Today was the third and final day of the class taught by Rick Jensen.  You might want to view Day 1 and Day 2 before continuing here.

I said yesterday that I had a lot of work left to complete this carving, and that I probably wouldn’t be able to finish it before the end of today.  It was a lot of work and I had very little time today for taking pictures; I was too busy carving.  I’m happy to report, though, that the hard work paid off.  I completed the carving late this afternoon.

I spent the first part of the morning shaping the limbs of the tree.  Although I’d done a lot of work on them yesterday, they were still lacking interesting shape.  I pulled out my trusty knife and slowly whittled them into shape, giving them a much more organic look.  A more experienced carver could have done it much faster, but I was being very careful not to take too much off.  Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of the carving before I started detailing the limbs.

The picture on the left shows the house after about two hours’ work.  The major changes are the shaping and texturing of the limbs (incomplete), and detailing the roof.  The right side (in this picture) of the roof is very steep and has a concavity that would have made shingles impossible.  Since I had a lot of thickness to work with, Rick suggested using a gouge to add some shadow, and then some shallow lines give it something of a thatch texture.

I took a short break and somebody else grabbed the power carver I was using, so I went to work on the windows and siding.  Here you can see that I’ve relieved the right-hand window frame by outlining with a V-tool and then carving around it.  The left side windows are due for a bit of redesign since the original design would have made the interior frame rather awkward and would have left an odd blank spot below the center window.

You might also notice that I’ve punched another hole through between the house and the tree limb on the right side, just below the roof line.  I started to do that yesterday, but got sidetracked on something else.  This morning I was cleaning up some cuts over there, saw daylight, and took a few minutes to clean up that spot.

After completing the windows and cleaning up a few more cuts, it was time to add the vertical siding.  This was a real surprise to me.  Below are the before and after shots.

On the left you see the house after I finished relieving the window frames.  On the right is after adding the siding.  All I did was take about two minutes to add some vertical and horizontal lines with a very small V-tool.  I found the difference quite striking.  Those few lines add a completeness to the house without drawing too much attention away from the other features.  I suppose it’s something like a woman’s makeup, properly applied:  highlighting features without drawing undue attention.

The gable texture is applied by continually punching very small holes with a triangular bit.  The bit (it looks very much like a finish nail that’s been carefully smoothed at the tip) is inserted into a hand-held reciprocating carver of some sort.  It makes one heck of a racket, but it works very well and very quickly.  Rick has lots of little tricks like this.  Another reciprocating carver is used with a rounded bit to burnish rocks in the carving.

A lot of the value of taking this class is learning such tricks and being able to practice them.  Rick also told us how we could do the same thing at home, without the power carver.  It would take a lot longer to do it by hand, but I could carefully shape a finish nail and punch each of those thousands of holes by hand.

Another good trick is adding color to the hollowed spots in the limbs.  We actually set fire to the wood using a small torch.  After letting it burn for a few seconds, blow it out and use a large toothbrush (a denture brush worked really well) to get rid of the excess soot.  If you do this, do not just blow out the fire and think it’s done.  The cottonwood bark burns quite readily and it’s likely that an ember will continue smoldering.  I looked away for a few seconds while working on one of these spots, and looked back to find that it burned through the limb.  Fortunately, the unplanned fire actually made things look better.

I spent a lot of time wondering how I was going to complete the carving before the end of the class.  I was especially concerned about the roots of the tree because I had already discovered that doing the work with edge tools was quite difficult and time consuming, and my skill with the power carver was limited, at best.  After discussing it with Rick a bit, he set me up with a much less aggressive cutting bit, gave me a few tips on how to use it, and left me to work it out.  I think I managed to do an adequate job although I think the base with the roots and rocks is the least attractive part of the carving.

The finish is, of all things, Meltonian neutral shoe cream, applied with a large paint brush, left to dry for a while, and then buffed off.  As a finish, the shoe cream has a lot to recommend it.  It’s relatively easy to obtain (try a local shoe repair shop), less messy than a lot of finishes, darkens the carving slightly, and adds a nice smooth look.  It’s also easy to re-apply after a few years or if you find yourself having to fix the carving (if somebody drops it, for example).  It does, however, have a few drawbacks, though.  To apply it, you have to rub quite a lot with the brush to work it into the wood.  It doesn’t just flow on like a lot of oil and wax mixtures.  It also smells like shoe polish, although I suppose that’s better than the smell of boiled linseed oil or other traditional wood finishes.  I sure wish there was a better way to apply it, though.

I thoroughly enjoyed my three-day class with Rick Jensen.  I started the class with a glued-up piece of cottonwood bark, relatively little carving experience, and inadequate tools.  Even so, I finished a carving that has more life and detail than anything I’d done previously.  Rick was an excellent instructor.  He explained each step by demonstrating on a carving (either one of his many demo pieces or one of the students’ carvings), then sent us back to work and was available to help out one-on-one as we encountered problems.  Most importantly to me, he encouraged me to try some things that were a little “out there,” rather than trying to dissuade me because I might goof it up.  He’d caution me about the potential pitfalls, let me make my own decision, and then give some advice about how to do it.

I have no qualms about recommending the class to anybody who’s interested in carving whimsical houses.  If you’re interested in attending a class or if you’d like to schedule one for your carving club, you can contact Carvings by Jensen, jrjensen@gvtel.com.  If you do email, be sure that the Subject line of your email is relevant (i.e. mentions a carving class).  Otherwise, it’s likely that your mail will end up in the spam bucket.

Take the class.  You’ll undoubtedly learn a lot, and I think you’ll enjoy it.  I certainly did.

View my complete Facebook photo album, Carving Whimsical Houses in the Round.