Friday, April 16, 2010

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.

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