An expirement in Tiki

After a long time of lurking on this forum I decided that it was time to finally register and make my own contribution.

I’m not sure what possessed me to attempt this but I have a lot of time on my hands and for some reason my last trip into this particular are of the message forums inspired me to make an attempt at my own Tiki carving.

Background… Well in regards to carving… none… zip… zero. Other than widdling sharp pointy sticks with a pocket knife, I have never carved a piece of wood. I have not even planed a door to fit into a door jam. I am a total and complete newbie to this.

This is how new I am to this… I know that I need a piece of wood to carve into (I’m not stupid)… I have no idea of what to do once I have it.

How hard can it be, right? (famous last words I know)

As I mentioned, I have the time to try it and I have two chisels in my tool chest (I think that I still do) and a few hammers laying around somewhere. What the hell, once I find some wood and I can start carving myself a Tiki with zero cost to me.

Three days ago ... I tell my girlfriend that I want to carve a Tiki and that if she finds a stump of wood laying on the side of the road somewhere, let me know where it is. After giving me a look of “God, not another project that will never get finished.” She humors me and tells me that she will keep an eye out. I also spread the word to a few of my friends that if they see a tree stump that they should give me a call.

Two days ago … After running some errands with my girlfriend and a trip to the bar to play some GoldenTee, we happen across some ‘Palm Tree Road Kill’ on the side of the road. I totally missed it but my girlfriend, being the trooper that she is, spotted it and told me to turn around.

I loaded up a few pieces in the bed of my truck… my nice carpeted bed with a tonneau cover. I ended up with three ‘Road Kill Palm Stumps’, all about 18 inches high and 14 inches in width and one piece that was split in half.

I now have four pieces of stump from some un-identified palm tree sitting in my back yard….and a shit load of a mess in the back of my truck.

So I picked the top piece in the photo to start my project with. It's the piece that was split already. I have it stacked on two whole stumps for now. I figured this would be easier to start with as I can place it against a wall and not worry about the back side of my Tiki.

The dog in the photo is one of four that we have. His name is Pete.

On 2008-08-07 23:42, drtiki wrote:

I now have four pieces of stump from some un-identified palm tree sitting in my back yard….and a shit load of a mess in the back of my truck.

*And dont forget those two chisels and all that time on your hands..

Best of luck - we'll be waiting with applause! :)

First lesson learned... When I got home with the stumps, one was peeling bark all over my truck and I was making a huge mess. Before I took it in the backyard, I decided that I need to take some bark off and clean it up a bit. I went into the garage and started hacking away at the stump with a hatchet.... (I wont show you that one yet). After some reaserch today, I found that using a box cutter is a far better, faster and cleaner way of doing the same thing.

Pic of my "Palm Tree Road Kill" halfway cleaned up.

Pic after fully debarked.

So far the only tool I need was...

[ Edited by: drtiki 2008-08-07 23:55 ]

I know that I need to clean up the log a bit more and I have seen some videos of someone using a planer to do it... but the idea was to do this cheap and to take up some of my free time. So a planer is out of the question right now unless one my friends has one that I can borrow.

On a plus note, or is it, a friend just called to say that he has to cut down a tree in his front yard and that he is willing to sacrifice the trunk to my new hobby. He claims that he will give me a piece of wood that is about 2 feet in diameter and at least 5 feet in length.

I will be gracious though and will drag this trunk home somehow but for now, i will focus my work on the smaller piece of palm.

The Tiki gods must love me. Just a few days ago I had the idea to try this and now I have more wood than I know what to do with. Now to do it.... I really have no idea where to start except to just pick up the chisel and have at it.

.... what have I done?

On 2008-08-08 00:04, drtiki wrote:
.... what have I done?

:lol: :lol: :lol: Youve taken the first steps into tiki carving land! :D Well done. And sounds like you've found Buzzy's youtube videos on debarking the palms - another well done! :D Looks like you've got some mexican fan palms, they're pretty good for carving too. Now do some searching of the tiki carving threads for for inspiration and get chisselin! :D oh yeh, post plenty of pics

I back Hewey - that does look like some mexican palm that you have there.

Looking forward to watching your progress!!

Remember - there are no mistakes, only lessons

KS

nice slicing technique

Interesting story so far! Keep us posted.

So, where the carving? lol. looking forward to see what your doing with them. Are you going to keep some of the bark on? Keep us posted.