Project #28 - Wedding Cake Topper

As the embargo has now been lifted I can finally talk about this.

This past Summer I was honored to be given a task by a very special woman, my daughter, to produce the cake topper for her National Parks themed wedding. Her guidance was that she envisioned something like a trail marker.

As the Wedding was being held in one of our favorite places, Acadia National Park in Maine, the idea of a tree growing over a Geological Survey Marker with trail signs nailed to it formed in my mind and I set to work. This piece like our daughter is a one of a kind. There is symbolism included that maybe only a proud (and maybe a bit sentimental) Daddy would pick up: The tree roots are compass points. Two of the signs point to their home towns (miles are from the Mt. Cadillac summit) and shows where they came from. Their signs are tipped to show their paths merging and traveling forward together.

For the base I used the Cadillac Mountain summit marker disk as inspiration. The disk and roots are carved from a single piece of basswood. The trunk and signs are all separate pieces of basswood and ultimately glued/pegged together for form this single piece standing about 8 inches tall. All pieces are hand carved and the lettering is done with a wood burner. Acrylic washes were used for color and the entire piece coated with a food safe finish.

I truly enjoyed the one of a kind project.

Project #27 - Miniature Grumpy Ol’ Man

This Summer I have been in a bit of a slump with regards to carving. I had a couple “must do” very personal projects which I thoroughly enjoyed doing, but, did add some time pressure that I usually don’t have in my whittling.

Since then I have bounced around with a couple other projects not finishing any of them. Oh, they will get done, but they just have not been holding my interest. There has also been a few upcoming life events that have given us lots of other things to focus.on, our Daughter’s upcoming October wedding to name one. And while we are throwing around the excuses, lets mention the weather. Here in the Northeast we have officially had the 3rd wettest Summer on record, and is seems like more of the rain fell on the weekends! As the camp site has been my favored whittling spot the rain has had a definite impact.

But enough of that!!

I have always worked with small projects, 6 inches on average. An article in the current Woodcarving Illustrated Magazine (Fall 2021, Issue 96) by Karen Scalin on carving miniature figures really intrigued me. The fact that she was able to pack so much character into such a small carving is amazing! I knew I just had to give this a try!!

This little guy is my copy of her example figure from the article. It began life as a 1x1x2 inch block of Bass wood.and about 4 hours later this little walnut-sized guy emerged. The size and detail in this figure required my use of more of my tool collection then any other carve I have done: 3 knives, 2 gouges and 2 V tools. A huge break from the predominantly “one knife” carves of the last several months and I am pretty happy with the results of this first attempt!

I know I am going to need to try a few more of these!

Project #26 - Troll King

Happy Father’s Day!!

The next project in my Flat-Plane style journey is the Troll King from Harley Refsal’s book Carving Flat-Plane Style Caricatures. I roughed this guy out prior to my shoulder surgery but did not have a chance to work further on it. As my daughter had to work this weekend, I spent a few hours at the camp whittling away on it.

Keeping with tradition, only my trusty “Harley” knife was used in the carving. Generally happy with the result, still need a bit more time to smarten up some of the cuts and clean up some “fuzz”.

Project #25 - The Reveal

The Moose is loose! Inspired by James Millar’s Whittling Flat Plane Animals, I whittled this as a gift for my daughter’s National Park themed wedding this coming October in Acadia National Park/Bar Harbor, Maine.

He stands about 6 inches tall and roughly 8 inches in length from a basswood block (had to glue up 2 blocks to get the length I needed…). It is finished with natural (antlers) and dark walnut (moose) danish oils. I really liked the variation in color and shading caused by the basswood’s grain and texture when treated with the dark walnut danish oil.