Post #685463 by tigertail777 on Thu, Jul 11, 2013 2:02 AM

Progressed a little more on mine. I am adding tapa style designs as "bands" around the top and bottom, but they are pretty intricate and I am having a bit of a hard time doing it. The dremel tool is fairly uncomfortable to use because it is so bulky and unwieldy. I am finding after short periods of time with intricate details that my hands start to ache badly and sort of freeze up. I have never experienced this before... is it normal when using a dremel tool? I almost dropped the tool a few times because of the pain its almost like a headache in my hand.

Well anyways here is what I got done so far... After some research I sketched in pencil the combination of a few designs.

Then I started the carving with the dremel.

Closer detail. Unfortunately my hand was getting a little shaky so the designs are not as geometric as they should be.

It will be a relief to finish the tapa details. I am not sure why they hurt my hand so much to do when the shrunken head was relatively easy and painless. I probably won't go as deep as I originally planned and maybe just do a paint wash so the color gets caught in the grooves to highlight them. I am tossing around the idea of what to actually DO with the bamboo when I finish, I am leaning towards turning it into a desk caddy to hold pencils and pens sort of thing by adding a bottom. Any other ideas?