Post #355547 by harro on Thu, Jan 17, 2008 10:47 AM

Well I'm kind of based in one spot for a little while and have missed carving a lot while I've been traveling, so I brought some tools back over here from Australia and have finally started attacking some wood.

It has been quite a challenge for me trying to get everything you need just to start carving. I'm a foreigner in a big city (Buenos Aires), can hardly speak the language, don't know any other carvers, and its pretty difficult to explain what it is that I'm actually doing (carving what? tiki? what's that??). Luckily there is another TC'er Clarita who lives here and has helped me out with sharpening my chisels and is the only person I've met here who understands tiki!

So after finding some hardware shops to buy some more gear, the biggest obstacle was finding some wood to carve. The northern and southern provinces of Argentina are blessed with an abundance of natural trees and beautiful wood (something I've been taunted by each time I've traveled there), but here in the big city it's another story altogether. I finally found a little sawmill just out of town and took some offcuts from them (but only what I could be capable of carrying back on a crowded bus).

As it turns out the wood I got was Quebracho, one of the hardest woods around and apparently around 200 years old for a piece less than 6inches in diameter! But I didn't learn that until after I had started (I just thought my tools were a bit dull or that I was weak and out of practice!). Afterwards I talked to a wood carver at a open air market and he couldn't believe I was trying to carve Quebracho. Anyway I currently don't have any other wood so I am going to try to persevere with this piece I have already started.

It is a beautiful, heavy and hard wood this stuff. When freshly cut it is pure yellow in color, but after some days exposed to the air it turns a deep shade of red. Anyone know anything else about it?

Here's where i stuffed up and broke off the back of one of his feet, so that changed the tack of the carve a bit:

And here's a couple of pics showing the workspace I have in our tiny apartment in downtown Buenos Aires:

What a view!