This is a 24”Sq. made of basswood with a walnut frame around it. When I make a carving like this I will make sample pieces just to make sure the design will work.

This is all made using a knife. In the middle pinwheel area I used three different kind of stippling to get a different kind of affect.

The last phase will be adding a hinged triangular piece on each side of the Sq. that will be carved in each side. My wife said that this should be made into a table top. I asked her if she would put it in our house. She said no. LOL! That’s a normal answer.

I will try and get pictures of the picture in the frame. Sometimes the customers do not want me to take pictures so it a flip of the coin right now.

As you can see I carved the frame unassembled because of its overall size.

The carving time on ths was 7 hours total.

The edge designs 1 1/2 hrs. , Sleds 1 1/2 hrs. , Dates & diamonds 1 1/2 hrs. , Rope 2 1/2 hrs.

The pieces have been sent on to my friend and next week I’ll put the frame together.

I also made several samples of ideas I had for some of the elements in the carving.

After I had my designs decided I the made a sample corner of the frame for the customer to approve. The frame is made of basswood. I am going to have a good friend of mine how is a decorative painter do the glazing finishing on this.

That’s all for now and the next time I should have some pictures of the carving process.

This is the picture that the owner wanted a carved frame for. As you can see by the photo the picture is out of the frame and I was able to take the frame with me so I could make the new frame the proper size for the picture. The new frame will be 3’-6” +- X 6’-6” +- so this is as large a frame I will have did to date.

The customer said that this painting was painted by Admiral Peary’s personal artist while on his trip to the North Pole in 1891. The only request the owner had for the design was to keep with the theme of the North Pole. After extensive research about Peary and his expedition I have discovered that Henson was as much a part of the discovery of the North Pole as Peary so I chose to include him on this frame. I also found that Peary designed and built the sleds that were used on their long journey to the pole so that’s why I used the Peary designed sleds. I thought it would only be fitting to use the globe with the star on top to acknowledge this expeditions destination. I chose to use a rope along the side frames just to tie in the top and bottom frame sections; also rope was a key element to this great accomplishment. Last but not least I added the years that this assault started, 1891, and ended, 1909.

Next time I’ll have samples that I submitted for owner approvial.

I just had to show you the plants that my wife has under our kitchen window.

Thanks for being patient.

If you look closely you can see that the backside has been cut away to give the leaves a 3D appearance.

Because I wasn’t going to be doing the appling of these I layed out the pieces with the Coat of Arms pattern as an example for those who were going to apply them.

There was time limit on these so I was pushed rather quickly. I had a total of 16 hours from start to finish.

The tools I used so far were in a very large range of sizes. Anywhere from #3-10mm to a #9-4mm. I have used the fishtail #3-12mm the most so far.

These are approx. 6 1/2” X 14” each and this time they will be made from poplar wood.

The last blog I didn’t show you my sharpening area which is to the right of where I carve. I have not found any better or quicker way to sharpen my carving tools than with this Jooltool. This is hands down the best I have found. It does struggle with sharpening knife blade a little bit though.

This is after c5 hours of work which includes cutting out the acanthus itself.