Carving in Cave Junction

One of the reasons that I went to Minnesota was to learn how to chainsaw carve from one of the masters of the trade. There are many kinds of carvers - some of them very detailed and refined and others more rustic and known for speed. AJ is known for speed and staying true to the art by using few tools outside of the chainsaw itself for carving. He also has a reputation for being ridiculously fast and capturing a certain movement that sets his work apart from the rest.

Yesterday I felt the need to practice again. It's been a month or so since I touched the chainsaw and I was starting to feel like the skill was slipping away from me. I also wanted to try carving exclusively with the electric saw that AJ set me up with before I left. Up until yesterday I had always done the major blocking of my carvings with a gas saw and then only finished up a few dozen or so with the electric saw. A gas saw is more powerful and has a much higher chain speed than an electric saw and to be honest I wasn't sure that I could get a bear done in a reasonable amount of time with just the electric...

I guess I should explain why I went fully electric instead of just going with a gas saw and making life easier... Well, some of it has to do with my distaste for the smell of gasoline. Mostly though I wanted to be able to chainsaw carve without having to spend a lot of money. Gas saws are temperamental and require a lot of maintenance as well as a constant supply of gasoline. I thought that it would be pretty cool if instead of gasoline I could somehow make use of the extra electricity we make from our solar panels. So, AJ and I did some testing and found out that I could run an electric saw for about 4-5 hours a week off the electricity that we make via the solar panels. Since I can carve a bear in about 45 minutes, I can easily carve at least 5 bears a week and not spend a single penny on the energy required to do so. That was the theory until yesterday at least...

So, I asked one of the RV park managers if I carved them a bear would they give me the wood, and let me carve a few bears for practice.

I found a piece of oak on a pile of firewood that seemed relatively solid and worth a few cuts to see if I could make a bear out of it. Oak is fairly hard as far as woods go. So far I had only cut fairly soft white pine and cedar with the electric saw. Lyle (one of the park owners) wanted me to grab an 18-24 inch piece of oak, but I didn't think the electric saw could handle it so I pushed for a more modest 12-14 inch piece. I think he may have been a bit disappointed, but then you really can't ask too much of an electric saw...

I cut off a 3 foot section or so and set it up on the concrete slab next to our trailer. There was a fairly deep crack of somewhat rotten wood that divided the piece roughly in half, so I decided to make a small bear and put one paw up in the air so I could remove the crack and still make use of half of the wood. The piece was cut at an angle on the end and I followed that cue and made the head tilted to one side on roughly the same angle as the cut...

The first 3-4 cuts I was really nervous. I had some idea of what I was shooting for, but honestly I didn't yet see the bear that I was trying to carve out of the piece of oak. By the time I moved back to the front of the bear and was cutting out the piece for under the chin and arm I had a clear picture of the stance of the bear in my mind and was able to relax a bit.

15 minutes into the carving I heard the pitch of the saw change and started to smell heat coming off the wood. I stopped to check the oil level and sure enough I was out. I refilled the oil tank and checked to make sure that oil was pumping to the chain, but nothing was coming out. I took apart the saw and checked the oil pump (which was working fine) and then noticed that the oil slot in the bar was clogged. After 20 minutes or so (and a bit of help from Alan digging out sawdust from the oil hole in the bar) I got oil flow back to the chain and went back to carving again. It took a lot of patience to get the plunge cuts between the legs done. I forgot to file down the rakers on the chain, so the cut was really slow and hot with quite a bit of smoke. I managed to get through it anyway...

By the time I finished texturing and putting the last minute details on the bear it was getting dark. I should have done the bear around noon instead of starting at dinner time. The last step was to give the bear some eyes. Alan held a work light for me while I burned in some eyes, eyelashes and added some detail to the nose. We decided that it was too late for me to carve a sign for the bear, so we called it a night.

Today I cleaned up the carving scraps and sawdust and went to work carving a sign out of another section of the oak tree we used. No problem finding a suitable section of tree for my little sign, but there was some problem carving it without the use of the sign carving table at the shop in Minnesota. I ended up carving 90% of the sign right into the log face and then cutting the sign out of the log. It seemed to work out fine even though it was a bit of a pain in the neck carving on the ground instead of up at a comfortable height.

The bear turned out pretty well. It's very hard to judge how long it actually took to carve since I didn't look at the clock when I started or take note of how long it actually took to repair the saw. My guesstimate is that it took around an hour (including the sign) to carve the bear. There's another hour or so work in finish work to be done - which includes burning, brushing, sanding and varnishing the bear. I'm not sure if they have any good quality spar varnish here in Cave Junction, but I'm sure I'll be able to find something to make do with...