Shelfie

Hi All,
Sorry I know it's been a couple of weeks since I've done a post but I have been really ill with the cold from hell. I'm getting on for seventy years old and I've had my fair share of colds and never resorted to calling them the flu, I've had the flu and believe me it is twenty times worse than a cold. Anyway, this cold was the worst I've ever had, it lasted almost, 3 weeks so you can tell how bad it was.

Still, I did manage to do a bit of whittling. I wanted to try more figure carving, so I followed a video on youtube made by a carver called Gene Messer. Below is the result and not bad considering he doesn't show any pictures at the beginning, so you have no idea what the finished result is supposed to look like. until you are done. I call the figure "The foreman" miserable as sin and hands in his pockets is what most people think of when you mention a foreman.

If you fancy having a go, here is a link to the video.

I quite enjoyed following the video and I picked up a few tips along the way, and armed with that information I decided to have a go at doing a shelf sitter of my own design. If you are not familiar with the term "shelf sitter," it is just something that sits on the edge of a shelf usually with the legs dangling down. I don't like the term shelf sitter so I called mine a shelfie.

He was carved from a piece of 1.5 inch square lime wood.

I think he looks kind of cute even though his face is a little bit flat. Flat faces are the trade mark of the novice figure carvers, so I've obviously got a lot to learn. I have been surprised by how much help there is on youtube for  those who would like to carve figures. I would recommend it to anybody because it has all the ingredient of a great pastime.

1) Very little equipment is required, a carving knife that cost about £9 and a carving glove that cost a fiver. is all you need to get started. You will need a lump of wood of course but you can start with pine from your nerest DIY shop.

2) It takes up very little space. You can even do it in the lounge if you want to by catching all the shaving on a lap tray. While the weather has been sunny I have been sitting on a chair in the garden whittling away without a care in the world.

3) It is a great hobby for those who want to be creative. You can either follow plans and patterns from books or design something of you own.

4) Your creations can be used to decorate your own home, used for gifts or even sold.

5) Raw materials in the form of Lime wood is relatively cheap especially in small sizes if you get it from a proper timber merchant like G and S timber.

Anyway, it is certainly one of the best hobbies that I have tried and I've tried quite a few.

So what's next? Well I've got a yearning to turn another pen and I've had thoughts about that shelfie. Part of me wants to paint it because I think it might look better, but I'm worried about spoiling it. So I will probably do a similar one and see how it looks when it has been decorated. I will show you them both in my next post.

Quickie

Hi All,
Just a quickie to you know that I have a free book offer running that might be of interest to some of you. The book is called "Carp Rustlers" and is the first in a series featuring, "The fishing Detectives."

Please download a free copy from Amazon and have a good laugh. I hope you enjoy it. To get your free copy just follow this link.

The book will only be free until Saturday 15th of September so why not do it now.

By the way, I've also finished another pen that should have been turned from a piece of holly. The bloke next door knew I did a bit of wood turning, so when he cut down a small holly bush he asked me if I wanted the trunk. You could hardly call it a trunk because it was only about an inch and a half thick at the most. Anyway, I accepted it and promised to make him a pen from it. This was about a year ago, I knew it would be no good doing it straight away because the wood would be too wet and it would crack when it dried out.

Anyway, I left it for about a year and then at the week-end I decided to give it a go. I cut two pieces to be used for pen blanks, turned them down a bit and then drilled the holes for the tubes. At this point I didn't know if the wood would still crack, so I didn't glue the tubes in yet because I didn't want to wast them. I decided I'd wait a couple of days and see what happened. Well I'm glad I did because the very next day one of the blanks had a big split in it.

I know some people get pleasure from turning wet or unseasoned wood, but I'm getting too old to be bothering with wood the splits. So now on it will be season wood only for me.

To rescue the situation, I made a pen from fully seasoned piece of lime.

The black lines are pyrography and the colouring was done with markers. It then had several coats of melamine lacquer. Looks nice enough for me and the bloke next door said he was chuffed with it so everybody is happy. I've been doing a bit more carving and will show you that in my next post.
PS, Don't forget to download the book.

Eggs

Hi all,
Some of you may know that I purchased a lathe so that I could turn my own pieces of wood for my pyrography projects. It has worked out very well but sometimes there is no need to bother with wood turning at all. Recently, my wife ordered some eggs off Amazon with a view to painting them, I said I could turn her some but didn't want to put me to trouble. When the eggs arrived I was amazed at the quality and the price so I nicked one for a bit of pyrography.

I drew on some honeysuckle and set about it with my pyrography iron and it came out well. The price of the eggs was so cheap and certainly not worth me making them on the lathe. Here is the link on Amazon

These eggs are perfect for pyrography and I have decided to do a bowl full of them to sit on our coffee table with a variety of designs. I did another one almost straight away, but this time a drew a random flower pattern on the egg.

I also tried a different pyrography technique. Usually, and in the case of the honeysuckle egg, my process is to draw the flowers and leaves and then outline them with my spoon tipped pyrography iron. I then shade in the rest.

However, for this flower pattern, I didn't bother with outlining and just went straight in with the shading. It is hard to pick up the difference from photos, but in reality it gives a much more pleasing effect. It certainly takes away some of the harshness and leaves the object smooth to the touch. I shall be trying it again soon.

If there is one difficulty with doing pyrography on eggs, it is the finishing part. I like to give mine a couple of coats of melamine lacquer to give them some shine and protection, but they are difficult to hold whilst applying to lacquer. So seeing that I'd decided to do a bowl full of them, I made myself a little jig to make the finishing easier.

Here it is in all its glory. A couple of nails glued into dowels and a frame to support them. It only took about a hour to make and works wonderfully.

All comments welcome.