Harro - What the hells been happening?? pg 13

Howdy all,

Firstly I’d like to thank all the guys out there who take the time to post their carvings, step-by-steps, tips on methods, tools to use, and answering questions raised by amateurs like myself – without your priceless information I probably wouldn’t have had the courage to think I could just start chipping away at a log to create a tiki.

This is my first carving of any kind, and although it took a bit longer than expected, every step I did I learnt a lot, so now I know how to do it a lot better and faster next time.

I picked up some logs at the yard of a local tree-lopper (I have no idea what type of woods they are), and bought new tools such as: angle grinder, arbortech wood carver attachment, dremel type rotary tool with flexishaft, palm sander, propane torch, 4 good quality chisels and a powerstrop sharpening attachment.

After torching:

After Staining:

After 4 coats of marine varnish:

Now I’ve got plenty more logs to get cracking on!

Thanks for looking (and thanks for all your help already!)

Harro.

[ Edited by: harro 2008-05-30 05:02 ]

[ Edited by: harro 2008-06-04 14:56 ]

[ Edited by: harro 2008-10-31 10:27 ]

Harro,

WOW!!!! That looks great! Man, you've got more tools than I do...can I come over and steal a few? :) Thanks for posting, the subject you chose for your first is a real tough one. Most folks think they are easy. Not so. Great job! What's next on your list?

-Gman

Sweet moai man! As Gman said, he's a deceptive bugger! Nice clean lines, you got a nice style. Cant wait to see more

Wow mate, that's your first?
I'm damn impressed!
I reckon by the time you've punched out a few more you could be up there with the best :)

Go the Queenslanders :)

very impressive first outing....great cuts....color and finish....we will expect great
things out of you!

That is a fantastic first carving. You have very clean lines, now go make another and post it up!!

Fantastic first attempt...puts mine to shame. More, more, more....

Harro bruddah!
Amazing first carving brah! Sure youre not being kolohe with us?! Looks like youve been carving for years brah! I really love the torching effect and the stain/varnish! Great stuff! As they say, you better get some good sunglasses, 'cause your future is bright!

Keep up the good work!

Malama Pono!

That is a difficult tiki style to carve. You did it marvelously. I hope we see a lot more. Nice tool selection to start with.
JP

Thats a SWEET First tiki Harro, How did you do it so well on the first try?
All you new carvers with your dynamite first carvings make me SO Jealous. I didn't get this good until after a few dozen pieces, really, I was BAD. I wish I could find some pix of my first ones, you would cry,, they sre so Ugly and Non-tiki.

Love that stain job. That's one very cool dude.

WOW thanks for the comps guys, it's quite humbling! you master carvers have been inspiring me since i found this forum some months ago. Cheers!

gibgib, hewey, Ben, congatiki, hellotiki, loki, kaha ki'i, rodeotiki: thankyou all for your kind words, it makes me want to get back out there straight away (unfortunately i'm at work!)

GMan, JP: yes more than once or twice i regretted choosing the moai as a first carving because i mistakenly thought it would be the easiest! man i spent many hours just staring at the log and then looking at pics of carvings done by TC'ers thinking 'how do i get it to look like that - it looks so easy?!'...

hopefully it won't take as long for the next one!
harro.

That's killer. A lot of guys are afraid to go near anything with the miracle of fire (I use it on almost everything, like Texas Pete sauce!). You did it first try..you should definitely keep it up. You have chops.

P.S. looks like you have yerself a tiki 'o good old white pine there(excellent carving wood).

that's really nice.

did you use the mini grinder attachment or just a disc on the angle grinder?

Beautiful job on the moai!!!! really nice finish as well.

Not too shabby at all, Harro! I knew you would be producing tikis from the moment you started posting here in "Creating". Most excellent Moai!

A-A

Harro awesome 1st tiki did you have fun keep em coming

Wow, I love the finish too! That's a downright elegant tiki. :)

tikivixen

marcus, palama, tikivixen: thanks again guys - i had heaps of fun carving, unfortunately just can't find enough time to feed the habit!

also had plenty of 'stalemate' moments where it was a stare-off between me and the log. that is, me staring at it going 'what do i do next, and how do i do it?', and it just staring back blankly... eventually it told me... :)

BK: i've admired your exquisite pieces alot and the how-to's as well (and also the funny pics of yourself you include in your threads!) - its truly awesome to receive such nice comps from you. And ofcourse it's pine (duh!) - i just have no botanical bone in my body.

AA: I re-read all your threads many times when i was stumped and it helped me get through (especially the stain/finish one) - thanks for your kind words and great posts.

pdrake: it's the big Arbortech carving disc i used, not the mini-grinder. it would have taken forever with the mini! looks like there is too many things that could go wrong with the mini-grinder (belt etc), that's why i went with the big disc, and i thoroughly recommend it.

i have another pine log like this that will get started on tomorrow (depending on extent of Oz day celebrations!), hopefully i can post progress pics this time.

to all in Australia (or those that wish they were): **Happy Australia Day! **It's beer, cricket, thongs, beer, snags on the barbie and some more beer for the holiday tomorrow!

hello again all out there in TC land,

the recent spate of fantastic pics from you carvers (and in particular the event of a lifetime coon-tiki) has inspired me to hurriedly finish my 2nd tiki before i jet off to Rapa Nui, Tahiti and South america this coming weekend.

i'm sorry i don't have time to put comments in each of your threads but let me assure you i get inspired and gobsmacked each time i get a chance to have a peek at the great carvings being done by you guys.

This 2nd tiki was from a similar log to the first and i hardly spent anywhere near the amount of time as the first. I just wanted to knock something out as quickly as possible, in a totally different (and easier!) style to the first.

cheers, harro.

Harro, Excellent first and second Tikis. The second is great for a quickie and could be Double great by taking more time and going deeper. Maybe the next one if time permits.

Harro, I really like the contrast of the deep black with the light wood. Did you use a torch? I'll have to give that a try some day.

A-A

(PS - good to see you back - I've been on a bit of a hiatus myself)

thanks ben and AA - next time i'll have to dig a bit deeper with those tools...

yeah AA it's just a propane torch - it's a bit too easy... turns a pretty average tiki into just an average tiki almost instantly!

Off to Tahiti and Easter Island TOMORROW!!! yee-har!!!

Go DEEP!

Cool tiki man!

Hey Harro - wow that is great work - how tall is it? - pictures are deceiving - in some he looks enormous!
Good to see the progress shots - shows the real work that has gone into the final piece. Are you going down to Wintersun this year - if you do drop by and say hi - I will be in front of 20th Century doing some carving.

aloha guys,

unfortunately i haven't done any more carving since coming back from South america and Easter Island, but i've been flat out putting a new album together with my band Wiseacre (not really tiki related at all!). BUT the album launch is going to be a huge tiki beach party!!

Marcus from Tiki Beat will be displaying his fine chisel work in the flesh at "Night of the Tiki Terrors" in Brisbane on Sat July 8.

I've posted all about it in the Events page:

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=19980&forum=4&0

cheers,
harro.

well this isn't really tiki #3 but just a quick stage prop that i made for my band's tiki themed cd launch. I managed to get some big blocks of styrofoam and just started hacking away at it with some handsaws, a butter knife and a small surform. Unfortunately i hadn't read the thread posted on here recently giving some good advice on carving moai's in foam, so i learned the hard way. after a few hours the shape was done and i sprayed it with a 'fake stone' type spraypaint (after an undercoat) - i seriously underestimated the amount of paint needed though - 3 cans of spray at $23 a pop each!! and i'm still getting the white dandruff out of my clothes too!

it's about 5ft tall i guess.

its funny this tiki even made it home after the gig - at one stage throughout the night someone nabbed it from it's perch overlooking the crowd and tossed it to the masses, therefore creating the funniest thing i've seen in a long time - a CROWDSURFING moai!!! i was expecting it to end up in tiny foam pieces on the floor, but it held strong and only lost a few chunks of 'stone'!

i'll be posting pics of the "Night of the Tiki Terrors" on the events page soon.

thanks for looking.

the pics from the night are in the Events thread at:

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=19980&forum=4&6

cheers!

On 2006-06-21 06:10, harro wrote:
aloha guys,

unfortunately i haven't done any more carving since coming back from South america and Easter Island....

Please tell me you'll be posting some story and pics on your trip!

Nice moai man! Now make a full scale one! - the Easter Island trip was to conduct primary field work wasnt it? :)

paipo i have many photos and stories from Rapa Nui that i will hopefully get around to posting on here soon...

and yes hewey i now have stacks of inspiration for carvings - but i just gotta find the time!?!

thanks for your comments - harro.

hey haro good work. i really like that one. the belly on it is cool.
keep it up

hey paipo, i've posted a bit of a blurb about my trip to Rapa nui, and some photots at http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=20792&forum=16&hilite=my%20trip%20to%20rapa

and i've finally started another carving, but have only just stripped the bark and starting to get it ready for chiselling - hopefully i can get it done before Christmas!!! (not likely given my pace!!)

cheers,
harro.

Yeah, I vote for a Full sized one now. Was the foam very messy to work with? Did your neighbors mind? Excellent job..

hi ben,

yes i have another big block of foam the same size which i am thinking of doing just a massive big Moai head out of... but the mess is certainly something i'm not looking foward to!! (nor the neighbours - hahaha)

but i'm going to do a real log again first. but this log is a lot harder than the others i've worked on and it is proving hard to shape even with the Arbortech!

will keep plugging away though...

Keep at it man! Go bug Marcus when you need some tips :) hahaha

Well I'm kind of based in one spot for a little while and have missed carving a lot while I've been traveling, so I brought some tools back over here from Australia and have finally started attacking some wood.

It has been quite a challenge for me trying to get everything you need just to start carving. I'm a foreigner in a big city (Buenos Aires), can hardly speak the language, don't know any other carvers, and its pretty difficult to explain what it is that I'm actually doing (carving what? tiki? what's that??). Luckily there is another TC'er Clarita who lives here and has helped me out with sharpening my chisels and is the only person I've met here who understands tiki!

So after finding some hardware shops to buy some more gear, the biggest obstacle was finding some wood to carve. The northern and southern provinces of Argentina are blessed with an abundance of natural trees and beautiful wood (something I've been taunted by each time I've traveled there), but here in the big city it's another story altogether. I finally found a little sawmill just out of town and took some offcuts from them (but only what I could be capable of carrying back on a crowded bus).

As it turns out the wood I got was Quebracho, one of the hardest woods around and apparently around 200 years old for a piece less than 6inches in diameter! But I didn't learn that until after I had started (I just thought my tools were a bit dull or that I was weak and out of practice!). Afterwards I talked to a wood carver at a open air market and he couldn't believe I was trying to carve Quebracho. Anyway I currently don't have any other wood so I am going to try to persevere with this piece I have already started.

It is a beautiful, heavy and hard wood this stuff. When freshly cut it is pure yellow in color, but after some days exposed to the air it turns a deep shade of red. Anyone know anything else about it?

Here's where i stuffed up and broke off the back of one of his feet, so that changed the tack of the carve a bit:

And here's a couple of pics showing the workspace I have in our tiny apartment in downtown Buenos Aires:

What a view!

Wow Harro, Thanks for the trip, I have enjoyed every day of your voyage to far off lands with ending here in Buenos Aries. Your Apartment looks neat, any more pictures? Great that you hooked up with Clarita, Lucky man. Your carving looks like fun too and I think the sawmill guys saw the Gringo coming and hooked you up with a Beautiful difficult piece of wood. You should take it back to them when you are finished and ask them for some HARD Woods this time, no more soft junk like this! :lol: :lol:
I really enjoyed our trip through Easter Island, Thanks!

Tang's looking good so far- especially dealing with such hard wood! That reddish color will make for a perfect finish.. Pretty cool how that happens so quickly.

Wooo! Glad to have you back making some woodchips mate :D Looking good so far

Can't wait for the next pix 'cause by now it looks very good.

Benjamin.

It's amazing all you manage to do in Quebracho, being the hardest wood ever, you say you are not so good for carving, but I'm starting to really doubt that :) !

Hi Harro, Just wondering how your piece is coming along? I like the way you put your space and tools together. Not easy to do in a foreign land. Looking forward to your free time.

Good to see you carving no matter where you are. Seeing this reminded me of carving a tiki or two with a similar view.

[ Edited by: Tiki Diablo 2008-01-27 00:04 ]

Thanks for stopping in guys... I need the inspiration every now and again as a number of times I've contemplated throwing this thing in the fire (especially after spending hours re-honing and sharpening my chisels only to have them chipped again after 5 min working on this tough wood). Anyway, have decided to power on and finish it and then try some other wood pieces that Clarita found for me.

Not much progress, mainly just trying to fix up/cover up previous mistakes! :D My first attempt at symmetry in 3D and its damn hard!!

PS: Diablo that looks like the back of the kiosko/bar that is right outside our bedroom window... :lol:

Cheers,
Harro.

I feel ya on the 3d, and the fix up/cover-up! Totally 3d is really hard to do. Everytime I try something I gain another ton of respect for the carvers here. This one looks pretty good from where I sit.

R.

That Quebracho wood looks to be really hard stuff and difficult to work. Don't throw it in the fire though! At least get the face carved so you can look in his eyes when you tell him his fate. :)

Looking good!