The Girl with Wind in her Hair. Tree Carving day 3.

I originally was going to only work on her for a couple of hours, but ended up working for about 4. It seems with only 4 hours of carving, you just don't get as much done as when I was spending 8. ( makes sense!) Anyway, It snowed and snowed. They said only 1 inch but now there is at least 4 on the ground! I had nothing better to do, so I set up a small tent and chipped away through the dark and snow. I worked on her nose mostly. I always seem to make the face flat. But my last one turned out pretty good because I made the nose stick out more than ever before. Hopefully as I sink the face in, this one will work out just as well. Also something I want to experiment with this one that I have never done before. I want to put her hair blowing across her face! I'm kind of excited about this! Having never done this before, I want to be sure to leave a lot of excess wood on her face so I have something to work with. And finally: My tools for the day. A few additions to the mix, but mostly I stuck to the rough out ones. I know the pics are crappy, but it's still early in the carving. And I have not made the huge strides like I did with the last one at each posting. Enjoy!

The Moment you have All Been Waiting For!

The finished pics of the Wood elf. Cheryl and I just posted the entry in the woodcraft contest. Wish us luck! There are a lot of really great carvings on the gallery already. I have sized up the competition and feel like I have a handful of serious competitors. However, you just never know with judges. The carvings range from full 3-d carvings to love spoons and everything in between. Well here are the five final pics that we chose to enter. We took several dozen! but ended up with these. We didn't get a good pic of the hands, or chest, but you can still see them in the full body shots. It would have been cool to show off more, but the entry only calls for five pics max. I guess you have to put a limit somewhere. Enjoy! With that out of the way, I may get started on my next masterpiece. I'm not sure if she should be a compliment to the last one or something completely different. Who knows! At the very least she will most likely be female.

Wood Elf Finish Finished!

Well, over the past couple of days I have been slowly finishing the wood elf and now she is done! We are planning on taking some "good" pics of her hopefully tomorrow. So here is what I did: Three coats of Danish oil ( sanding between coats) then I used Minwax wax for the wonderful luster that only wax seems to be able to bring out. Now I will admit here that I got a little zealous and kinda put too much wax on. You see, I melted it and painted her so that the wax could penetrate all those little nooks and Crannies. Imagine my horror when it cooled, hardened and made her look like a giant candle! I immediately set to trying to remove the bulk of the wax and two days later...if got most of it off. The good news is that she should now be pretty waterproof! ( for a while anyway, until the wax wears off) Another nice thing is that she remains touchable! Wood is so much better if you can touch it and feel the wood instead of a polyurethane finish. I spent the remainder of the night sharpening the chisels. A couple needed some serious work. But most just needed a little honing on the buff wheel. I'm probably bad for waiting until the project is over to completely resharpen the chisels, but what a pain to constantly having to drop everything just to regrind a chisel. Well, they are all nice and sharp once more. Ready for the next project!

Finishing the wood Elf. Day one. Mixed emotions

After reading a the comments in the previous posts, and with some added comments from my wife. I really don't know what I should think about the project at this point. Well lets start off with what I have done so far. I tried Danish oil natural for the first time because I saw someones carving treated with that and it looked pretty good. I'm not sure. but it looks, smells, and acts a lot like tung oil. After one application here are the results. One of the factors that made me choose it was that it bragged that it penetrated the wood then hardened forming a nice moisture barrier. I'm no fool and I realize that there is no perfect finish, but I thought this would be interesting to try out. Since the log was a green log, it still has some moisture inside. Along with all that tanic acid. I'm not sure if it can be done, but I wanted to see if I could keep the moisture inside as well as protecting it on the outside. Regardless! It doesn't look too bad at the moment. It might be difficult to see in the light, but the color is a mild warm tan/ light brown ( the color of natural oak) Cheryl likes it and wants to submit these pics to the contest. but I had some plans on the color pallet to paint her. Then there is the issue of putting a second coat on her. The first absorbed pretty fast and there was not much need to wipe off any excess. Also the natural finish will not cover up the "blackened" areas ( knots, and black spots) that I could not sand away. Ah well. I shouldn't vent on the blog. Just voicing all my thoughts seems to help since I will make the decision eventually anyway.

Wood Elf day 18, Can we finish now?

After an additional 4 hours of sanding, I now declare she is ready for the finishing part. Cheryl wants me to just stain/ tung oil / linseed oil her up and call it good. However, I have just stained oak before and I did not think it was as great as it could have been. The grain is a problem, and in the case of an entire log like this, the sap wood and the heart wood contrast a little too much. Bottom line I would rather paint her. They painted the old ship figure heads in olden days, so that is what I'm striving for. But enough yap...Here are some close ups of the final figure with out any finish, oil, or paint on her. It kinda makes her look like she is made out of marble. Kinda cool, but eventually the wood will darken over time and lose that white powder look.

Wood Elf Day 17 More sanding.. so that is what those files are for..

Continuing on the sanding note I spent about 7 hours sanding about 2/3 of her. I'm sure it could be one of those jobs that is never quite finished. I have set for myself this standard: Sand it to the touch! Meaning that it should feel nice and smooth when you run your hand over it. So for the time being, I have been using every small sanding tactic at my disposal. I power sand when I can, but for most of the little detail, I just have to wrap a small piece of sand paper around my fingers and work at it. I have added a little detail to the jewelry on her head and ear. And I found the true purpose of those little files I bought several months back from Woodcraft. I thought they were not very effective as files for smoothing out wood, However, they seem to work really well for removing the small wood fibers under the leaves and between the fingers. Knowing this, I wish I had bought the rasps instead of the files for a little more aggressive wood removal. Anyway. there really is not any way to show much progress with pics, so i just snapped a few to post. Enjoy!