been getting the carving on this summer...staring with #157 'Akua Kai PV'
what do you get if you have a potted plant holder that is an old growth queen palm stump ??
CrazyAL Tiki #159 'Kaneokekai'
My fisherman client had another stump to grace the pool area. After explaining to him that Marquasian tikis are ancestor based, he told me this "My Dad was given the name of Kaneokekai by a native Hawaiian elder in the sixties. It means "man of the sea"....He went on to name all of his boats Kaneokekai and it's what we plan to name this tiki ." So Tiki#159 became a tribute tiki.
Queen palm sure is pur'dy... this tree was real dense even though the dark resin cords were not pack together very tightly. It made for dramatic effects!
Here is a lesson in carving. I spent about 3 hours just drawing out the Marquasis design because i wanted to get a very symmetrical carving in a great piece of wood....
Tiki #160 is called the "2 Hour Tiki" !!
strangely enough, this guy turned out very symmetrical..?
back story:
a client had a tree dropped at their place of work... Hey AL? do you think you could carve this?? it's kinda big and in the bed of my truck... I thought maybe, I'd have to take a look...come to find out after sometime and the logs 50 mile trip to Bamboo Ben's parking lot pool party... that the thing weighed 1100 lbs!! my worst fear! since I own no heavy equipment!! well, we could slide it into my truck I bet, since the 'showing end' seemed carvable... 500 lbs into my truck I can tell the 'hidden end' was uncarvable... 1100 of water not wood??... now what?... I took the log, but I knew I did not want to think of unloading it (having already damaged my truck before with logs)... and my suspension was maxed! Danny Diablo said go slow, just don't hit a bump... right... I thought there is only one way to know if there is any carvable wood in this log and I did have to get some weight out of my truck!...
a 7ft log was now a 4ft log but still not of a good density...hmmm??...
one way to find out if I could carve it, and remove more weight!
so much for a swim w/ TCers... thank God that Ben had a chainsaw on hand!!
the walls to the bed of my truck kind of gave me a good guide-line and created the symmetry..
THREE BEARDED FELLOWS...
lesson two: Location Location Location
same basic carve in soft wood, but it took 6 hrs instead of 2!!
perched on a steep embankment
10-12 feet in the air... hmmm? flip flops on an extension ladder with a chainsaw! speed is an issue...
the wood was to wet and hairy to draw on so a drew with the chainsaw, which I do normally with budget restraints. I also knew the wood of this immature Canary Islands palm would be if'fy at best, so i was not going for a master-piece.
the bark/wood was so wet that I could ring out the shavings like a dish towel.
but a good carving was had as wet wood holds together! and there would be no direct sunlight on the North-face, so cracking should not be massive... let us hope!!
by the way, note to carvers... This summer's 'stump' carving cemented an idea that I've formed that palms have a 'Sunny side' to them... palms regularly have one side that carves much nicer then the other side because of the density of the wood. I knew it was a water problem, but I wondered if this was do to the log laying down horizontal and gravity taking effect after it was cut... OR? was one side of the tree 'baked' by the sun while growing... Well? every stump this summer had it's sunny side denser then its other side! Ha!
This stump was a great example as the 'shady side' almost dripped water.
You've got to love the backyard homes of these tikis! the client did the landscaping him self... nice!!
lesson 3: this carve was near SanDiego, i carved 6 hrs but was away from my home/studio for 12! talk about Billable time issue...
Lesson 4!! I forgot to 'WD-40' Ben's chain-saw blade after carving such wet wood... ooops.... it got kind-da rusty and don't move so good now....
[ Edited by: crazy al 2009-08-31 07:42 ]
