Ku smiles upon me...(or the mother ship has landed)

I hit the mother load!

Last week I was coming home and noticed that that there had been a bit of "earth moving" next to the water tower in my neighborhood. I investigated and found 3 huge pines had been cut. So I called my buddy down the street (you know the one with the truck!)we loaded them up and now I have about 15 logs ranging from 6 to 9 feet each. i know this is might sound stupid but I'm stoked! In fact I already carved a nine footer (my biggest yet):

this behemoth is so friggin tall I can barely move it, much less get the entire thing to fit in a photo

I'll post more pics as soon as I carve more...

woo hoo!

nice work love it!

really like the carve. How do you handle the weight? More more more.....

What a find to stumble upon and then to have the availability of a truck close by, WOW. Then you turn around and carve these dynimite tikis, way to go.. You Must be Stttookkkedd fer shur..Onn some of those tikis try to put a TALL Deaddress on a few, see how they will be loved.
Those wern't logs, Those were TIKI Gifts. The tikis expect you to put in some extra care and love when you carve those polesGive them love back.

Great job. You should be stoked!

Congrats on the great find and the monster tikis! Great work too.

thanks for the input...as far as the weight is concerned I had to get help loading them for transport but as far as at home I just roll them around. It's a bit hard to stand them up but where there's a will there's a way (and a thrown back)

Benzart- Deaddress? I assume you mean a design on the forehead area above the face... I've seen some pretty cool designs placed there(a rising sun, and I bought one at oasis 3 with a pineapple in that spot). I definitely should try that out- thanks for the advice...

I think he meant headrest... :D

I know what it is like to find a big wood score.
Your mouth waters , hands shake and you get a million ideas at once as to what to carve.

Congrats on the nice score.

Yeah, Deaddress, you know the headdress the dead tiki wears?
OK, I did mean Headdress, my bad about spellchecking or proofreaddimg.
Any more carvings yet?

actually i'm on the cusp of finishing two more right now- i've got a 7 foot moai based on a design in the Kahiki section of "The Book". And I'm doing a replica of the one you see above for my friend's pool (which already has the exotic setting with 2 huge palms several banana trees, hibiscus, and a cool rock fountain.) It irritates me every time I swim there because everything is perfect but there are no tikis! So I'm donating to the cause. One tiki at a time we'll turn this world back to what it should be! BTW, what's on you're carving table right now?

Hey people - here are some new pics from the motherload, I wasn't planning on posting these yet as they are not quite done but some guy from the Houston Press (a local rag)called me yesterday for a quick telephone interview about what is and what is not tiki. He needed a new pic- so we took some and I figured, hell might as well put these up on TC.

Here's a 10 footer (my biggest yet). As you can tell it needs some detail work. The headdress isn't complete and it needs a good sanding. The pecs need work and the necklace isn't done either. This is the 1st time i've tried doing a torso, legs, and feet. It was pretty scary doing that on something so big-I was worried I'd totally screw it up but I'm somewhat content with it so far...

here's a moai -7ft

YOW!! That Moai is AWSOME! How do you remove that much wood and retain that nice shape without it taking forever?? (Maybe it DID take forever??)

thanks- the moai DID take forever- somewhat of a painful endeavor... I thought I'd never be done with it!

cool maoi. It looks like a round log at the bottom and a flat board at the top. The chin looks like a mighty deep cut. Which one does your friend get and is the local paper going to put you in it.?

well i gave the moai to my friend as a thank you for helping me move those most heavy logs... the pic of me sitting next to the 10 footer is supposedly going into the paper-- i'll post a link to the article when it comes out

Way to go Hypnotiki. It is SO Nice to be given a load of tiki logs/mana from heaven and you are doing the right thing with them,,,Carving them up. Nice , impressive pieces. Keep'em coming.