Come in to my parlor

[holmqer]

said the spider to the fly...


My first current holiday themed carving. I figured a Jack-o-lantern would be too easy so went for spider in the web.

As this progressed I was getting increasingly nervous. This is the first of my egg carvings that I am sort of afraid to touch! I was tempted to airbrush the spider, but chickened out. I had been tempted to leave the back uncarved to make a sort of inverse shadowbox effect.

 

[hanau]

Looks cool as heck.
You need to paint the spider to bring it out and so no one can call you chicken.

How long did that take you carve and what type of egg?

 

[holmqer]

I guessing it took an hour of carving and an hour of layout and cleaning. I had to draw the web and spider, then clean off the layout lines.

It is a goose egg

 

[Jgrden]

Sheeesh, what good work.

 

[devowoodworking]

Once again, amazing work Eric!

 

[ctubbs]

Nervs of Steel. Amazing! If I tried that, I would have scrambled egg shell. Beautiful art! congratulations!

charles

 

[holmqer]

The key to not breaking these I think, is holding rather gently. The carving tool applies so little torque that you just need to hold the egg tight enough not to drop it. Imagine holding a babies or an old ladies hand.

 

[bitshird]

Eric, that is an amazing piece of work, you have a steadier hand than mine!!

 

[holmqer]

Eric, that is an amazing piece of work, you have a steadier hand than mine!!

Thanks!

Steady hands are over-rated! Well not really, but let me provide an example. A turner friend of mine has very shaky hands. They shake almost like he has Parkinson's, but put a bowl gouge in his hands and stick him in front of a lathe and he makes beautiful turnings. Good technique can help overcome for a multitude of limitations.

Watching a master of the high speed air tool give a demo at the AAW Symposium, and listening to her describe why she used the posture and technique she employed, helped me realize that much like good turning technique, good carving technique can help you get better results than your believe your body can produce.

I have a ways to go to get to what the real stars of this tool, Binh Pho, Joey Richardson or Gary LeMaster can produce, but I can see some of the things I need to do to improve. How good I'll ultimately get, I have no idea.

 

[thewishman]

That is great design and execution. Cool egg!