bigt carvings

Wow! I feel for you guys. I hope everything dries up quickly for you.

Nature can deal some hefty blows.

Let me know if there is anything I can provide to help out.

Mahalo for sharing

McTiki

wow...damn bro.

Sorry about the flood. Hope everything is getting back to normal.

On a lighter note, great start on the new tiki!

Thank you all for the encouraging words. No tiki carving going on here, but we are high and dry again. And we have a pineapple in the makings!

This plant started as the top cut off a pineapple from the grocery store. That was some 5 or 6 years ago. This year it decided to fruit! Don't laugh at the cage we have around it. The last time we bought a pineapple from the nursery, a raccoon or opossum took it one night! :lol:

[ Edited by: TheBigT 2012-08-05 08:19 ]

haha cool! glad you're no longer under water...

Whoa dang, it's been 8 months since I posted last! I guess it's time to blow the dust off this thread. There hadn't been much carving going on around here in those 8 months, but I finally started to get back in the groove a couple of weeks ago.

Way back in February or March I had started these two tikis:

I finished the one on the right last year and finally picked up on the other one. He looks like this now...

Somewhere along the way last fall I took the chain saw to a big pine log. Haven't done anything on him since then.

In fact, it's the very log pictured below that tried to escape during the food last year by floating away...

This dude is still sitting around too:

Will any of these get done any time soon? Heck, who knows!?

That spalting really adds something vintage to that one! Hes gonna finish real nice!

Welcome back!

McTiki

[ Edited by: mctiki 2013-05-08 06:43 ]

arrrrg..... sorry!

[ Edited by: McTiki 2013-05-08 06:44 ]

McTiki thanks, thanks, and thanks! haha. btw, love your latest. Love that vintage look you always get!

thanks fer the bump on my thread BigT, looks like you need a push too? These guys are very stylish, let's see some more!

Better get those guys finished and sealed. We are overdue for another flood. :)

Thanks Atomic! Amate: still working on those other two dudes. Not much rain around here lately.

Well, I can't seem to finish anything these days. However, I did complete an entire tiki from start to finish this weekend.

Kool Ku...the beauty of those small ones is they don't occupy a lot of floor space.

one wknd!
it takes me 6 weeks to finish an 8 ft Tiki.
But then again my hands aren't that big.
Sweet.

On 2013-06-11 03:00, amate wrote:
Kool Ku...the beauty of those small ones is they don't occupy a lot of floor space.

Thanks Amate. Yeah, I've got room for about a million of these!

On 2013-06-11 04:20, Will carve wrote:
one wknd!
it takes me 6 weeks to finish an 8 ft Tiki.
But then again my hands aren't that big.
Sweet.

Will, many thanks. You should've seen the chainsaw I used!

I managed to finish another one of these tiny tikis. Now if I could just have these enlarged to five feet, I'd be in business!

Nice work Big T!

On 2013-06-18 07:36, cy wrote:
Nice work Big T!

Thanks cy! That detailed fish you did on that 4' cedar tiki is Incredible!

Hey All! Some new updates from Tiny Tiki Land!

I recently did a 2nd one of these dudes:

Plus, one new one:

I love these little guys!

Hi All! Wow, I can't believe it's been almost a year since I posted any carvings! I guess real life must have intervened or something. Although I started a few things since then, I haven't actually finished a thing. Allow me to introduce my first palm tiki (mostly finished)! This is a design by the great Milan Guanko.

I heard chain saws rip roaring one afternoon a few weeks ago and found my neighbor cutting down a palm tree in his back yard to make way for a new deck. The crew saved me a three foot piece of it. Have no idea what kind of palm this is. It's super stringy though and freakin heavy! I was barely able to lift it into the back of my truck.

I was planning to cut on it a little more, but it's now starting to get moldy and rotten. And as it dries, the fiber is coming apart like straw. I don't know if it's particular to this palm variety, or the gulf coast humidity or what. Plus, it got swamped at the base when my garage filled with water during one of our Houston summer soakers last week (4" of rain in one day, 9" over two days). I've been having to put mineral spirits on it to kill the fuzzy mold that's growing.

If it dries successfully and doesn't rot to pieces, I'll stain it and call it done.

This is the skin and end grain. Anyone have any ideas what kind of palm this is?

NICE!

Being that you are in SE Texas, I would have to guess that it is Sabal Palm. The reason it is so heavy is due to the water that is trapped inside. It will get moldy, but that doesn't mean its rotten. Palm is stringy. Leave it somewhere dry so that it can lose the water inside. Don't be surprised if it becomes very light. Allow it to dry before finishing (I let some of my palm carvings dry for several weeks before finishing them). Don't worry about the mold that from the moisture inside - when the mold dies it may be dry enough to finish. DO NOT seal it till the mold stops growing - the mold will continue to grow even after you seal it.

bark looks to thin to be a sabal...

looks more fan-palmish to me...

imho... but I am certainly no expert.

Very nice Roy!
I had the same thing happen with the fan palm log I had. Constantly infected with fuzzy mildew and it eventually just rotted away. It was 5' tall and 3' wide at the base. The guy used a front end loader to put it on my truck. I can't believe I got that heavy son of a gun out by myself.
Next time I'm down your way I want to check out this guy's work. I forgot his name but he is working out of Gulf Coast Palapas in Baycliff. I've been discussing some possibilities with their newly opened San Marcos outlet. Anyway, it looks like he's got at least one palm in his resume and he my be able to give you some pointers on seasoning the local palms.

Cy, thanks!! Sorta pales in comparison to your intricate carves... :)

pjc, aloha, thanks for the tips. You're right it was literally so water logged that water splashed out with each cut I made. I suspect it will rot away because there are several big mushy spots. I tried to cut most of it out. We'll see. I brought it inside and will let it sit a few weeks.

Did I say that was a blast to carve?! So nice to be able to cut out big chunks with each blow of the mallet instead of the little chips I usually make...

[ Edited by: TheBigT 2014-06-09 19:57 ]

On 2014-06-09 14:19, amate wrote:
Very nice Roy!
I had the same thing happen with the fan palm log I had. Constantly infected with fuzzy mildew and it eventually just rotted away. It was 5' tall and 3' wide at the base. The guy used a front end loader to put it on my truck. I can't believe I got that heavy son of a gun out by myself.
Next time I'm down your way I want to check out this guy's work. I forgot his name but he is working out of Gulf Coast Palapas in Baycliff. I've been discussing some possibilities with their newly opened San Marcos outlet. Anyway, it looks like he's got at least one palm in his resume and he my be able to give you some pointers on seasoning the local palms.

Yo Allen, thanks! Yeah I've seen the ads for this place. Never been. Let me know if you're passing through. I wouldn't mind checking it out.

The palm finally dried. It's a lot more fragile than I expected! The head is threatening to break off and it shakes a bit like a bobble head. I poured some minwax wood hardener in to stabilize it. It looks about a hundred years old, which is very cool, but a lot of the features are somewhat flatter in appearance than when I carved it. Wish I knew what kind of palm that was. My plans are to avoid it in the future! :lol:

Looks very nice, has a good vintage feel to it.

Cool carve BT!

I had a softie break in half on me, and I fixed it by running a piece of rebar through the middle, and then pouring on the wood glue.

it's been about 2 years now & it's still outside in the customers yard holdin' together...

Loving your work, so cool to see the progress in your craft.
I wish that I had those sorts of skills.

Thanks hiltiki and cy!!

Jeff, great idea. I thought about that yet and if it comes apart, I may do that. You can see with the pic below that once it dried it started coming apart like a broom!

In this top down view, you can see some big gaps in the base where the fiber shrunk once the water evaporated. I had to glue a playwood base on the bottom to keep it from breaking apart. I say glue, because nails or screws wouldn't work on this palm.

kahuna kraig: I'm sure you could. If I can do it, anyone can! :)

Hasn't anyone told you not to carve too deep?

On 2014-08-29 10:58, AlohaStation wrote:
Hasn't anyone told you not to carve too deep?

LOL Now that's the 1st time i've ever heard THAT!

Been working on this one for some time. Finally, almost ready to stain...

Also working on a picture frame. This is made from 1x3 cedar trim.

Got this little guy ready to stain. I was hoping to have these last two tikis finished by the end of the month. But maybe I'll get one of these last two finished.

Lovin it!

Progress.. Two coats of tung oil so far... The grain and spalting of this log are pretty crazy, so I'll try to preserve it. I'm going to give a light coat of shellac after this and I think that will be it for color.

Finally finished this one. It had been sitting around in my garage for two years!! Ugh. The finish set me back a little. The nose and both sides of the eyes were heavily bug damaged. When I cleaned out all the frass, there was so little left, I regretted doing it. The bridge of the nose had a giant gap down the middle.

Luckily I was able to patch it and match some of the spalting with some acrylic paint.

A close up of some of the crazy grain.

That was definitely worth saving Big T . The grain, paint, and carve look great!

Nice carve...and nice save on repairing the bad spots.
Good looking tiki...and a bit different that we normally see.

There is some great work in this thread! Those little guys and the last few in this thread are nice! Did your guanco hold up? And is that minwax wood hardener thick like a paste? Or a glue or putty? Keep it up!

Thanks for the comments guys. We gonna something new from Wisconsin soon Conga?

Adam: the palm tiki is still standing. Minwax wood hardener is very thin, almost like water. I'll bet the epoxy resin is stronger. I used the wood hardener because i poured it into some areas, like the neck, where i wanted it to soak in deep. Seems to have worked, but the carving itself is still fairly fragile. I'll bet it wouldn't last long at all outside.

I almost bought the wood hardener, but wasn't sure if it was thin or thick, and saw the epoxy resin was thin so I went with that. I like how everyone says carve deeper, but with palm we can't carve deep cuz then they fall apart.. Maybe if we had good tall mature trees like bill said maybe they wouldn't fall apart as bad.. Anyway you do good work, I hope to see more of it, palm or not. I also like that you seem to sculpt the whole thing with chisels. :)

Way kool

Thanks hang10, fastback.

Fastback, yep I carve the whole thing with hand tools. I suck with the chainsaw. However, I do bust out tha angle grinder here and there if I need to grind something off pretty quick. That's about it.

Starting to put the finish on this one. Has a light coat of Golden Pecan and a coat of thinned shellac so far...

I'm aiming for a little darker, so going to keep working on him.

[ Edited by: TheBigT 2014-10-20 19:34 ]