My first attempt at carving... anything.

My wife and I are wanting to decorate our courtyard as a Tiki bar. We found some carved Tikis and put them around. I was looking at how they were done and decided to try one myself. Not having any palm trunks laying around, I went to the garage and found a PVC pipe contraption left over from previous plumbing repairs. I cut a useful section out and attacked it with my Dremel. This is the result. Looks great at night with a candle inside. Now I gotta find some real material to work with...

PVC pipe?? I think that wins as the most inventive thing I've seen carved!

Great job! You got a good amount of depth out of it - I would imagine the head piece is some kind of a joint. If you want to keep working with the dremel on similar sized stuff, you should be able to find some local trees that you can carve up. I think I've read that citrus is good, you mostly have to avoid stuff with lots of sap. Hopefully some FL people can recommend some local trees, or contact a local tree trimming business to get some palm logs.

Congrats on jumping in and finding a new addiction!

Welcome to TC, thanks for sharing your work. That must have been some seriously thick-walled PVC pipe! Like Mieko said, great depth. You've definitely got your own style going already it seems.

You want to scour the neighborhoods before the guys take away all the leaves and branches on trash day: cedar, cypress, palms, mango, there's tons of material out there can be carved into tikis. There's also good hunting after storms and high winds.

much respect... I converted pvc to bamboo and that was a pain.... cant imagine the carving of PVC.... Turned out great especially for a first attempt.

Amazing work on PVC. I look foreward to your next item!!

Hey Miller, Welcome to TC, Excellent piece of work considering using only the Dremel and on PVC Pipe? How thick was that pipe and what bits did you use. Really cool design for the first, Awesome.
Yes, Here in Florida, Logs are usually easy to find. Just follow the tree trimmers around and you will have a truck load before you know it.

pvc, huh?
Pretty impressive.

where in Fla are you?

Hey folks,

Thanks for the replies.

A little explanation on the PVC... The bottom was part of a union, the top was part of an ell. I cut it off just before the bend started. The middle, where the eyes and nose were carved, was a coupling from a previous repair. In that area I had about 5/16" to work with. I used a high speed 1/8" cutting bit to do most of the work.

I now have several friends on the lookout for logs...

very inventive! Great Job!

Amy