Hits and misses

Kudos to halfeagle.com one of the coolest list of Scouter blogs I have ever seen. Also a great blog called Scoutmaster with good information and podcasts that I am looking forward to listening to when I get home. (On vacation right now and have a slide I am going to make based on a large one I saw here but more on that in another post.) I would recommend these sites to all scouts and scouters.

Misses? "Where did your site go?" asked my sister-in-law today me today. Huh? For some reason my site was removed for a time today but hopefully will stay up and I haven't broken a "terms of service" rule.

Diving Eagle

Early to Mid April 2010
Time to carve: 4 hours
Finishing: 1 hour

At 7 1/2 inches this is the largest slide I have carved to date. (Actually the Giant Titanus Beetle is larger but that is just because of the antennas.) Carved from maple (yeah, I am on a maple kick)for its strength, this slide took quite a while to carve. I roughed it out on the bandsaw but even with this advantage, there was a lot of wood that had to be removed by hand before I could begin shaping the slide. Going forward, the wings needed to take on an elongated oval shape and

my knife didn't perform this task very well. The best way I found was to use sandpaper to shape the way I wanted. The feet had to be carefully carved as not to break off any of the parts. When finally finished carving and sanding I set forth painting this piece. I made one change from the original pattern when it came to the color scheme. The beak and the feet were suppose to be a cream color but when I painted them that color it just didn't look right. My wife has been following a live web cam of the birth of several Bald Eagles so I asked her what color they should be and went with it. (She's so smart.) A couple of coats of poly finish it off.

I like this slide so much, I going to save this till our next eagle ceremony and wear it then.

Hungry Frog

Late Late March - Early April 2010

Time to carve: 4 hours
Finishing: 1 hour

I like slides, sometimes, that don't require a loop to be attached to the back of it. The neckerchief simply passes through the body of the slide. Why? Well these slides tend to be a bit more tricky to carve and the Hungry Frog is a good example of this. Made from maple, for strength, the hole in the center is not straight through but take a curve following the curve of the back of the frog.

I hated to paint this one once it was sanded because it was such a great looking natural wood slide but it would be hard to see what it was at a distance. Painted with craft paints and coated with a couple of coats of poly

Artist's Palette

End March 2010

Time to carve: .5 hours
Finishing: 1 hour

One of the easiest slides I have made thus far! I had some thin pile wood scrap around
(from another project) and a quick trip around with a jig saw did the trick. Drill the hole and then elongate it with knife to accept the brush. I ended up having to do some carving on the brush too to make it all fit together correctly. Some dabs of color and a couple of coats of poly to finish it off.

Bugle

End March 2010

Time to carve: 2.5 hours
Finishing: 1.5 hour

Delicate does not begin to describe this project. I had to pick wood that would not crack or break while I carved out the fine details of this slide. I decided on maple because of it's strength (and because I had just bought a big bag of the stuff). I roughed out the outline of the bugle and then drilled several holes in the middle to make roughing out the inside easier.

Without access to a real bugle, I had no idea how the tubes ran. I began to cut but quickly discovered that I had transposed the drawing. Yikes! Now what? I put down the piece for a couple of days trying to decide if I should start over. The solution came to me while I was in the shower one morning. Why not reverse the drawing on the computer screen then print it out. Once I had this, the pipes were easy to follow and as a result my slide is a mirror image of what the original drawings were. Lots of sanding on this one! Finished with gold spray paint I could have stopped there but the resulting slide just didn't look right. (Too shiny) I wondered what would happen if I sprayed it with the water based poly I usually use. Would the poly react the paint somehow? The result gave the bugle a weathered look...Sweet!