The Tiki stump is DONE! Meet Maynard

I have to start this post with a little apology.  The Uncle has been holding out on ya.  I didn't want to give away a couple of surprises until the right time.  And now, the time is right to reveal....

His beatnik soul patch...

And his........................ fez!

I'm estimating I have about 50 hours of chainsawing, chiseling, staining and accessorizing this guy, and now, I\m stopping to declare victory. I've tried to give this Dude a beatnik/atomic vibe to make him stand out from your average everyday run-of-the-mill backyard 12-foot tiki stump.  So, meet --  Maynard G. MacAtom (The G is for Stanley).

This "Dude of Leisure" has been talking to me a lot lately.  First it was the raised eyebrow.

Then he said to give him some chin whiskers.

Then, he wanted some kind of mid-century atomic vibe - hence, his pointy head turned into a fez.  The tassel for the fez is made from a couple sizes of polypropelene rope I twisted together and attached with a screw in eye hook.  I plan to give the front of the fez a little atomic detailing. (I'm not very good at freehand drawing, so I'll probably make a stencil and give him either a sputnik star or an atomic symbol in yellow to match the tassel).

I ended up using five different shades of outdoor wood stain.  The Behr brand has quite a few color choices and you can get them in either a solid or a transparent mix.  So the Dude's body is a transparent shade of natural cedar (kinda looks like that spray-on tanning stuff that turns you orange, doesn't it?).

For the fez, I used a solid redwood stain, and the eyebrows and soul patch are a combination of slate and a second coat of a dark gray I mixed by combining some of the slate color with some leftover white solid stain.

The lips started out redwood, but I've added some slate to a second coat of redwood to darken them a little.  These stains are advertised as sealing and waterproofing and they're supposed to hold up for six years on fences and siding - no mention of tikis. I'm hoping all the nooks and crannies and grooves that I left are not going to lead to problems.  I had a tough choice to make - take weeks or more to smooth out every rough spot and leave it unstained and unprotected from rain and cold, or pick a stopping point and get the stain on and be done.  I'll probably have to do some touch up or recoating but we'll just have to see how it works out.

I hope you've enjoyed this project as much as I have, and I want to thank you all for your great comments along the way - you have really kept me going on this.  Maynard will now be here to motivate me to get the darn patio walls and the patio built!  Stay tuned for more details as that work gets underway.