TikiGap's thread - Tiki 20 and other travels - Page 22

On 2007-03-27 20:41, tikigap wrote:
His head and ears were underground for a long time.

Must be hunting for truffels then.

Very nice drum sticks! I bet that sounds great. I'm glad to see you got back to it.

How are the lungs doing, did you work out a dust collection system?

JP

[ Edited by: Johnnyp 2007-04-02 18:07 ]

That's a really nice pig slit gong! Fun and functional! It might be cool if u drilled some holes and carved/procured some pig tusks to put in his hog mouth as tusks are so manly an' all in Melanesia.

T-Gap, That would be totally cool. Bring some pig, we could roast him up for sure!

Hey thanks Danny (haven't heard from you in a while!), Johnny, SneakyT and Ben - you guys are too kind.

JP - I'm all better now respiratory wise, especially now with summer knocking on the door - I can take some of this stuff outside and breath.

Sneaky - I thought about tusks. I have some beaver teeth (Fangs) I was scoping it out with... I might just have to do that if I can find the right teeth. (Hmmm. Maybe I'll check with GMAN :wink:)

I don't ever even enter my little workshop without a respirator now though.
I don't want to go thru that again. My dust collection system is still
a big old shop vac... I'm still working that problem.

Ben! - I "solved" the eye problem, at least temporarily. I made the eye sockets deeper and bigger, which got past the first problem I was having (the "check-in-his-head-right-where-his-right-eye-would-go problem).

I carved inserts to fit snugly into the sockets, so I could change them around and figger out what worked best. Since I couldn't decide what to do really, I just made some dark black little beady eyes on a stick (a-la Mr. Potatohead!) and drilled a small hole in each eye socket, and pounded the beady little eyes in there.

They might fall out if the drum is actually used hard enough, but by that time I may have a better solution, and can put something else in there. I'm giving the pig to some friends of mine so I'll be able to visit and 'adjust' it in the future. I really gotta work on eyes... that's gotta be the hardest part of carving for me.

The pig has been hoggin up my workshop for too long - it'll be nice to give him away and get back to a stone thing I was trying to work on.

I'll post some final pictures when I get him outside for a kodak moment.

Anyway - long and windy as usual. Sorry about that.

Thanks again everyone...

Pig done, finally.

Hangin on the wall:

signed his ass:

I love the Head Grain in this walnut:

Lilac drumsticks and the leather "thong" to hang him up by his you-know-what:

This is the under side with the drumsticks in there:

and this is them hanging out:

It's finished with 20,000 coats of tung oil. No, really.

Most excellent! As a serious hog connoisseur, I can see the real beauty in him. What an awesome piece! I would love to try to make one of those one day.

Bacon, bacon,

G

I am squealing with delight! This finished up really nice GAP, and even better that
it's a drum. I liked this one all along but I never thought it would turn out so cool.
See ya at Coontiki II huh?

Hey GMAN - that means a lot comin from you! It's a pretty good pig, you know? - And Conga - I love you man! Thanks a lot for the support!

Thanks again fellas....

gap

T-G,

I love the porker an' branding his ass was a stroke of brilliance. I hear that cures hog-roids.

S T

Very nice work, man.
Love the grain of the head too. It is super top.

Benjamin.

I saw this right after you posted yesterday, but didn't have the time to post. This piece kicks $%^&. You did a fantastic job on it. Some day I have to hear it play. Congrats on a job well done.

Alright. What is next?

JP

YES, Excellent job, and Nice solution to the eyes, They look great and you have room for improvement if it is found, Very Creative Thinkin'.

ST, Benjamin, JohnnyP and BenzArt - wow! Thanks for your comments, and thanks for lookin.

JohnnyP - you inspired the pig you know, GMAN's pig pictures too, but your work in the genre of slit gongs is really fantastic - thanks.

Ben - the eyes are pretty funny - I'll PM the story to you someday.

Thanks again all -

Oink on!

wow, i literally just wanna sink my teeth into that little oinker. yum yum. great job!

Here's the happy recipient of the pig, and the first pictures (only pictures) of the pig in the sun. It's finally out of my house and hair!

The recipient:

He liked it!

Basking in the sun:

Hangin up at the party - it took a beating that night.

Thanks again GMAN and JohnnyP and of course Ben.

Now. On to the next ... stone maybe.

gap

[ Edited by: tikigap 2007-05-29 07:17 ]

That's a fine hog....I'm impressed....and inspired to go out and ground-check some pork. Here piggy piggy....

-G

Hi Gapper...I was wondering what happened to you....in fact....I was going to inquire on TC
as to your whereabouts.
Nice pig.....makes me hungry for the pork rib roast sitting in my freezer.
Are we gonna see more bats or something?

Super pix and very nice pig.

Benj

Hey thanks you guys - I appreciate the comments!

I forgot to mention - Conga: Yeah, I have orders for 3 bats! Thanks again!

[ Edited by: tikigap 2007-05-29 07:15 ]

T-Gap, I'm glad the Piggy found a good home. He was a Fun project, for us anyway, and you did a great job with a unique piece of wood.

Hey thanks Ben... and everyone else. I hafta admit, even with all the trouble I had, it was still fun for me too. Now no more excuses for me. I've got to get back to the carving bench and try some more.

TGap, Where are you hiding these days? Come back and say Hello. Hello Hello?

Wow. That was weird.

Here I am sittin around watching a show on DIY about wood sculpting, and this guy is carving 'wood spirits' and doin a very nice job of it. Anyway, he's showing us how to carve eyes, (which I have a history of having problems with :wink:).

Then I think of Ben, who has shown me a couple of times, of how to carve eyes. Wow.

Well damn if I don't get an email, at that very second, from TC saying someone posted to my thread! So I logon and look, and it was Ben! That's amazing. Thanks man.

I've been lurking around TC for a while, but I haven't done any carving. A whole bunch of stuff has happened in the last 3 months (got wacked at work; then found much better job closer to home etc...:wink:), and a whole bunch of other stuff - good and bad. But all is well now.

Anyway, it's even weirder that today I started carving a simple moai for my tiki bathroom. And I started carving it out of a palm log that Ben gave me in Florida last summer! Dang!

Thanks buddy! The vibes are good!

On 2007-09-08 19:45, tikigap wrote:

.....today I started carving a simple moai for my tiki bathroom. And I started carving it out of a palm log that Ben gave me in Florida last summer!

How is it turning out? We've been waiting.

Aw geez JP... thanks for your interest. The sad truth is that I'm still slackin. The bathroom thing is on perma-hold, until I come to grips with making a 'face' tiki. I hear those are bad these days...

Here's it's status, anyway:

Relegated to the shop floor for a while...

I did make another bat recently and gave it away,


but that's about it.

So what about you! Damn that crock drum is awesome! That was so cool. GMan should play it and post the sound of it up here for us to listen to. (I should post this over on your thread!)

I've been layin low around here because the bar is really really high, and I just can't dedicate enough time to carving to get better! I mean you guys rock. You, Conga, GMan, Ben, tama, paipo, buzzy, lake, all you guys...

The list goes on and on and it'll be a while before it includes me... but I aint dead yet.

Merry Christams and Happy New Year and all the other holidays too, for that matter!

Greg

Bump---where you been?

Yeah, Any more Weird messages?? Been Missing you around these parts, Hope all is well with you. Come show us what you are up to!

On 2008-07-10 07:41, Benzart wrote:
Yeah, Any more Weird messages?? Been Missing you around these parts, Hope all is well with you. Come show us what you are up to!

Well hello fellas! - JP, Ben, and everyone else. It has been a while - and I've been remiss! It's great to hear from you and thanks for checking in on me. I'm glad to see you guys are still at it - and that Ben is all healed up :wink:

Life has been catching up with me, (kids in college, new job, surgery (gall bladder out! Ewww!), lots of travel etc.), so I have not been doing enough of my own stuff - I have had almost zero time to carve for the last 6 months or so. I have been lurking on TC though, and checkin out the great stuff - you guys amaze me.

I did finally finish the palm log (my Tiki #20) Ben gave me to drag home a while back - I call it "Bathroom Tiki". I know, it's just another 'face tiki', but it's what my wife would allow me to put up in the BR.

I made a rubber stamp (or four) for a border around the BR, and carved out some molding for around the mirror, and stuck the #20 on the wall:

It aint much, but it was at least some carving :wink:

I went to San Francisco on business a month ago and visited the Tonga Room in the Fairmont Hotel, and Trader Vics in Emeryville.

Also, I just got back from 2 weeks in Alaska (zero tiki - none - nada), but I did get to see some fantastic totem carves, which has inspired me to pick up the mallet again. Also, at the suggestion of TabooDan, I stopped by the Waldorf Hotel in Vancouver BC to see the Tahitian Room.

Thanks again, and I should be posting again real soon, hopefully with some examples of better-quality work.

Greg

[ Edited by: tikigap 2008-07-10 09:42 ]

[ Edited by: tikigap 2008-07-10 18:57 ]

Hey Greg
Nice to hear that you are still around these parts, and nice job with the
bathroom re-do. The carving is cool...even tho it's "just" a head :)

It's been a long time.

I'm going to post a few carvings I have done since my last post in 2008. Here's the first one - from a piece of bamboo Ben gave me. A Zombie lamp. Did this a couple years ago.

I'll post some other random stuff in a bit.

I've been missin you guys!

Hi "old timer," nice to see you popping in. Not many of us left from "Coon Tiki I"
anymore, I guess we might have been the middle group of the TC carving community. Nice
lamp, show some more stuff when you have time.

Hey T-Gap, Great to see that "Bathroom Tiki" finally done. looks good and the bamboo lamp is Awesome,Glad you finally did that too.