Carving Post

P.S. Thanks....are you coming to Hukilau? I owe you a scorpion bowl!

Dang! Another reason I'm so bummed about missing Hukilau: the chance to buy some of your cool carvings, Basement Kahuna! Both those you pictured above are lookin' good! (How's your hand healing? Carving gauges that require stiches are NOT fun to work with!)

And I'll try to pick you up some absinthe in Spain, as you requested on the Hukilau thread. Theirs (Spain's) is supposed to be among the worst in the world, smelling of turpentine. I brought back Czech absinthe from Prague last March as souvenirs for friends. Wish I'd known you then! Beautiful art deco bottles, even the teeny ones. (Why didn't I save one for me?)

Hey Polynesian Pop, most tree service companies that cut trees are more then happy to give you their logs, then they don't have to pay to dump them. I'm always on the lookout for dead palms and redwoods being cut when I'm driving around town. Be on the lookout for palm trees that have lost their heads. After one or two years these are then dead and very lightweight which makes it a lot easier to cut and haul. If you don't own a crane or have access to one, forget about the big live ones, as they weigh tons. Go for it! JT

Very nice tikis Basement Kahuna.

Thanks, guys and gals...That encouragement helps the chisel fly straight and true!Formikahini-Thanks in advance if you can pick up a bottle or two of absinthe-and if you need I'll send you some moola before you go! There are three brands of Spanish Absinthe which are supposed to be of superior quality...Candela (tops...made the same way for 100 years,)...Serpis, and Deva (both reputed to have thujone levels close to the old Absinthe of Latrec, Van Gogh, Wilde, Picasso, and Hemingway) . All others are as you say..the worst. Eastern European is supposed to be the most rite with impurities (I.E. Czech, Polish, Etc.)

On 2003-01-12 23:12, Basement Kahuna wrote: There are three brands of Spanish Absinthe which are supposed to be of superior quality...Candela (tops...made the same way for 100 years,)...Serpis, and Deva (both reputed to have thujone levels close to the old Absinthe of Latrec, Van Gogh, Wilde, Picasso, and Hemingway).

An article I read recently called the Serpis "...dyed an alarming shade of reddish-orange" as well as, along with two other brands you did not mention, "had a smell suggestive of turpentine." So I shall try for Candela!

I trust your judgement on La Fee Verte....!

Here is a bar I carved and a couple totems. The bar is a witco style like the one in the BOT. on page 235. I made a few changes to make it a little more stable.

Those have incredible vintage style...I saw that one on the left on E-Bay....your grandfather-in-law is William Westenhaver, no?

Keigs that bar looks incredible. How long have you been doing this, because you are putting out some top notch stuff.

Tacky Techie Tiki Bar

[ Edited by: Turbogod on 2003-01-16 03:54 ]

Wow, very nice bar. That Witco influence sure is prevalent!

That is a beautiful bar. Nice to see this style of work so lovingly re-created, and available.

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=1580&forum=1&90

The tiki gods expect you to do your part:
Help Raise a Tiki at Tiki Gardens!

[ Edited by: Kailuageoff on 2003-01-16 08:00 ]

[ Edited by: Kailuageoff on 2003-01-16 08:03 ]

Thanks for the compliments. Bill is my wifes grandfather. He is a great guy I could not ask for a better grandfather inlaw. I have been carving for about 8 months. I am still a rookie. I did not realize this many people carved on TC they look great.

Here's a Hukilau exclusive Trader Vic's style Marquesan pole I just finished....added a little pinch of Cali cartoon into the soup for fun. It is 5 1/2 feet high (Bill the Brittany Spaniel shown for size comparison...he had just licked the camera lens, hence the spots!). How you like?

Wow! That is one hell of a nice tiki!! I noticed in the pics you have rough hewn planks - where does one go about finding such a medium for potential tiki panels???

:drink:

Hey, thanks for the comp! Go to any respectable lumber yard and ask them for "wide stump cuts"...in Maryland you should have tons of maple, cherry, and "pumkin pine"...all good carving woods! Most of the time they can be bought for the 5-10.00 range. Those you see are gonna be (hopefully) some New Guinea clan spirit panels also ala Trader Vic's.

Damn Brotha that was fast. You just posted the beginning of the work last week. I wanna be a soldier in da family. You've got to be an enforcer in the Fam. your work is something for the rest to attain. BTW I Been Drinkin, but Basement Kahuna does seriously put out some of the best work. Again no slight, I dig what he's doing as should everyone else. Keep it up Basement.

Very nice work BK.

How long did it take to carve and how much do you think it weighs now... ?

7TiKiS

Thanks, Turbo. Looks like I am sort of the room-to-room selling contact for Hukilau now (you will need to contact me regarding that through the Hukilau site-has an e-mail icon called "vendors"). If we all get close room we can get our own little Eden's Island going in the decor/merch department. 7-It is pretty heavy, about medium dry. I seal those things from top to bottom to slow drying (that's an oil finish on that tiki pole). All wood will crack if it dries too fast...the trick is to get it to only do this at the core and not at the surface. Fact from Brad Fisher, a buddy of mine who builds timberframes: a log loses 85% of it's moisture through the cut ends. Buy a can of pruning seal while working and tar the crap out of both ends of your log. The tiki will thank you!

[ Edited by: Basement Kahuna on 2003-01-19 12:14 ]

Here's an idea that someone can try. How about a tiki carved into wine bottle corks, uh-huh, yeah, why not? You could use a small v-shaped chisel. I tried it with my chainsaw but the cork disappeared. HA!

?

On 2003-01-25 21:55, Basement Kahuna wrote:
?

My thoughts exactly...

The chainsaw was just a joke guys.
On the wine bottle corks; if someone had the time and patience, they could whittle away at the cork to carve miniature tikis, no? JT

I just carved a crude Easter Island head from a cork with my Swiss Army knife. Call me crazy. If you use the knife like a saw, (back and forth) you get a smoother face. The cork wants to chunk off.. My knife is a little dull, maybe my brain is too, but I think it can be done. JT

The Easter Island head is difficult to carve correctly. The brow, nose and chin are very prominent, while the forehead is deeply recessed. My second attempt turned out better than the first. I'm going back into my jungle, JT

I have toyed with the idea of building travel bar sized portable miniature tiki bars that maybe "pop up" into a diorama when you open them (with a place to put four full-sized bottles and fou mugs, of course).

here's a 3 1/2 foot New Guinea wall panel with a touch of my imagination.

this is the part i wen made up.

this is a traditional style Hawaiian menehuni mask.

Those are cooool...Like the paint on the NG mask especially.

howzit BK,

I like painting some of the tiki's and NG stuff because it gives age to da look if you use a certain technique(sp?)

Mr. Schmaltz at OA told me he liked da way I aged one of my mask so I kept doing it.

I'll probably bring dat piece to Florida fo sale.

I jus wen get dat wood on saturday. I been waiting for a while on certain woods. I haven't had any wood because of da strike a few months ago on da cargo ships.

I missed out on a lot of wall panel buisness dat customers and friends wanted done! SORRY!!

I might jus have to move back to da mainland if dat happens again.

I just got a small supply of just beautiful OLD GROWTH (200+years old!) black walnut slices (1x and 2x slices are all I can get so far). If you want I'll bring you a couple of pieces down to Hukilau. Making some weapons out of it, and that walnut is so dark and richly grained they look like pre-contact museum pieces! It's coming off of a previously untouched mountain ridge in Franklin, North Carolina. Unfortunately, a bunch of the timberframers are buying up the big stuff and using it for (get this) structural tenons, of which walnut ones hold joists like iron. What a waste. Some of the trunks are 4 feet wide.

eh BK,

I can use sum depending on how hard da wood is. I tink I might bring some 2 ft coconut stumps with me to florida to trade with or sell for da carvers who would like to carve a trunk frum da islands. I have a friend moving ova by da pan handle on Florida and is going to ship sum of my stuff with his furniture. So I'll throw sum blank coconut trunks in.

I'll take a couple. I could even use 3 or 4 foot if you got'em. Black walnut is a very hard wood but very carveable and once it's carved barring all extremes that object will be around for centuries. I'll trade you or I'll just buy a couple!

Finishing a Cook Islands style Akatara tomorrow (long serrated club) in multicolored old growth walnut...I'll post pics.

not as cool as your guys, but I think im coming along slowly.
Here's my finished sign. Just a practice piece, as soon as I name my bar i'll make one for it too.

close up

Looks cool HH. Keep on carving.

eh Hula, Good job cuz!

[ Edited by: tikifreak on 2004-12-20 12:15 ]

Just found a reliable source for high quality, highly verrugated abalone in whole shells....beautiful, jewelry quality stuff....8.00 a shell! I can get my Maori mack on again and do it in style!

P.S. Nice finish, Hula!

Hula, verrry nice, yah! The richness of the wood really sets it off.

I've got another brilliant Jungle Trader idea; "tiki business card holders". I'm doing a local home and garden show and I need one yesterday. If I can't find one I'll try making it myself. Obviously it should not be much bigger then a business card or about the size of the average hand. Oh, how about a business card holder shaped like a hand. "The light bulb above my head is on".

Do most of you carve with a hammer and chisel?

That would be me...I find chisels to be the best way for me personally. I have looked into some machines like rotozips and they make a mess and don't work (they just break bits after about a two inch line). Every experiment I've done totally with automation thus far has come out looking cheap, half-assed, or like any number of those typical, cookie cutter, four-lines- across-a-board-makes-a-tiki-face jobs that are everywhere. I find a Dremel with a flat burr to be useful for quick clean up of relief and corners, but I for one am trying to hone my chisel skills! I dig the vintage styles, and that's how those tikis were carved. Also, have you noticed that it seems like 80% of the stuff out there for sale today is of the same style (You know, the one that you see everywhere that looks more like Jimmy Carter taking a poo than a Polynesian deity?).

[ Edited by: Basement Kahuna on 2003-01-31 12:38 ]

And I use a chainsaw. Not a lot of detail yet. I'm not a pro carver, it's just a hobby that might be considered an off-shoot of my business. Hopefully my skills, (like a good bottle of wine), will get better with time. JTvic

On 2003-01-31 12:36, Basement Kahuna wrote:
Also, have you noticed that it seems like 80% of the stuff out there for sale today is of the same style (You know, the one that you see everywhere that looks more like Jimmy Carter taking a poo than a Polynesian deity?).

You mean the Florida style? I might be in the minority here but, I prefer traditional Hawaiian and South Pacific style (including Easter Island Moai). Although their styles are different, I like the work that Chiki and Gecko puts out. Florida style has never appealed to me (not that there's anything wrong with it). To each his own, I guess...

*** * * The Polynesian Popster * * ***

[ Edited by: PolynesianPop on 2003-01-31 14:07 ]

I wasn't going to say :) ...but we are men of the same heart. And Chiki could easily be his own Witco and Gecko could easily be the next Leroy Scmaltz....You know, someone should really apprentice under Leroy...He ain't 'gettin any younger and the man is a national treasure. If I lived on the west coast I'd set up a tent on the lawn of OA so I could watch him work.

I use a chainsaw or grinder to rough out the shape, and save some time, and do the finish work with chisels. I prefer to use chisels because I feel it gives me more control especially when doing fine details. One slip with a power tool and you've gotta cover that scar.

As for style, I like just about all styles of tiki.

Mark

Great stuff! I've got a whole garage full of power tools we've bought to remodel the house over the past two years, I think it's time to get my ass in gear and start doing some carving. My last tiki carving project was a KU jack-o-lantern I did for halloween. Not much, but I'm heading in the right direction. Saw a news program last summer about a local guy (probably a TC'er) who makes tikis using a chainsaw & a blow torch. If you read this get in touch, I'd like to check out more of your work and maybe purchase a tiki or two...OK brah.

I tried using chisels from scratch, took two weeks to hammer out the first carving. By using a combination of chisels; right angle grinder and a chain saw I was able to get it down to 4 hours.

I'm still looking for the right high speed bits for a flex shaft tool, nearly all that I've purchased thus far load up with 'pulp' after 30 seconds of use and become worthless.

Regarding burning... I tried a small butane torch, works well on aged (meaning dry) wood, but so far the palms I have carved are usually too wet to burn. I found min-wax stains help darken the deep areas and bring depth to the carvings, followed by a coat of Spar Varnish.

So far, carvings covered with the varnish have not checked or cracked, but they still weigh a ton (full of H20) even 2 months later. Those uncoated, are checking and cracking badly.

Regarding styles... as near as I can tell (IMHO), there's four primary styles out there... with a myriad of variations on those primary styles, each of which expresses some form of personal attribute unique to the carver.

Florida style - Wayne Thompson.
West Coast Retro - Mr. Schmaltz (The King)
West Coast Pop - Crazy Al
Pre-Contact Hawaiian - who the heck knows.

It's hard (if not impossible) to hang a two or three word description of a particular style that others can agree on, or to sum the entire lifes work of these artists into one particular category, and I'll appologize now if I've offended anyone with the 'short' descriptions above... just the way I see it after having tried to look at the different art forms out there now and then.

Heck, there's probably ample material out there for a whole book on the subject of carving styles and origins... eh BigBro?

The age old adage no doubt holds true here too though... there is no accounting for taste. No matter what your preference or favorite style, there's a Tiki for you out there somewhere. :lol:

7

There's nothing like a sharp tool!

[ Edited by: 7TiKiS on 2003-02-02 07:06 ]