Post #532780 by Bay Park Buzzy on Fri, May 28, 2010 1:10 AM

I was asked to carve an official event drum for Tiki Caliente this year. I'm just about wrapping it up and thought you all would like to see it. A couple of parts need another coat of stain tomorrow morning, but this is pretty much how it will look when done, except the color will be a little better and it will be a lot more shiny:

I had a lot of fun carving it. Thanks for asking me to do this WildsvilleMan! Everyone that has seen it in person is totally blown away by it, and I hope you are as well.

Here's a little more background info on some of the designs and features I added to it

The three tikis I carved on the legs are my "tribute" versions to this one by the Tropics pool:


The original tapered too much at the chin, so I had to put the foot under the tongues for stability.

The logo was my carved rendition of Doug Horne's event logo.

Carving this rated high up there in the difficulty scale of stuff I've done:

His original used the black lines on the letters as shadows to give the illusion of depth. I didn't need false shadows on my letters because I was planning on carving them raised from the background anyway, but I wanted the logo to look as exact as possible. So, I carved them out with the outline of the letter and shadow, and then went back and added the shadows with my trusty Optima 1 Dual woodburner. The tapa patterns on the frame were carved out first, then I went back and burned in the recesses with the woodburner. The burned parts can still be seen under the stain after I added it.

For the back of the drum, I used some elements from the Tiki Caliente 1 mug that I borrowed from Tiki-Kate. This one:

Thanks Kate! I'll be bringing your mug back soon...

My first draft had the A-frame the same way it was on the mug, but it just didn;t fit on the drum right. So, I used TC as a handy reference source and found this post card of the Tropics over in Locating Tiki:

The end result: the A-frame from the postcard, palm trees, and flaming tiki torches.

I couldn't do finer details in the relief carving on the back because it's where you handle the drum the most. Smaller details would tend to break off under the strain of the drum being lifted and moved about. If this was just a display drum I would have done them, but this piece is going to be functional: played, moved, and handled. I had to take its functionality as a playable drum into consideration and carve and sand it with soft edges and duller details than a display piece would have.

Because of the way everything was configured on it, I was able to make the bell part a little larger than it appears from the outside view. It actually extends below the bell into the pedestal portion.
These lines show where it was hollowed out to make a bigger sound chamber and vent:

I recently put a head on another drum I carved and when I was testing it,I noticed the air/sound wave blowing out the hole in the bottom of the bell when I hit it. Kind of like a quick blast of air shooting out.

That got me thinking...

What if I carved the mouths on the tikis all the way through to the hole that already runs through the center of the drum?
The two red zones are where I then carved the mouths back through to the hollowed out center chamber of the pedastal

I shined a light through the center and snapped this picture to show the new air hole

I made one like that in each mouth.

Now, in theory, if you take a burning incense cone and place it inside the drum at the bottom of the hollowed part on a fire resistant surface, then the whole drum chamber will eventually fill up with smoke as it burns away. If it got full enough of smoke, when you play it, the air forced out by the sound wave will blow the smoke out the holes in the mouths when you hit the drum head.
Hopefully it would be something like this theorethical cross section of the smoke filled chamber:

So while you're playing the drum, the tikis will be breathing out puffs of smoke in time with your playing, until it runs out of smoke.

That would be even cooler if they could blow smoke rings!

I'll do a test of the smoke blowing tikis when I get the head on and report back here. Come check it out in person at Tiki Caliente!

Buzzy Out!

[ Edited by: Bay Park Buzzy 2010-05-28 01:17 ]