Finished Trapper

Here he is, all dressed in his Sunday best. After burnishing the carving, I applied a coat of 50/50 mixture boiled linseed oil and mineral spirits. Then applied three light coats of Deft Satin Lacquer. Next a wash of acrylic burnt umber to the hair and beard. Then sprayed one coat of a Krylon Matte Finish to tone down the shine and seal the wash. After drying I applied a layer of Howard's Feed & Wax. I still need to make a base, I think he'll look good on a piece of walnut.

New Trapper Pics

Here are updated pics of my latest carving.
Still have some clean up to do on him, and then he'll be ready for finishing.

Trapper Update

Had some time to work on my latest carving. Still a long way to go, but it's comin' around.

Trapper

This is what I am currently carving, a John Burke pattern from his 'Carving America's Legends Volume II.  It is a rendition of a French-Canadian trapper. I started by transferring the pattern to a 4" X  6" basswood block and cutting out on the band-saw. Roughed out with mallet tools, it is starting to take shape.

Cookies For Me

Every Christmas I carve a Santa for the wife. This past Christmas see decided she wanted a Mrs. Claus carving. So I came up with this scene. Combining two of my favorite things, Christmas and cookies. Come to think of it Christmas cookies are another one of my favorites.

Walnut Cowboy

This one is hand carved, a chunk of walnut from the firewood pile.
Hard to carve, but a great finish.

Kid Rojo

Here is my recent attempt at caricature carving. Carved from basswood and mounted on a red oak base.

First Post

This is the first post of my new blog. I want to start by showing some of my completed carvings. I took a class with Vic Hood in Springfield Missouri in 2011, where I started this carving. I usually don't keep track of  the time spent on a carving. However I did this one, 200 hours. It was carved from a butternut log.

Work in progress