The City of Orangeville commissioned a few carvers to carve some trees in the park for the Founders festival this past weekend (July7th-9th). My theme of choice was based on Fantasy/Lord of the Rings. I chose to do this collage of a Dragon, Wizard and Castle.  


In preparation for the event, as my mentor Fred Zavadil insists I should do for all carvings, I created a scale model of the carving in clay. I would normally just go ahead and carve and see what happens, but this gives me a good Idea of how the carving is going to work out and also speeds up the carving process. Given the limited time frame, it was was well worth the extra effort.  

The log chosen for me was approximately 9 feet tall and almost 4 feet wide maple. The city cut the stump and transported it to the park for the carving and will be putting it back after it’s finished. The carving turned out to be a real challenge as the log was hard a rock, that is other then the top two feet that was cracked and starting to go bad. 


Start : 2:00pm Started carving at about 2:00pm after setting up. Here is a picture of the Log after I debarked most of it. 

 

 
Day 1 : 7:00PM – Well the afternoon was hot and the wood hard as a rock. Not to mention the nails, screws and stones. But it was still a lot of fun and I think the day went fairly well. I got most of the blocking done today and should be in good shape to finish the carving tomorrow if all goes well. Here’s how I finished the day.
 

 

 

 

 
Day 2: 7::30AM – 7:00PM – Thankfully My log was sitting in the shade for the better part of the day, because that sun was hot. The poor other carvers were in the blazing sun! Ouch.  What a grueling day though. My arms are like rubber after 12 hours of carving. Oh what I would give to be carving cedar instead of MAPLE!! Well I didn’t get finished today and will have to come back tomorrow to put the final touches on. All said and done though, I think the day went extremely well and am very happy with the results. 

 

 

 

 

 
Day 3: 9:30 AM – 4:00PM – It sure was hard getting out of bed this morning! Coffee never tasted so good! A couple of cups of full strength coffee and kick in the butt and I am off again. Originally I was going to just finish the detailing and call it day, but I was inspired by Murray to put the rest of the base detail in, so I had to double time it to get the extra work done today. Mayor Drew Brown dropped off Coffee for Murray and I. Now that is something! How may people can say the Mayor got out of bed to bring you coffee. How could I not add the rest of the base detail after that?  When is a carving finished? I don’t know, because the more you do the more you see and the more you want to fix, adjust and add to it. Well it’s 4:00pm and I am beat. The log has won, I hit yet another chain killing nail and I give up. I am declaring the carving finished.  I am pleased overall with the results as I hope everyone else is. Let me know what you think.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ok, for those astute/meticulous/ picky or some may say vary observant, Yes I could not leave without finishing the Dragons foot. As you may have noticed in the final pictures was not carved until the last picture. After packing everything up Murray notice that I had not detailed out the foot as yet, and shamed me into finishing it. Yes I admit I was going to try and sneak off  without finishing ,  but that last nail really pissed me off! 

Oh yes, Did I mention that this is 100% Chainsaw, no Chisels. 

Check out the Orangeville “Walk of Trees” brochure  here, This carving made the cover. 

http://www.orangeville.ca/documents/TreeBrochure2006.pdf 

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