First time carving a ball and cage! Pic heavy

[neeman]

Eye openers!!

I have been playing around with whittleing pointers for reading from a Scroll.
I am getting some olive wood branches.
If they work I will silver guild them.

 

[General Specific]

Really neat stuff guys. I tried carving several years ago and found that I am pretty deficient at seeing 3 dimensions and pretty damned good at shoving a chisel into my hand repeatedly. I suppose that's why I like knifemaking. I don't have to mental-ate more than 2 dimensions at a time, except on the handles. That said, I think at some point I'm going to have to try the ball in the cage thing. That is just plain cool! Although, perfect spheres have to be one of the hardest things I've ever tried to carve/sand... Nice work, all! Hope to see more!

Regards,

Dave

 

[mycroftt]

Here's some of my stuff. The ball in a cage with chain was the first one I ever did and I was experimenting with the chain links without having any plan or layout, which is why the one in the middle is a type of modified mariners chain link. It's in basswood.

The other ball in a cage is in pine. I'm not sure if it's yellow pine or white pine but I think it's yellow because it was fairly hard. Anyway, it's a piece of 2 x 2 that I selected because of the unusual knot that extends out through three sides and I wanted to work with that. Unfortunately, the heart of it ran straight through the whole length of that corner post and made it difficult to carve. Oh well - next time I'll pay more attention to the whole grain pattern. Lesson learned!

The basswood "ball-in-a-ball" is my favorite piece. I put a lot of work into it. Everybody who sees it immediately picks it up - it's a very tactile piece. I'm pretty proud of it. A co-worker is a master wood turner and he complimented me highly on it.

All the pieces are rubbed with a tung oil finish. You might notice that I never sand out my knife marks as I think they lend the true beauty to the piece. Hand-worked folk art should look hand worked. I sand stuff that I do with my Dremel - they may look more finished but they are the ones I give away. My hand carved pieces are my keepers.

 

[stockman242]

That is amazing carving you've done there mycroftt. :thumbup:
Thanks for showing us these pieces.

Peter

 

[ken erickson]

Its really nice to see some of the work you guys/gals are doing with your slips!

Duckman1 , WOW I really like your decoys! The carving and painting looks wonderful.

Ken

 

[duckman1]

Thanks for the compliments. But that ball in a ball looks harder to carve than a decoy. Great job on that.

 

[fasteddie]

Here's one of mine with the knife I used for most of it. This one hangs over Reese Bose's workbench now. I only work on these when I go camping, so it takes me a long time to finish. No biggie, since I'll just start another one. Just finished one up on a campout this week, and that one is going to the Ole Dawg.

I really like the ball in a round cage. I've been looking for something new to carve, so I think I'll take that on. BTW, I like to carve in Basswood.