Jun 19

Carved Octopus Bowl

Octopus bowl hand-carved from cherry firewood

This thing started out just as an excuse to 1) finally use my Xmas gifts from @tamarynart (an @arbortechie minicarver and bowl gouge) and 2) just carve something random outside from a chunk of cherry firewood I had lying around. I also used pretty much all of my @saburrtooth rotary burrs on this thing. It’s not the best thing I’ve carved – pretty lousy anatomical accuracy and the suckers aren’t nearly as detailed as I would have liked. But I just sort of sketched it as I went. After putting a couple weeks into it, I was ready to call it done. Overall, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out for a one-off bowl to hold the TV remotes in our “Lair”. 😂

Apr 08

Wooden Plaque for PhD student

Wooden Plaque for graduating PhD student Dr. Zheqi (Vaciry) Lee

Several years ago, I started making little plaques with names and degree for students in the @leeoesterreichlab after they receive their PhD. Today I can finally say congratulations to Zheqi “Vaciry” Li (@vaciryli), who had to defend his dissertation via Zoom this week. But he nailed it! This plaque is made from walnut, ambrosia maple, and cherry, and the design is roughly inspired by architecture from Huishan Ancient Town near Vaciry’s hometown of Wuxi, China. I have to give special thanks to @chelseachen655 and @kaiding568 for providing and proofing the characters.

Vaciry defending his dissertation (via video thanks to covid-19).
Mar 06

Carved walnut seahorse

Walnut seahorse carved from an antique chair arm

Last summer I started this little carving from an antique walnut chair arm (2nd pic), given to me by my step-father-in-law @freetimemike. I had no plans when I started – it was just an excuse to whittle outside. Eventually I saw this shape inside it. Once it got cold, I threw it in a corner and got distracted. This past week I decided to finish it up. Most of it was carved by hand with @flexcut_tools knives, then finished with some @saburrtooth dremel burrs.

Feb 02

TV Console Table

Hand-built TV Console Table


I finally finished our new TV console table! The purpose of this was to replace a beat up old beast of a particle board stand (last pic). Our house and living room is pretty tiny, so a while back @tamarynart requested a much smaller piece to open up the space. She also helped and instructed with the design – she uses this TV more so pleasing her was my only goal.
Constructed from scrap African mahogany from a furniture maker, walnut, and an inlayed bloodwood/Caribbean rosewood/brass flower from @copper_pig_fine_woodworking. Pyrography on the drawer fronts was designed and burned by @tamarynart.

Aug 02

Snail carved from black locust

Snail hand-carved from black locust

After I finished @tamarynart’s table this week, I wanted a little project I could do while sitting on the porch and enjoying the weather with Bandit. So I walked in the shop, grabbed a log, and looked in my notes where I have random project ideas written. Apparently at some point I just wrote “Snails!” I power carved the rough shape and then whittled outside. The disgusting looking jar is my two year old homemade batch of vinegar and steel wool. It still works really well as a home brew stain and darkened the shell nicely. The branch is a piece of black locust I picked up a few years ago from someone’s firewood pile. I knew I’d get around to using it.
The video was just sort of a “Meh. Why not?” Thing.

See the video below for a timelapse of the entire process!