Why Wood ? Wood Chip Art

I am going to collect a series of photos from my email and re-post them into this blog.  I have decided not to try and link from email, to email, to email post etc.   The photos are from a friend of mine that collects and sends interesting stuff.

Wood Chips.......

This man takes wood chips, soaks them in water for many days, using a tree from Russia (Red Cedar).Then he starts building his pieces which takes him about 6 months, 10 hours a day to finish. He was offered a lot of money for 1 piece but will not sell any.

Enjoy the pictures. What wonderful work....

  

 

    Pretty amazing stuff.

   On another track entirely.

   I follow insidetheworkshop.blogspot.ca, and though I have never met Derek I feel that I know him a little bit because of his Blog and website I've learned many new things from him and watched as his shop life has developed.  If you are interested in the emotional/philosophical side of woodworking you may want to look in and read what Derek has to say about his take on woodworking. 

   He is moving ever closer to the "Hand Tool Only", ( Royite) woodworking club.  Dan at Dan's Shop  also has joined the "Royite" hand tool world.  I am not a dedicated  "Normite" (all power all the time) but there are aspects of what I do in my shop that requires power tools.  For example, I make and sell cutting boards. 

 I can make cutting boards by hand, but.....no body would pay what they cost to make.  Table saws, jointers, and planers make cutting boards cost effective.  Power tools also make it fast and easy to make those practical, functional, none art items like flower boxes and shelving in the basement etc.  For Arts and Crafts or High Art furniture  I can see hand tools only.  I guess like in so many things I have one foot on the dock and one foot in the boat. (Lets hope I can keep my balance).

     

Honest Mistake, hard lesson learned

   Derek at Oldwolf Workshop is another of my hand woodworking heroes.  I have followed Derek's blog from the start and watched as he developed as a wood worker, carver and blogger.  

  Derek's current blog is one of those honest admissions that we who work alone in our shops don't often make.  As you can see from some of the comments, we just sand down, throw away, or burn our little mistakes and no one is the wiser. I admire his effort to remain philosophic when there was so much time and effort spent to learn the lesson. I guess it is not just measure twice, cut once, it is also spell check and edit, then edit again because you can't trust the spell check.

   When Derek talks about router guys and pantographs he is talking about using lettering bits.  With good templates and quality router bits you should be able to make pretty good signs, not an individual as hand carved but good none the less.

   I only ever made one sign in my shop and that was years ago and the store is long gone, I wonder what happened to the sign?

thetoolstore.ca