It took me longer to carve this Calla Lily because I wanted to get the wrap-around petal and the leaf it sits on to as thin as I possibly can. Well, I got it to about 1 mm over all – with some places showing opaque against the light. It was a lot of fun as well as a challenge to reach the thinness . . . lots and lots of sanding to 600 grit. I did make a ooops on my first try on this design so I was much more careful on this one. As most of my carvings, I did not color this one so that it won’t be mistaken for a resin cast import. It was finished with a wood hardener followed by 3 coats of clear satin lacquer. Oh, no router, laser or CNC are used on my carvings.
As always, critiques are very welcome. Thank you all.

The Iron Chef of Tulsa wanted an award spoon for their annual contest winner. The spoon they wanted will be given to their Chef of the Year for him to keep for one year, until the following year’s contest. I gave them several drawings of spoons from which they picked this one.

They also wanted it to be at least 14 inches which is longer than most spoons. So I lengthened the stem, carved a twist on it and made the top proportionately larger. The design template showed only the front of the spoon, so it was up to me to carve the back of it as I thought it might be. I also added a presentation base so it can be displayed properly.
The wood is Basswood and the base is poplar. The spoon was first treated with a pre-stain conditioner then with 3 coats of Colonial Maple stain. The stain came out blotchy because end grain areas took the stain differently than side grain. Two applications of Minwax paste wax were used as final finishes. The base was made with poplar. After a application of pre-stain conditioner, I rubbed on a coat of Cherry stain and 3 coats of rattle-can lacquer.
The spoon measures 14” long x 1 5/8” wide x 1 ½” thick.
The base measures 7 ¾” x 3 ½” x 8” tall
Your critique are welcome, as always. Thanx

I started carving a block of Basswood measuring 8” X 14 ½” and 2 ¾” thick. The softness of Basswood made it easier to carve than Sycamore (Twists n Turns o Life)– maybe even a bit too soft for comfort. I started it with a frame supporting the tips of the lily, bulb and leaf until almost all the carving was done; then removed it. They now bounce a little – extremely fragile. So I made an acrylic box to protect it.
I reduced the thickness of the flower and the leaf to under 1/8”, somewhere between 1/16 and 3/32 with areas that are opaque against a light. That was a challenge and it was slow going as well as having to support the working area with counter pressure from the opposite side; at times, I felt faint for having to hold my breath doing that!
And for added realism and a little humor, I carved a Lady Bug that ate a hole (I really hated doing that) on the Lily. I did not color this composition because I did not want it to look like just another resin cast made in China. This puppy is made – correction – hand carved in America out of one piece of wood. The bug is the only thing added. I used mostly traditional hand tools on this project. I did use a drill press and a power chisel to remove large areas, but no laser, CNC or router was used. On the advice (thank you, guys) of some of my fellow LJs, I put 5 coats of (rattle-can) lacquer on the composition.
I am elated to tell you that last weekend, I entered this project into the judging contest at the 46th Annual Artistry in Wood Show in Oklahoma City, OK and won a Blue Ribbon!
Thank you for watching.

The slab of sycamore measuring 8” X 14” by 2 5/8” thick was a gift from a friend. My experience with sycamore up to now is limited to seeing the beautiful box that Andy (gfadvm) made. I love the fine and subtle grains in sycamore as it reminds me of the similar grains in ivory. It is harder to carve than basswood; about the same as maple.

I’ve named my sculpture “The Twists & Turns of Life”. You may have noticed that the pot is cracked symbolizing growing up in a dysfunctional family. And as you can see I took a couple of side trips in my life as well as experiencing dual personalities. I am glad that I have re-connected with Heaven in the latter part of my life.

I was extra careful not to accidentally break any of the twists and turns, especially the ends of the lower branches. Yesterday, I applied a coat of Sam Maloof’s Poly/Oil very carefully with a soft brush used in water color painting. After the finish was applied, lo and behold! some flaws showed up. So today I spent most of the day making necessary changes and reapplied the finish. The wood was very thirsty as it darkened the wood quite a bit. I spent a total of 110 hours in carving time, using a scroll saw to cut out the big holes; the rest was done mostly with hand tools, a few power tools such as Proxon Power Carver and a Dremel. ..... finished just in time for my birthday tomorrow for which my sweetheart is taking me to an Indian (India) Festival ! !

The Canada Goose project is finally finished. It shouldn’t have taken two months, but it did . . . no excuses.
Each feather is drawn in with a pencil, knife outlined, then carved to slope down and under the feather in front of it. Then depending on how it turned out, I smooth the rough corners with a rasp then sanded it until I’m satisfied with it. When that was finished, it was ready for woodburning. It did not occur to me that when I burn a feather vane crossing from one piece of wood to the adjacent one, the burn would look different. Even though the heat setting is the same, and pressure and speed are the same through the vane, when the burn crosses onto a different piece of wood, the result was noticeably different. The problem was that it is almost impossible to go back and darken the lighter half of the vane. The only solution, I can think of would be to use one solid chunk of wood instead of bonding several pieces together for the fuselage. I will be trying that on the next bird. In future bird carvings, I am not going to color any of them – not even the white parts. I think most people know what a Cardinal, a Bald Eagle, a Canada Goose, or a pheasant look like so I really don’t need to show them the color of a Red Tail Hawk, do I? The painting cover over the detailed carving which is exactly what sets mine apart from being just another plastic decoy. So, if I get any criticism for the lack of color on the birds, it’s not going to bother me. I decided not to cheapen mine and let them be just another made in China plastic decoy. Mine are all hand carved from wood – feather by feather – in America! I would love to hear from y’all, good or otherwise. Thank you for looking.

Well Folks, It’s almost done. The carving on individual feather was slow going. Then when the carving was done, the woodburning on each feather started. That presented a completely different range of problems and challenges. The body of the goose came bonded with four blocks of basswood 2 ½” wide each running front to back. Apparently each of those four blocks had different densities, grain pattern, age or even origin. So, when I burn a feather vein, crossing over from one block to another, the burn changes to much lighter or much darker. With the dial set almost to 1 and drawing very slowly, the burn could range from no color to very dark! Looking at it, one would guess that heat setting were numbers apart or slow to fast draw! That was enough problem for me to be pulling out the little hair I have left! I ‘m not a novice woodburner, but I had the wood telling me how it’s going to burn!
Another challenge I had not encountered in all my other carvings was compound curves. There is a concave trough, if you will, that runs along the top center of the bird. When carving a feather that runs down into the trough and up the other side, the first challenge is the knife outline. When I carve each feather I’m watching out for grain run, smoothing out all the bumps with micro files and final sanding. Then comes the fun of woodburning those lines down one side and up the other! Oh, not mention having to turn the ten-pound bird upside down at times to get to those almost-impossible-to-reach places. I did run into a few of those impossible to reach places at the tail. Along the way I found all the little misses that had to be corrected too.
All of these challenges will again enter into the carving of a Bald Eagle, on even a larger scale. With that in mind, I am doing another bird, maybe a duck to be sure I am aware of and know how to overcome any problems that I haven’t run into yet. I can tell you that it was more fun carving this goose than I thought possible.
Is my Canada goose a decoy? I wouldn’t call it one. Since I started on this project, I bought several decoys – some quite expensive! – to see how they do it. I also visited a large decoy manufacturer and talked with its owner at length. I learned that mine could not be used to cast plastic decoys for the simple reason that molds cannot go around corners, therefore the carving must be much simpler. All my feathers are carved under the trailing edge from 1/16” to over ¼” deep. My goose is a detailed carving of a water fowl – not a decoy. Therefore I have no plans to paint any of mine with elaborate colors to make them look like plastic decoys.
Thank you all for looking. I do appreciate all your comments good or critical.

My daughter has quite a collection of bird houses but no bird. Recently I came upon a stack of old magazines and saw a line tracing of this pheasant. So I burned this one for her for Christmas. The first eagle was also a line tracing and burned it without detailing the feather. The second Bald Eagle has each feather detailed.

When I posted my Feather Box (project #44005) I received many wonderful comments both posted and PM encouraging me to carve a whole Bald Eagle. Well, I’ve been working on that between set-backs, health issues and my wife’s major surgery – yah, excuses, excuses! At least I got a little progress to report.
To find out if I have what it takes to carve a whole eagle, I started with the claws, since I had a little experience in that area, sort of like starting from the bottom up? So here it is. It was intended to depict two eagles in mid air combat about to lock their claws. I was thinking of one claw higher than the other, but somehow, they turned out about the same height. So rather than calling it Claws in Combat, I thought “Birds of Pray” might be more apropos . . . a little play on words. It looked more like the “praying hands” than fighting claws, don’t you think?
Hope you like it.

With a State-wide burn ban, I’m having a ball burning wood inside! If I had known that wood burning is this much fun , , , well, it’s like if I had known that grand kids are this much fun, I would have had them first ??! I was working up enough confidence to carve a whole bald eagle. Now I am seriously considering burning a life size whole bald eagle ! I just have to find a big enough piece of wood – for the eight-foot wingspan ! Okay, shut up, LittlePaw, you’re paining yourself into a corner!

The temperature here in Oklahoma has stayed over 100 for the past two weeks. Toady is expected to go as high as 110 and the rest of the week doesn’t look any better. And since my shop (two car garage) is uninsulated, I had to move indoors and find something to make in the cool. So here’s my new adventure into wood burning. . . . hope it meets with your approval. I made it out of scrap 1/4” ash plywood. . . by the way it doesn’t burn evenly: the dark areas won’t burn hardly at all, but the light areas, wow, gotta move fast!

I don’t know if you’ve ever caught yourself muttering, “Where is it? I just had it in my hand a minute ago,#%@&? I finally got so tired of it, even though I really tried to put what I just used back where it’s supposed to be. The problem with clamps is that I hadn’t provided one such place for ALL my clamps. So I bought one of those mover’s dollies and just started erecting a rack on top of it. And this is what I ended up with, put together with 1×4 scrap pine from throw away shipping crates.. I never knew I had so many different kinds and sizes; I’m still finding clamps to put on the tree! From now on, I’d just wheel the tree to where I’m working so they would all be close by – to get and to put back! Should’a done it a long time ago.

My admiration for all the beautiful spoons by fellow LJ, particularly Jim Stephenson of NEOWA, was my inspiration to make some of them myself – just to have some fun and to see if I could do it also. All my sporks (spoon on one end and fork on the other – not my invention) were made from scraps: the 1st (posted last week) was a spalted maple left over from one of my canes. The rest were all pine from pallet scraps. Final sanding with Abranet 400 and rubbed with four coats of Danish Oil. Now that I’ve had a lot of fun free-handing these, I think I got sporks out of my system and ready to go on to something else.

Bertha’s lead was enough of a kick in the butt for me to get a caddy built for my wood burning set, the parts of which are everywhere except where I expect ‘em to be. So, starting with a 2×4, I drilled it full of holes, glued a couple of spacers on the bottom of it @ each end so saw dust won’t accumulate in ‘em holes.

In order to attached the base unit to the caddy, I removed the metal cover and drilled two holes so I could attached the unit to the caddy, and probably voided my warranty by drilling the holes.

Next I pre-drilled the holes to accommodate the 1/4” x 2 1/2” lag bolts (and wrapped the screws with elec tape) so I could wind the power cords up when the set is not in use. The next thing I had to do was to attach a strip at each end on the bottom of the caddy to serve as the feet, and then added the round felt pads.

. . . nutt’n fancy – just utilitarian ! ! !

After seeing all the beautifully carved spoons, I got the itch to carve one also. But mine just had to be different, so I combined a spoon with a fork and called it a spork. The first one is carved out of a scrap piece of spalted maple with 4 coats of Danish Oil. The second is pine without any oil because I like the natural grains and color of this spork. It was a lot of fun carving them this weekend . . . hope you like them too :-}

When RoAnn had her major rotator cuff surgery last month, many of our friends from church brought us well prepared and delicious dinners. Now that She is much better and I started to get busy in the shop, I made a couple of vertical bread boxes with slide up doors and general purpose boxes as our token of appreciation. Actually the bread boxes can be used either laying down or standing up. Mine is standing up because it has a much smaller foot print. I used a combination of walnut, poplar, mahogany and pine. I hope they like them.

Of the walking canes I’ve carved, this is my favorite. I named it The Quiet Patriot.
Rather than attaching nicely carved handles to dowels, all my sticks are carved out of a slabs of wood (2” x 6” x 40”), much like a rifle stock. I also put a gentle curve on the shaft so it wouldn’t look like a dowel.
The top third of The Quiet Patriot is the Bald Eagle with her wings wrapped around the cane. The middle third is a shield with flying Old Glory wrapped around it. That’s why the lines are not straight and the stars are not symmetrical. You can see where the red and white stripes are sewn together. I chose not to paint or stain Old Glory so that the beautiful salted maple grains can be seen. I also didn’t feel I had to color our flag because I don’t think there is an American alive that doesn’t know that our flag is Red, White and Blue. The bottom third is rectangular with the front and back saying: “GOD BLESS AMERICA” and “IN GOD WE TRUST”. The left and right sides say: “HOME OF THE FREE” and “BECAUSE OF THE BRAVE”. The words are inlaid with Lapis and Turquoise.

This customer wanted an “unusual” Feather Box to carry her Bald Eagle feather (fans) to Pow Wows. So I thought it would be appropriate to incorporate eagle claws into the design. At first I was going to attach the handle with claws on both ends on top of the lid. Then as I was drawing it, I thought it would be rather unusual to let the talons dig into the lid as if it is holding the lid that way. She liked the claw idea, but when I presented her with the finished box, she was very excited with the claws in the lid. That made me happy also.

The box is made of walnut sides and pine front and back. The lid is walnut with poplar center strip. The handle is carved out of poplar.

I started this banner kick because I wanted a sign over my shop (really my garage) saying PAW’s Man Cave or something as corny. I made two with scrap 2×6 pine boards, one quite a bit larger than the second. Then my wife wanted one for her sewing room, but wanted something exotic and femanine like lace wood. So I made her a narrower one so it’ll look more like a ribbon. I thought “inlaying” the letters with crushed Lapis, Turquoise or Metalic Aqua might look nice. Thus the scrap piece with the three trial runs. I’m leaning more towards the middle one which is turquoise. What do you think?

Discovering a Trout Stream

Guide Notes: Shimmering stripes of the Tiger Maple simulate the ripples of the crystal clear stream The Light Spalting of the tiger maple resemble the Trout in the stream Hidden in the current is an ancient Chinese word for “water” A turtle napping on a rock

A Trout Stream

Gushing, churning, full of life
The origin of flow Spirals down
From the top of the mountain
What used to be icy, still, frozen
Is now a force

In the beginning it speeds
Gathering strength as it goes
Then as the mountain slopes
So too does the creek slow
Settling into its new life

The creek is no longer a destructive force
But a pure, life sustaining Stream
The Trout that move beneath its surface
The Tiger Maple that drinks from its shore
Know the power of the Stream

A power greater than brute force
Flow that smooths rough edges
Its Crystal Clear Ripples dance for the world
It is life, it is happiness, it is Fluidity.

After reading the contest rule, I went into my shop and looked through several hundred pieces of new and scrap wood. A slab of lightly Spalted Tiger Maple caught my eyes. Lengthwise, the grains and the spalting “flowed” from the top of one side, gently to the other side and back to the original side at the other tip.

This “flow” pattern reminded me of a trout stream with crystal clear water dancing and shimmering through the pebbles and rocks. So, I incorporated a spiraling scroll at the top (the handle) to simulate the origin of the stream high up in the mountain.

Because of the length needed to show fluidity, I decided to make a walking cane with rocks, pebbles, a turtle napping in the sun and inlaid the flow with crushed lapis. I purposely left the lapis “raised” as opposed to grinding and polished them flush with the wood.

When I finished carving it, I hand rubbed four coats of Sam Maloof’s Poly/Oil Finish over four days. Then I hand rubbed two coats of Minwax Paste Finishing Wax to seal in the Poly/Oil. I hand rubbed both the poly/oil and the finishing wax was to allow maximum absorption into the wood. When the wood had absorbed all it could, there was very little left to be wiped off and buffed.

Thank you for viewing – I hope you like it.

I finished this a while back, but since I haven’t hunted in a while, I kinda forgot about it. I put a rosewood fore end with a spacer and carved it to resemble a violin (fiddleback). I also finished the full recurve pistol grip with a rosewood cap and an extra high Monte Carlo cheek piece. I have since given it to my oldest son as his wedding gift . . . something he really wanted because, as he said, “My dad made it”