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3 More Walking Eagles

January 30, 2021 by Bob Easton 4 Comments

photo of 3 walking canes

A few years ago, I made one of these in walnut. Last year, another in cherry for one of my brothers. Now, three more in cherry, two for my other brothers and one for me. We’re all aging and gratefully still fully mobile. The time might come when one of these is handy. As I learned 6 decades ago as a Boy Scout: “Be prepared.”

I have already adjusted mine (far right) for the height I find comfortable. My brothers are about as tall as me; I’ll let them adjust their own. Here’s a useful guide for getting the right length cane.

Today’s temperature in the Peoples Republic of New York started at 15° Fahrenheit, leaving the shop at 36°. My cold tolerance in the shop bottoms out at about 50°. During the recent cold spell, I’ve deferred heavy work (such as hacking out bowls) abandoned the shop, and moved my carving bench and carving tools into a heated room, ideal for the detail carving of these eagles.

detail photo of 3 walking canes

As with earlier walking canes, these are built with a foxed tenon and finished with several coats of Birchwood Casey Tru-Oil gun stock finish.

Filed Under: Woodcarving, Woodworking

Grinling moved

October 15, 2020 by Bob Easton 1 Comment

The Grinling Gibbons Society - Celebrating 300 years of his Life and Legacy

More than a lifetime, 300 years! When we make thing to “last a lifetime,” do we ever imagine them lasting 300 years? Many of Grinling Gibbons carvings have done just that. Next year, 2021, will bring the 300th anniversary of his death, and celebrations are being planned by a newly formed British Grinling Gibbons Society. Those plans aren’t quite online yet, but I’m watching for their announcements and will add them here as soon as they appear.

Bigger and Better

Photo of Grinling Gibbons statue at the V&A Museum

Hannah Phillip, Programme Director of the Grinling Gibbons Tercentenary, contacted me a few months ago while she was getting started planning the tercentenary events. Hearing of the events, I decided to make my previously published Gibbons articles and photos freely available for the Tercentenary.

photo of zooming in 3 steps

So, I’ve moved them from this hobby blog to a new home all their own. I’ve also upped the ante on photo resolution. All of my own photos are available in the full resolutions that come out of the cameras. Yes, we have images of manageable bandwidth on web page articles, but click through to get the full detail. A couple of hundred images from 13 locations exist now, and I’ve reserved space for a couple more locations where Hannah might enable us to take yet more photos … when pandemic travel permits.

Since one of my early goals was to bring more, and larger, photos of Gibbons work into being for all who care about them, all of my photos at the new site are being offered as “Public Domain” under the Creative Commons Zero, CC0, license. The Tercentenary organizers, you, and anyone else can use my photos as you please without license constraints.

Visit the new Grinling Gibbons Photo site.

P.S. In addition to the photos Eva and I managed to capture on two trips to London, I have included articles about modern day woodcarvers who imitate Gibbons in their own unique and beautiful ways: David Esterly, Patrick Damiaens and Alexander Grabovetskiy.

Filed Under: Grinling Gibbons, Woodcarving

Bowl #4

June 24, 2020 by Bob Easton 4 Comments

  • photo - completed bowl
  • photo - completed bowl
  • photo - completed bowl
  • photo - completed bowl - bottom

Ambrosia Maple. Length: about 13″ – Width: about 8 & 1/2″ – Height: about 4″ – Finish: food safe flaxseed oil

This log came from tree maintenance along a wooded road to the South of Lake Welch in Harriman State Part, NY. It was one of the logs I asked about a few months ago. From that query, I learned about the Ambrosia beetle and its habit of burrowing into a tree to establish nesting space. The beetles who inhabited this tree are long gone, but they left their large marks and a few tiny bore holes.

photo - rough shaping

The log rested in a plastic bag for a couple of months before I started on it. By the time I started, it had dried a bit and was as hard as one expects of Maple. I did a lot of the rough shaping using my newly built bowl horse. [ Bowl horse design from David Fisher. ]

I always find it interesting to see how many chips result from carving. Two pics show the bowl. The first is after roughing, with all the chips from that process, and the second is after final carving with those chips. The chips become garden mulch.

  • photo of bowl #4 - work in progress
  • photo - bowl and chips - 2

FWIW. This bowl is, at the time of this posting, currently lost in the mail. I posted it for a destination in Europe while in the midst of lockdown mania. The post office wasn’t aware at that time that mail to Europe was being held at various points along the way. Some European countries were rejecting entry of all mail and have only recently opened their gates. We have yet to discover whether the package actually arrived in Europe, or is being held at a big airport on the U.S. east coast, or … ??? — UPDATE: arrived at its destination after elebenty-seven days in transit.

Filed Under: bowl carving, green woodworking, Woodcarving

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