The Snowy owl

The Snowy Owl has been the object of attention over the last couple of weeks.

I decided to give it a smooth coat, and this has been quite a challenge given the nature of the interlocked grain. So having got the surface as smooth as I could with very sharp gouges, I resorted to medium grit garnet paper to get rid of the odd blemishes.



Of course a beak is going to have to be added, and i still have to prepare the wood for that!

Approx 12 hours

Owl Started

Over the last couple of weeks I've managed to find the time to finish the Beaver.

There were several options when it came to the eyes, but in the end I chose a fairly tight and deep design, which I've seen used on several totems.

I decided to leave the platform that separates the figures until I finish all the creatures, and do the final cuts.



So now I've started on the Snowy Owl ....going above the Beaver ....
... Lots of examples here, so I've chosen a fairly simple version which will fit with the story quite well.

The picture on the right is the total so far. Above all this will go the Parrot!


Approx 8 hrs

The Beaver matures

I have managed several short sessions during the last couple of weeks, but hours are at a premium at the moment, so progress has been rather slow.

The photo shows that the shaping of the Beaver is now mostly complete, as is some of the finishing. Just the legs, ears and eyes to do.

Today I took the pole to the Portsmouth Grammar School where the Guild meet every couple of weeks to have a "carve-in". The school workshop is used by about 20 Guild members, each working on their own project.

Approx 11 hours

Starting the Beaver at Marwell

After a short break away and tackling a rather urgent commission I resumed work on the Pole today. I joined the Solent Guild which was exhibiting and demonstrating at Marwell Park, and the Bear certainly attracted a lot of interest.


The Beaver was measured out and aligned so that initial roughing cuts could be made in the right place. The tip of the nose is one of the high spots so I relieved that and then found the contours of the eyebrows.
The next high point is the bottom of the two front teeth so it was quite easy to shape them down into the mouth, and this enabled the contours of the mouth to be set.
The two rounds each side of the nose are not eyes! But they are rather stylized whiskers.



Approx 3.5 hours

The Bear is Done!

Over the last couple of days, I have concentrated on finishing the main carving of the bear, and I'm quite happy that it looks pretty well in keeping with the various 'originals' that I have seen. This view shows the contours taken round the sides. They are not taken all the way round the back because the intention is to mount the finished pole against a wall or other support.

As can be see from both these photos, the surfaces tend to get fairly dirty looking. This is mostly because the wood tends to stain the hands while working, rather like oak does. This can easily get transferred back to the surfaces. Luckily these can be cleaned with Methylated Spirit.

Some of the surfaces may need a bit more refining and smoothing, but this will be better done after all the other subjects are brought to the same level.

The next job will be to plan and rough out the shape of the Beaver. But other priorities will mean little progress here for a week or so.

Approx 7 hours (so about 25 hours total on the Bear)

The Bear's Left side

Yesterday and today, (so far) I have been working on refining the front claws holding the fish and extending the left paw round the side. This meant turning the pole onto its side and the work quickly ran into the back left leg and paw. So here is the area roughed out.
It became obvious that the rest of the left side of the bear should be shaped so as to solve some of the lines and contours coming round fom the front.

I did not have an exact prototype for the side of the bear, but remembered seeing several in Canada which, similar to the Beaver, showed the animal sitting on its haunches. The head is normally of a much larger scale than the body. I took the shaping up to the crown, but not above it as I haven't yet decided what the boundary between the Bear and Beaver will look like.

The surfaces were smoothed as much as possible. In some areas this was frustratingly difficult due to the close interlocking of the grain.When I got it to this stage, I decided it was time to start on the other side in case this threw up any inconsistencies which needed adjustments on the first side.

7.25 Hours

Bear's Teeth !

My time on the project today was spent defining and 'extracting' the Bear's teeth. They shouldn't bee too regular, I decided, and the exposed tongue is of equal importance in the mouth.

The Bear is also usually shown holding a fish. And although this wasn't in our prototype, I decided it would be fun to include one. So here you can see the fish outlined and the start of the rather indicative paws holding it.

Approx 3 hours
BTW I use a stopwatch to get some idea of how long I spend on any project like this. Of course sometimes I orget to start it, or forget to turn it off when I get an interruption, but generally the timings are good enough.

Southwick Show

Today I joined with my fellow Guild members to exhibit and demonstrate carving at the Southwick Village Show. The weather was beautiful, sunny and warm with just a gentle breeze to keep things reasonably cool.

I took the Totem pole and here you see it set up ready to start.



Here you can see some of my colleagues and our exhibition.



As always at these events we spend a lot of time talking to the visitors, so only a limited amount of carving actually gets done. However I did manage to rough out the mouth, exposing the tongue, and starting to define the level of the teeth.



Approx 1.5 hours

The Bear's Eyes.

Today I have shaped the Bear's nose and eyes. Had some trouble with interlocked grain through and under the left eye, but providing I approach this from the correct angles the gain can be controlled.Although the eyes have been shaped, rounded and smoothed, I have not given them 'sight'. I adhere to the idea believed by many other carvers, that giving sight to a figurative carving should be the last thing you do, (if it is done at all !)


3.5 hours

Shaping and Starting the Bear

The first task with the Idigbo length was to remove the front corners. As the piece is rectangular rather than square in cross-section I decided to leave the back flat with just a small amount of rounding. I also decided that I could use the whole width near the front to accommodate the Beaver's stick, so marked off that area so as not to remove it.

I cross cut the corners at the marked limits of the Beaver's stick, and then set the band saw a 45 degrees and removed the corners.

I then decided to start carving the Bear, as this is at the bottom of the pole.



This shows the area left for the 'stick', the top corners removed and the beginning of the carving of the Bear's crown.

2 hours

A New Start?

Today I found a length of Idigbo which I decided would satisfy the requirement. It is not quite as long as the original, but I decided that it could be mounted on some sort of plinth, which would lift it off the ground.



Idigbo is a yellowish hardwood from the Idigbo Tree (Terminalia Ivorensis), native to the west coast of Africa. It has a rather interlocked grain. This does mean some difficulties with the direction of cut. The wood contains a dye which may stain other materials when wet; it also contains tannin which causes staining when in contact with iron under moist conditions. We must take this into account when planning the mounting etc.

I have calculated the size and separation of the animals.

1 hour

The Pole at Titchfield

Today I took the pole to Titchfield where I was demonstrating with the Solent Guild at the Fareham Model Engineers open day.

I worked on the beaver for a while but as I started to put in more of the detail it became apparent that because of the dry cracked nature of the surface, it was going to be very difficult to stop it breaking up as I carved it. Other members of the Guild also thought that it was going to be unlikely that a decent finish would be possible.

Also I realized that two faults which I had originally thought to be surface damage, were in fact caused by large embedded nails.

I decided to find an alternative which would be more satisfactory.

2.5 Hours

Starting the Beaver

I decided to start on one of the more complicated animals today. The beaver is very stylized on Totems. They are characterized by their two long front teeth and they are always holding a stick. The children had depicted this in paint but I had to think how to carve it.

I found this picture of a Totem Beaver, and decided to base my work on it.



I blew the picture up to the size needed and then copied the basic shapes freehand onto the surface. This surface will definitely cause problems if I try to put in very much fine detail, so providing the basic shapes are there, the detail may have to be painted.

I started on the eyes and nose because they are the parts that 'fix' other details.
This is as far as I got today:



Approx 1.5 hours

Continuing the Owl

More or less completed shaping the Owl today.

Continued with the rounding, top and bottom, taking it around most of the back.

I decided rather than just painting on the beak, it would be preferable to add a sculpted beak, so I flattened the shape on the front of the pole so that the beak can be fixed on later.

At the end of the day, the Owl looked like this:



Approx 1 hour

Owl Shaping

Having got the pole now installed in my home work area, my conservatory, I had to decide where to start the figure shaping. I had noticed that some of the surface is rather unstable due to weathering and splitting, so decided to start on the simplest shape - the Snowy Owl.

At the school I had showed some of the children how to find the best part of the pole to be the front face, and had marked all down this with a pencil. In fact we had also marked the eyes or the Owl and I had demonstrated how these were hollowed.

Today I continued to take these out and deepened the pupils. I then started rounding the owl's shape, deepening the dividing incisions as the rounding got deeper.

Approx 2 hours.

Second School Visit

For my second visit to the school, I took just the few tools that I thought we would need to complete the initial carving. I set the post up as before and got the children to complete the initial incisions that we had started the week before.

Here is one 'apprentice' hard at work:



I then took individual pictures of parts of the original pole so that I could work on carving them at home.

The Original Painted Pole

This is a picture of the original Totem Pole designed and painted by the children.

It tells their own story based on some of the traditional animals depicted in North American Totem poles. At the bottom is a Bear, then a Beaver, above which is a Snowy Owl. The whole being topped by a Parrot.

The basis is a garden post with added 'wings'. It was painted with poster paints and sealed.

First School Visit

I spent a couple of hours at the school this afternoon. There are about 25 children in the class, aged between 9 and 11. I was shown the Totem Pole they had painted and they told me the story that it depicted. We talked a little about the different types of Totems and where they came from. It was obvious that they had done considerable background work on the subject.

I then showed them some of the tools of the carver's trade, the gouges, chisels, mallets, etc. and described how they are used.

I got some of them to have a go at cutting a few pieces of scrap wood, but fairly soon we decided that it would be nice if we could start on the actual pole itself. This is a garden post 1300mm long and 115mm in diameter. It is a fairly rough weathered pine post with several knots and quite a lot of surface splitting.

I decided that we could incise a separator line between each of the four animals, so having got some of the children to compare the new post with their painted pole we pencil marked where the cuts should be.

I mounted the post on a sturdy table, using a 'Jobber' and a cramp. Although this was a bit low for me, it was a suitable height for the children.

Each child successfully carved a small section of the encircling incisions needed, using a large flat (No 3) Gouge and a mallet. Meanwhile the rest of the children did some modeling of the animals in plasticine.

The first incisions:

At the end of the session I agreed with the teacher that it would be nice if we could carry on with the project. I agreed to come into the school again the following week, and then to continue working on the pole during the summer break, with the intention to have it finished in time for the School's centenary in October.

Start of the Carving Project

The 'Solent Guild of Woodcarvers and Sculptors' received an email from a teacher at Milton Park Junior School asking if there was anyone who might be able to spend some time showing the children how a Totem Pole was carved.

The class had been studying North American First Nation People for a project and had painted a Totem Pole, depicting a story involving a Bear, a Beaver, an Owl and a Parrot.

I agreed to go to the school and show how a carved totem pole might be made.