Carved Wonders

An arborist told Tom that this was the largest red elm he had ever seen in Texas.

Here's a picture of my cute niece Juliet, to illustrate the size of the log. This log is small for carvers in other parts of the country but for me a rare find.

I cut and sealed 6' logs and left them in Tom's yard for about a year before carving them. Then I took a mid-sized log and cut it on diagonal from top to bottom and carved a familiar subject just to get a feel for how red elm carved. This piece sold immediately to a man named Patrick, from Dallas, the first person that saw him. I still have the other half, and might make a flying pelican or a heron later, we'll see...

Tom is a unique character with a vivid imagination and tastes that range from homebrewing to martial arts to quilting. He wanted to do something unusual with the trunk of the tree. We dug around the base and I carved a giant lizard emerging from the gound to entertain the kiddies. Here's one on top of the lizard, holding one of his homebrewed beers!

That's my brother Bill and me standing up a partially carved log. At this point you just can't tell what it will be, but maybe a horse? Since I have no heavy equiment for moving logs I had to rely on levers and brute force. What preceded this shot was me using my biggest chainsaw, plunging it into the horizontal log, whacking away large chunks of wood, rotating the log, wedging it in place and removing more wood to reduce the weight so it could be stood on end. I've never carved a full horse before so this is the first challenging piece I wanted to make. I had to visualize the new subject, then see it horizontal, then not cut away any essential wood and screw up the subject. THAT was challenging!

My friend Bruce helped me haul the horse to my property and I need a picture of him here.

We hauled the partially finished horse from Tom's yard in Murphy to mine in Pottsboro, where he continued to take shape between 2011 snowstorms.

I carved and carved until everything that wasn't a horse was sawdust. I repaired an area on his neck where there was a large hole and some damaged wood. Then  I burned, sanded (sanded, sanded), stained, and varnished and here he is! He is all finished with one exception: the light area at the base is reserved for the name or brand of the next owner. No hurry, I get great enjoyment displaying him on my front deck. I'm calling him "Young Gun" because he's a lean, muscular wild colt. 

Here's me for scale - Young Gun is 6 feet tall.