Post #442937 by Lake Surfer on Fri, Mar 27, 2009 10:26 AM

Aloha Benjamin!

Thanks for the vote of confidence!

Though this guy nearly turned into Mega Firewood a few times yesterday!

Ben, as he takes shape he's looking more like a tiki than a mushroom.

So, on with the update...

We hit a tropical high of 56 degrees yesterday which allowed for a decent day to work on this guy. I was beat after chasing this thing around, and as I said it nearly ended up as firewood a few times.

Its a pretty crappy log, and wasn't my choice for carving wood. It came from the other half of a mini dugout canoe I carved last summer for my in-laws.

My brother in-law had this in his yard and one day came over and tossed it off his pickup in my driveway. So I was kind of stuck with it.

The first problem was the banana curve in it, the second being the structural integrity of the log. It had many bug holes in it and a few sections that had been tunneled by carpenter ants. There's also some funky sections where the grain is tight and where the grain is loose.

But I trudged on, hoping to get something out of it since it was here and was going to reside in the yard anyhow.

First was getting him to stand upright. I thought I had it last time, but had to do some more work on him. And I did some more shaping to get the form better.

With all that done, it was time to prep the surface so I had a smooth canvas to work on.

After a half hour of sanding...

Sanding done, I reached for a Sharpie and sketched out the Mega Marq.

The log still retains some water from the winter, so it has to dry a bit, but I was able to start carving the right side which was dry.
As I mentioned, the wood grain is real funky and crumbles and chips in places and carves smooth in others.

Sanding the detail right after carving does wonders, so I'll continue on and see what I can get out of this log.

[ Edited by: Lake Surfer 2015-03-22 12:26 ]