Beiträge von Brian Thair

Welcome. I will enjoy seeing your carvings.

Very good relief carving and I like the design, also.

Sheets of 3M fine automotive finishing wet and dry sandpapers and a cardboard strop.

I buy each in a package of 10 sheets. Might last my lifetime now.

600, 800, 1,000, 1,200 and 1,500 grits are adequate. A block of Chromium Oxide green for honing compound.

I bought a big 6 speed wheel grinder. I have not taken it out of the box in a year.

I can shape the papers around metal tubes and wooden dowels to sharpen all my crooked knives.

I wrap them around a tennis ball to sharpen my adzes.

The quality of the details makes many different things to look at.

What is the wood? What is the finish?

I use olive oil on all 70 spoons and 30 forks that I carved. It is baked into the surface and never goes rancid or washes out.

For a bowl such as you have carved, I would use beeswax and a very high friction polish to heat the wax, to melt it into the wood.

Keep your work covered with plastic and maybe a wet sponge in there for humidity.

For most all of my wood carvings, I must keep a pencil center line on the wood

until the very end. I am constantly measuring away from that line to the features of the carving.

Many masks and bowls are carved here in the Pacific Northwest without cracking.

The best species are Alder (Alnus viridis) and Yellow Cedar (Chamycyparis nootkatensis).

The biggest of the feast dishes are carved from large pieces of western red cedar (Thuja plicata).

First, split the log. The void of the bowl/hollow back of the mask to be hollowed out must face the center of the log.

This relieves some the stress of shrinkage.

Next, keep the wood wet for the carving process. This helps before you get all the wood to the right shape.

Some carvers use a plastic bag with wet wood shavings, some have a big container of water and a rock to

hold the carving submerged.

Here is another much better carving of another Haida part of their legendary belief.

This is very big, 140+ pieces of nearly perfect wood. The original carving is no bigger than a grapefruit.

https://moa.ubc.ca/2020/01/the…conception-to-completion/

After a time, Raven realizes that he is able to see his own reflection in the water.

This carving is nearly 60 cm tall.

There are two other possible carvings in this series but I have not seen them in the wood so far.

Here, you can see that Raven has put 6 stars back in the night sky. Also, Raven has put the moon in the sky.

Raven is carrying the hot sun in his beak, squinting in the light and flames. This will go at the top of the night sky.

There are many other symbolic features in this carving which are hard to see wit the black paint. The ruler is 15cm.

For many years, I have read the stories which are parts of the Haida Frist Nation legendary belief of Creation.

These are shared with the Tlingit and Tsimshian people on the mainland. As you might imagine, the stories change a lot with fine details.

The central stories are all the same.

I carve what I see in the wood. I can do it only if it is there. So I have many piles of wood, posts and blocks, indoors and outside.

The Ravens are my constant winter companions. I feed them when it is colder than -20C ( several nights this week of -35C).

I was carving Ravens in western red cedar when I understood that I could show parts of the Legendary Belief of Creation.

I get an idea for a carving then look for the wood that it might be in. Maybe in minutes, maybe in years.

Ravens are very intelligent birds and occupy a high place in the First Nations cultures of the Pacific Northwest.

Raven can move from the natural to the supernatural very easily.

== = =

In the Beginning, it is dark. Raven has to walk everywhere like everybody else. It is too dangerous to try to fly.

After a time, Raven learns that all the light in the world is kept in a hidden box by "The Old One Who Walks Everywhere."

Raven plays many tricks and learns where the box is hidden. Raven steals the box of light.

There's a difference in color and carving quality between bass wood (Tilia) from the northern United States and wood from the southern United States.

The best and most popular source is Heineke. I don't ever carve bass wood so I have no link. Sorry.

Welcome from the western Rockies in Canada.

Keep your work shop warm. It was -35C here again this morning.

My tools and carvings are in the Showcase.

Very nice carving. Bigger pictures would be better next time.

Each bright and dark = one annual growth ring. Those woods are best to carve with 15-40 growth rings in 25mm wood.

I like to carve dishes. Yours are very good. Carve more of them!

I use Microsoft Translator but it does not work for me to post German. Sorry.

There are no Eskimos. Those people are Inuit. Their basic language is Inuktitut. Eskimo is a poor nickname.

Any fine-grained wood which is too difficult for comfortable carving with gouges and knives.

Ebony, Iron-wood, Tagua nuts cut like gem stones.

Serpentine and Alabaster, even Steatite soap stone would be a lot of fun with a Dremel.

I use folded sand papers to 1,500 grit and CrOx/AlOx on the edge of leather for honing.

I read that there are several different species of Siberian Tilia sp.

The trees are not common so the wood must be expensive.

I would try local woods such as beech (Fagus sylvatica).

Conifer woods are very common but split easily. Always look at the count of annual rings

15-30/25mm is good. Less is too soft, more is hard but can be carved.

I have been carving conifer woods for about 20 years now. I can stop before they split!

If you can rub it off with your thumb, it is mold. I expect that you will carve it away so do nothing more.

If you want to clean it up and kill the mold, find some chlorine washing bleach.

Mix 1 part bleach with 9 parts water. This is used to sterilize biology laboratory benches and tools.

It kills everything, HIV included.

Just paint it on and let it dry, the chlorine will evaporate.

I have some big pieces of willow (Salix sp.) that had mold as they dried. Bleach killed everything.