To one day become a champion, I must do this now.
Tiki #5 was done on a bad log and it was the first time in my life that I had ever even touched a chisel before. I had no technique or instruction at all. I just hacked into it. Looking at it, I noticed several big mistakes that I couldn't believe I did not notice while in the process of making it. The most obvious error was this huge gap in the teeth where I measured incorrectly. If it isn't drawn right, it will not be carved right. You do not become the champ by luck; you need to work, hard, to become the champ. Here is my work.
It started with a Mexican Fan Palm, 2’2” tall, 5 1/2” in diameter.
I used the one in the middle

Here it is drawn out. I changed the teeth on this one because I liked the bigger tooth look

Details of how well I draw it out before carving:

I carved this one in the garage, at night. Here it is I after one layer of removal. The line carved below the eye will show the highest point of the cheek and face.

I taper it down by hand with a chisel from this point to the mouth

I was still carving the whole piece shallow first, top to bottom.

Then I would go back and redo the whole thing deeper

Here are a couple close ups of the grain of the wood.

I use the 1” flat chisel and scrape it by hand this smooth

It takes very little sanding to get this surface perfectly smooth

I did the eyes last. Here it is close to being done

This looks good at this point. The planer lines and any other flaws will be taken care of when I sand it.

I find that it is easier to remove these last fibers with a sander when it is drier. If I take them out now, the sander would clog with damp material. Or trying to remove them with a blade may leave a scratch that you will have to sand out later anyway .I do not have a problem leaving them a little rough like this. It will look fine after sanding;it just looks rough now

Sanding will fix all these tool marks quickly and easily later on

Finally, here it is a few weeks later, sanded and stained

I think I improved this one on this attempt a great deal from my first attempt. I was happy after it was done because it looked so much cleaner and better balanced than my first try. This was my first visible evidence of how much better I had become since then. Just wait until the rubber match to follow(tiki #29). Hint: I win again!

[ Edited by: Bay Park Buzzy 2006-04-21 16:14 ]

[ Edited by: Bay Park Buzzy 2006-04-21 16:22 ]