Carving in progress

Those of you who check in on this page periodically will have noticed
that work on bowls is going a bit slowly.
This is where our lifestyle most directly affects my carving. Spring and
summer are our 'outside projects' time of year and we have been
spending very little time in shop and studio. This bowl is a commission
by a custom home builder who likes to give the home owners a gift of
fine art to help celebrate completion of their new or remodeled home.
Since their home is in the arts and craft style I designed this bowl to
complement that style.

Here are the preliminary sketches...

The bowl is being carved from a green oak half-log and was roughed out with a small hatchet and large gouges.

Here you can se the general shape with the outside roughly shaped and four kind of blocky appendages for the legs.		The bowl is beginning to look more bowl-like but there is a lot of wood yet to be removed to get it down to a thickness of 3/16".

Though the bowl is still quite thick the bottom and feet are taking shape. I ground the edges off a couple of rasps to create tools for shaping and cleaning up those areas where the feet meet the bowl. (9/18/04)		You can see here that the bowl is pretty much completed. Another week or two to finish it (Tried-and-True Varnish Oil then bee's wax and carnauba wax) and it will be really done.