[William]

This is one of the book ends for my growing collection of carving books...hummmmm..half the books in the side vew have a fox on them!, I'm not sure what the other end will be but it will also have a natural wood finish.This carving was a free-hand carving using a few pictures for the face detail and it's 11.5" tall, 8.5" wide, 4" thick with a flat back and is made from one block of white cedar and two blocks of red cedar (from a dead tree found in a woods nearby) it's finished with one coat of sanding sealer and 3 coats of DEFT satin clear.

I've never used my claw hammer on a carving before but it works great with cedar, most of the finish carving was done with a gouge, "Kulis Karvit" two part epoxy was used to hide the glue joint and trim the red cedar.The blocks were glued using Devcon 5 minute epoxy mostly because the odd shape blocks would make it hard to clamp, you just hold them togeather for a few minutes and thats it.I drilled a hole in one block and put a screw in the hole with the head sticking out about 1/2" and drilled a hole larger than the screw head in the other block and also filled them with epoxy when I glued the blocks togeather but I'm not sure the screw was necassary because the epoxy makes a really strong bond but it was only done on the red cedar blocks.

The color in the red cedar really jumped out when the sanding sealer touched the wood, it's one of the most beautiful and easiest wood's I've worked with so far AND IT WAS FREE! This was approximately a 15 hour carving project and now that it's finished and I can see the natural wood color I wish I had done a better job on the carving and made it a full depth bust with a base...note to self: [think ahead Bill!]. I have enough red cedar left to do another bust but the two blocks will not complement each other the way these two did. The red cedar has several natural drying cracks and dark spots but I think they add a little character to the wood and don't really take away from the overall look.

Bill
^v^

[Toffeeliz]

gorgeous piece! I love the detail in it - I have some cedar that I'm carving at the moment, when I was telling someone I know who carves, he said to be careful of the grain becuase it was even looser that pine. I'm having trouble when I hammer at it, but with a hand and chisel its fine, so the claw hammer anecdote surprises me. Is american cedar better than english I wonder?

the mouth is particualrly impressive, and the colour is beautiful consider me blown over!

[William]

Thank you for the kind words Toffeeliz, I've only used cedar for decoys up until now but this was a fun project and I really like the look of this wood. You are right about being careful with it, I started with a tree section cut in firewood length and worked it down to a block with the hammer but I couldn't get too close to the final shape before switching to my carving tools

Bill
^v^