My fourth take on bible carved from a solid piece of koa wood. Dimensions are aprox 22”x14”x3”. I felled and milled this tree from a neighbor’s ranch. The detail is hand-carved, and the pyrography done with a Nibsburner 1315 Woodburning System. The finish is hand sanded to 1500g and sealed with oil and wax.

This is the third of several of these I’m making w/ matching koa stands. The lumber is koa from trees I’ve harvested and milled locally myself. This carving is done by hand using various tools, but chiefly with chisels. The book is carved from a solid piece of koa that measured 3”x13”x20”.

Lord’s Prayer in hawaiian and english – caligraphy is hand written with a wood-burning stylus

This stand consists of curly koa milled from the same lot. Since this was from a tree I felled/ milled myself, I could exercise discretion on the lumber sizes – hence the 1”x14” panel you see here.

The finish, is done with an initial sanding to 1500grit – danish oil, followed by several coats of lacquer which is then sanded, polished, waxed and buffed. The effect is that of a glassed finish

Fastening was acomplished w/ brass finish screws which ride in cut slots (to allow for seasonal lateral expansion of the members).

In response to some inevitable end-grain checking, some butterfly pegs were inlayed along the fractures, effectively arresting any further splitting. An interesting side effect to this is a switching contrasting of color depending on which perspective they’re viewed from. Pictured here, the inlays are darker than the field, but they can also be seen as blonde in contrast.

This floor medallion measures 24” in diameter and consists of 74 full-thickness (3/8”) edge-glued pieces, and was installed in an oak floor. I was sent some drops of the same floor to use for the background field. Design species: curly koa, curled mango, and scaled macnut.

This piece was done as a memorial to David Michael Langhans, and given to his family. It is entirely hand carved in ohia wood, locally salvaged. This was my first work in this species of wood. It’s very hard, and after a couple blisters, I invested in some finer sharpening surfaces to give my chisels razor sharp cutting edges. The upper detail remains unsanded (carve-to-finish) with the rest hand sanded. The finish is oil and wax.

This was a commissioned piece, dimensioned roughly 24”x16”. The wood used was hawaiian koa, salvaged locally from a milling slash pile. Roughing was done with an angle grinder w/flap sanding disk, and detail was done w/ files and chisels. After hand sanding, the finish consisted of danish oil and lacquer.