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.

End of February Stump Carving Update

Had a good day today!

Our car club got together at an indoor go karting place and I took the 16-year-old daughter (she still has her learner's permit) and she raced with us.  I think the experience will help her when she someday attempts to drive on the DC Beltway!

Anyway, after we got home I grabbed the chainsaw and got back to work on the stump.  Today I did a lot of smoothing of rough edges and removing the last remnants of bark, and I did some shaping around the eyebrows, nose, and lips.  I took a break from the chainsaw for a while and got out the rubber mallet and chisels and worked on some areas around the corner of the eyes and nose - places where I couldn't get the saw to do anymore detail.

After about 45 minutes of chiseling, I went back to the saw and used it to do some smoothing and shaping on the back side of the stump.  I'm really starting to feel like I'm getting close with this project, but I know there's more chiseling left to do.

So here are the most current photos, taken with my iPhone so quality is not quite as good.  I'll be working on it again tomorrow and I'm off Monday, so I'll get some time in then too.

I'm doing what I can to remove the cut marks, but at some point I'm 

probably going to give up on that, it's a pain the the a**

The other eye - still some chiseling and shaping to do here

I don't have any ideas for what to do with the back, 

but I'm getting  sick of carving, so I will probably stain

 it  as is, and someday if I get the urge, I can always do

 some  more  carving on the back

Area around the upper lip and nose, I need to 

do some chiseling and smoothing here too

Yet Another Tiki Stump Update

After I got my smaller chainsaw working well, I decided to get the bigger one fixed.  I had gotten an estimate on it and at the time I thought it was too much to spend on a used chainsaw.  But last week I decided to go ahead and get it fixed.  I'm glad I did.  Today I had my first chance to try it out, and I found that it's making cuts the smaller saw could not handle.  So, I tackled the tapering of the top of the stump above the eyebrows.  The weather has been wet and the goggles and face guard I'm using were fogging easily, so it was slow going, but I think I made some good progress on the top of the head.  It went like this:  move the ladder, wipe the moisture and fog off the goggles and facemask, start saw, make sure blade lock is on, climb ladder, line up cut, release blade lock, make angled cut, lock blade, shut off saw, climb down ladder, move ladder, and repeat.  I did this about 20 times, gradually circling the stump twice, to get where I am today.

Here are a couple of pics.

Before:

After:

I've still got some more work to do up top, then I need to clean up the area just above the eyebrows.  I'm hoping with a couple more hours of sawing, I'll have the head above the eyebrows done.  Then it's mostly detail work after that.  So I think I'm on schedule to have this guy done sometime this Spring!

Another Tiki Stump Carving Update

So between Christmas and New Years, since I was off I spent at least an hour every morning working on the tiki carving.  The saw, while fixed, is still not quite tuned right.  It will start up and run and cut for a while, but many times it won't restart and I have to let it cool down. The next day, it starts right up.  I think it's an idle adjustment problem, and I've been tweaking the idle to try and get it to work regularly. It's working a little better, and I'm using compressed air to clean around the air cleaner regularly too.  I mention this just to let you know that I am neither an expert chainsaw maintainer, nor a stump carver.  But I'm having fun and learning, and I'm not afraid to make a mistake.  Anyway, here are a few more recent photos of the progress.

I'm gradually getting the area around the eyebrows and top of the nose the way I want it.

A little trimming above the lower eyebrow - I like the raised eyebrow look, so it's staying.

.  

The top of the head is also starting to take shape.  Once I get the top of the head shaped better, the top 5 inches or so will come off, there's some rot up there from the stump sitting untouched for a couple years, so I'm hoping I'll find solid wood further down from the top.

Here you can see that I'm removing a little from the sides of the face.  I haven't decided what if anything I'll do to the back of the carving.  I may leave it alone and just seal it to keep it from rotting. 

I haven't decided yet what I'll use to seal the carving when I'm done.  I don't want it to be too dark though.  I kinda like the amber shellac color that's on the wall panels of our camper, and I have some of that shellac left over, so I may test it on a piece of the wood to see how it looks.  If I don't like the shellac, I'll probably pick a stain color I like.

Finally, if you're at all interested in stump carving, here's a blog where the carver is obviously top notch!  Check out the indian chief that he carved recently.  Amazing!!!

The chainsaw is no longer stumping me

It's been weeks, but finally the chain saw is ready to use again, so I can get back to carving the tiki into our tulip poplar stump in the back yard.  For you relatively new followers, here's a brief recap:

What I started with - a tulip poplar stump

Where I last left off before the chainsaw took a leave of absence

When we left our subject, he/she was getting a nice set of puffy lips.  I'm working now on getting some appropriate scaffolding arranged so I can get up higher to carve around the head and eyes.  I can't just prop a ladder against the stump, because then I'll have to reach around the ladder, and that's not safe.  I have some old tires and wheels (being a car guy, I have too many old tires and wheels, but we won't dwell on that fact).

Anyway, I thought I could stack the wheels and then stack lumber between them to get me up higher.  I will probably use them somehow, but now trying one of these ladders that you can fold in different ways and see if that will give me a sturdy perch for carving higher up.  So far, the ladder is working, and I'm using it and a tire stack to stand on.

Conditions were less than ideal.  It's cold, and very windy, and the wind loves to blow saw dust into my face, despite the safety gear I'm wearing.  The sun was in my eyes, and the dust mask, eyeglasses, facemask combo fogs up my glasses frequently.  But, I spent about 90 minutes with the saw, and it's cutting a lot better.  Funny what a tune up and blade sharpening by professionals will do for you.

So, here are the current shots.  I've been whittling away at the lower lips and the gap between the lips.

I also did a lot of carving along the edge of the nose, and also along the side of the face to cut away more excess.

I noticed I've started cutting one eye opening higher than the other, but I kinda like that expression.

On another day, after my tired arms had recovered, I used the tripod ladder to get high enough to start whittling away around the top of the head.  As you can see, I'm cutting parallel lines vertically and horizontally, and also diagonally.  I'm trying to watch how deep the saw goes, but that's pretty tough to be consistent with when you're standing on a ladder with a deadly chainsaw!

Once I get a bunch of cuts made, I shut off the chainsaw and use a 24-inch pry bar to get between segments and pry them out one by one.  It's slow going, but I will just work on it as I find the time and keep chipping away.  I'm hoping to have it pretty far along by spring.

UPDATE:  A big thanks to Pam over at Retrorenovation.com for featuring this silly project!  And welcome any first time visitors!  I'm still mastering the intricacies of some of the more subtle blog linking tools available to me, but here's a quick link back to earlier posts on the stump carving topic.  I'll have another stump update soon.

Anyone waiting for a stump-carving update?

So am I !  Since Halloween I've been fighting a cold, the change to standard time (meaning almost no evening light outside), and a stalling chainsaw.  But progress is being made nonetheless.

I'm straying some from the original outline.  How about this mouth?  Remind you of anyone famous?  Maybe I'll call it Troy-ki Tiki-man, or Trangelina Jol-iki.  Hard to tell if it's male or female, that will have to wait a while more.

Stump carving has begun!

I sharpened up the chainsaw today and started cutting back the area outside of where the nose will be. My plan is to get all the features that stick out done first, leaving a lot of cutting the excess.

The tulip poplar wood is carving pretty easily so far, a lot easier than a hard wood would be to carve.  I'm getting a good cutting line by lifting the saw up and letting gravity work to define the edge, then I'm cutting on an angle to create strips of wood that I can pry off with a pry bar, one strip at a time.  This is going to take a while.  After about an hour of holding that saw up, my arms and shoulders are killing me!

Tiki Carving Update

If ever there was a time when I went into something not knowing if I could do it, this is the time.

The tall tulip poplar in the backyard has gone from this...

to this...

to this...

to this...

and if I'm lucky, when all the chain sawing is done, it will look something approximately like this!

Building a Patio Wall, and I'm Stumped

A couple years ago, I dug a hole I haven't gotten out of yet.  It all started when I went to a party hosted by a friend I used to work with.  She lives in DC on Capitol Hill.  Has an old townhouse with a great walled courtyard out back.  It's really all her fault.  I figured I could build a nice L-shaped brick wall out back and create a nice courtyard for us to enjoy.  So I started hand digging footers for a foundation.  SWMBO calls it the big dig (and not affectionately).

Well, I finally finished the digging, and this Spring I moved about six tons of gravel to use to level out the bottom.  I have the lumber and rebar, now I just need to frame up the footers in order to pour cement.  But these 90-plus-degree days have made it awful to work outside this summer.

Meanwhile the area I'm working in is overgrown with weeds.  It's slow going even with a weedeater.  So I've been gradually trying to kill the weeds by leaving them covered with tarps.  It's not a pretty picture out back, but I can envision what it will look like when done. Now I'm aiming to build the footer forms in early September.

I'm still torn between building a brick wall, or holding out for some period-correct screen blocks to use for the wall.

The problem with screen blocks is, they don't seem to be available any more, at least nowhere here in the Washington, DC area.  And shipping a big supply of decorative concrete blocks from California or Florida might just be a little pricey.  I may end up finishing the footers and putting up a wood fence, at least until I can find some of these screen blocks. (There's a great list over at Retrorenovation - but unfortunately, I have found nothing close to me.  I plan to try Lowes locally and see if I can persuade them to stock something.)

There's another project waiting for attention in the area of the future atomic patio.  We had a humongous tulip poplar tree cut down because it was old, too close to the house and dropping huge limbs a random moments. The tree guys had to bring in a crane to get at it.  They did a good job and even left me a tall stump.

Can you guess what I want to do with this stump?