surf soul tiki

thanks guys...

Cut part of the headdress today...

BIG and Gnarly!!! Nice!

tatts!

nice work!

The detailing looks great pjc .

Awesome

this is what I have come to refer to as "the pub lono"...because that's the only place I work on him...

my hand hurts...

Damn! I can see why, looking great.

The pub lono is looking sweet as well...I like his stance

wow
sweet lines

Nice and even! Good job, Jeff! the owner should be quite pleased with their new work of art!

"the islander"

Splendid!! Awesome work Jeff. I am sure the new owner is smitten.

That is so awesome really like this carve

wicked detailing on 'the islander' love it!

thanks guys. Trent is super stoked, and like 20 or 30 people have stopped by while I'm working on it to tell me they they think it's cool.

So yeah, looks like there's a little tropical activity out in the gulf, and my buddy just called me from Anna Maria to tell me it's stomach high & building, so I'm loadin' up & headin' out. Hopefully I'll get some good pics to share...

was out yesterday at anna maria beach with the kids and your tiki's at the "beach house" are doing great. nice job on that last piece.......

thanks bro. yeah, I caught some great waves down the street at the south pier on saturday.

so GREETINGS FROM SUNNY FLORIDA (which is now underwater...lol)..

Here's the huge oak tree that blew over in my neighbor's yard....

and I'm watching the weather channel last night and there's a damned rootball just rolling arounf on the beach next to the guy talking....gah!!!

That rootball prolly weighs 2k lbs....

Nice you guys got some swells! Enjoy!

Mahalo

McTiki

I've been salivating over those hair balls too.
I keep picturing hair ball Tikis floating around Jim Cantori.

HA HA, your radar is up! Rootball's flying by!

a little more progress on the pub lono...

and yeah, I know...those balls in the headdress still need a little (or a lot of) work...

looking good, like the facial expression...

I see faces in each of those balls!

hell ya

Nice work Jeff,hope your goin to score some of that oak to carve.

we have daylight sir...

awwwwww shiiit!! sick bro...I can not believe how much you have improved after your visit with those "southerners"

Very cool stuff!!!

thanks Nixxy...

punched most of the headdress through tonight at the pub.

ok...let's go see what kind of interesting driftwood Debby washed up on the islands....

Looking fantastic Jeff!! Hope you get some good wood...err...drift wood :)

Put some screaming faces on those meaty Polyps!

Hope you scored some drifts...(notice I didn't say "wood")

Mahalo!

McTiki

yeah, I did pretty good today.

I found a full-on sunken log. It's waaay heavy. I muscled it out of the water as best I could with 3 other dudes plus a girl, and was able to get it out enough to saw it up. Got 2 lengths, about 6 ft each, and then my saw ran out of gas. Been under for enough time that it didn't float! there's even barnacles on part of it. Real hard inside though...and it looks like there's some different colors and it as a really interesting exterior...I'm wondering if it's pine. Either way I'm gonna do some really cool deep relief-carved tikis out of 'em so there's plenty of tiki but also plenty of the original "texture" of the exterior. Should be pretty interesting.

I also found a root canopy that's going to be a neat glass-top table with a little massaging.

and I think I may have found another piece that I'm pretty sure is going to be the new octopus....

so yeah, it was a successful run! I love driftwood.

a few pics of yesterday's haul....

first up, the next Octopus....can you see him?

future glass-top table...

2 extremely heavy sunken logs....soon to be a neat sunken log relief-carved tikis....

and the pub lono getting there...

Nice haul!

yeah, I did pretty good on that run for sure....

I seriously can't wait to cut into those sunken logs with a chisel & see what they look like inside.

so anyway here's a 4x8 4 ft long piece of douglas fir that Benz gave me during my last visit, that I just started cutting into today at the pub.

And here's the next octopus in process...

Nice bunch of projects coming up ... Is D Fir a good carving wood? It does look like a chunk that can be found at the Home Depot!

On to a new one already???
What happened to this one???

Chris, yeah I think it's just a regular old 4x8...but it carves really nice! I'm used to the stringy-ness of palm, so this is the first nice piece of hardwood I've tried. Completely different, but I really like it!

And Will, I need to go to woodcraft & get a few smaller chisels to finish him up. Between the piece of Mahogany that Tom gave me while I was down there, this piece or douglas fir that Benz gave me, and the sunken logs I recovered from the water last friday, I have all kinds of pieces of hardwood laying around & I was dying to cut into one of 'em....

On 2012-06-21 14:45, pjc5150 wrote:
"the islander"

Dude, that is killer! I missed your last few. Bravo man.

thanks T. Gonna try to go finish him up here after the 4th...

so, I'm a few hours into this piece of douglas fir, and I just have to admit, I am so relieved. For some reason, after pretty much working with palm for a few years,and having a mostly frustrating experience chiseling cedar (and or should I say BREAKING cedar), I was thinking that I was never going to be any good with hardwoods and would always just be a guy who made palm tikis with a chainsaw and an angle grinder (which isn't a bad thing, but once you've done that for a few years you start wondering what else is out there). And that perceived limitation kinda sucked because I have developed quite a fondness for stuff made of hardwood as I've sunk deeper into tiki-dom. The richness of the color, grain, finish, it's longevity, etc.

But this piece is my first attempt at chiseling a hardwood since the cedar debacle, and it's going way better than I thought it would. I feel like I'm kinda starting to get it. I really looooove the lack of "stringy-ness" that palm always has. So anyway, my first hardwood tiki is halfway there. Next is the head.

[ Edited by: pjc5150 2012-07-03 20:08 ]

On 2012-07-03 20:07, pjc5150 wrote:
But this piece is my first attempt at chiseling a hardwood since the cedar debacle, and it's going way better than I thought it would. I feel like I'm kinda starting to get it. I really looooove the lack of "stringy-ness" that palm always has. So anyway, my first hardwood tiki is halfway there. Next is the head.

Yeah it's looking great. I think I would have the opposite problem - never carved palm before, only pine and a couple of hardwoods.

Your many projects are lookin' good Jeff .Willcarve won't be happy till you add those screamin' heads to your lono. Although I love it when I get a rare piece of palm here in the NW, there is something about getting into a wood with some grain as it guides you through the piece almost like following the way a river flows. Also painting them to bring out the grain is rewarding. I also like to start with a square piece sometimes like on your newest as they come out very different than starting with something round. Keep up the good work brah!

Thanks Cy. I have to admit, I feel like I'm gonna have to step it up in the finishing department. that's never been my specialty.

so I was dying to see what it looked like inside of one of the sunken logs, and there was one of the ends that broke off when I was cutting them, so I cut the top 8 or 10 inches off to square it off & to have a little piece to dissect & see what lies within.

there was a wormhole in this section, and there are some others. but except for that immediate area around the wornholes it's very solid. and there are definitely some interesting colors popping up. it was literally changing colors as I evened the edges off with the grinder. this could get really interesting...

So awhile back I got really inspired off of Seefssurf's driftwood tiki. I remember looking at it over and over and thinking "that is just brilliant".....so I've been looking for driftwood logs to make tikis ever since. So now I have 2 6 foot sections of these sunken logs, and another driftwood log I found washed up on one of the spoil islands that is a completely different kind that I haven't cut into yet. I'm stoked to have some completely new wood that actually has the potential to be something kinda special...

[ Edited by: pjc5150 2012-07-04 10:13 ]

What do you suppose it is? Oak?

not sure. there's lot of australian pines on the islands...but I suppose it could be oak...

no idea really...anyone???

[ Edited by: pjc5150 2012-07-04 11:19 ]

so I got some new chisels today....some smaller ones for detail work.

and I broke down and bought a little carrier-pouch thingy for my chisels, and it is BELLA APPROVED!

so yeah, anyone have any guesses as to what kind of log that is???

oak? aussie pine? any ideas?

No clue. But I of course have a hard time distinguishing different palms. Nice score on the chisels...def looks like the dog approves.