Post #229709 by Loki on Mon, May 1, 2006 5:19 AM

New and finished works.

StumpGrinder and I both needed some time away from tiki to refresh our creative sides. We were thinking so much about what the next tiki project would be that we kept coming up blank. We decided instead to carve wood spirits. I know, they are not tiki, but it did get the creative juices flowing and they were FUN to carve. We both enjoyed it immensely. It also allowed us to work in more detail with the hook knife, and recip carver.

My wood spirit is about 8.5 inches made of Florida mahogany. I used flexcut gouges and V's in a palm chisel handle and a hook knife blade. Spent about 6 hours total and i'm really happy with how he turned out. Again, its not tiki, but it really put a smile on my face to carve him. The focus was on detail and facial features using small tools.

StumpGrinder made a walking stick out of a yet to be identified wood from a felled Wilma tree. We saved them from back in October and are finally getting around to using them. She used the recip carver and the hook knife.

Here is my guy all stained and ready to try out for the next Lord of the Rings movie...i didnt have the heart to tell him they were all finished filming years ago.

Stumpgrinder finished the tongue tiki. It really looks great and these pics just dont show how nice it is. The ficus wood has some nice spalding which gives it a deep and textured look. Again, we have been impressed at how nice ficus carves. It has very minimal checking and finished great.

I have finally gotten around to a project I've wanted to tackle for a long time. I'll just let you all watch what it turns out to be. Only one of you knows I'm doing it and I hope I do it justice to the designer. Any guesses?

Again, thanks for taking your time and visiting. Sorry about the non tiki, but sometimes you just have to work outside the box. Aloha for now.