Natural Danger WIP

[EddieJ]

Natural Danger or Creature Of The Deep?

 

This one is a work in progress, which sadly will have to wait about a month before I can started on it. Life always spoils fun!!

 

It's another lump of oak that I dragged out of a ditch and whilst I had no idea what to do with it when I loaded it into the van, I was greeted by this angle when I took it out.

 

 

 

 

I've quickly wire brushed it off to remove the moss and dirt. I then started to have a very quick play with one of the eye sockets, and I reckon that this piece has got very good potential.The only downside of this lump of oak, is that it is riddled with old staples and barbed wire.

I'm half tempted to put golf ball size black glazed balls into the eye sockets, and I'll also probably drill holes into the mouth cavity, knock in some 25mm oak dowel, then carve them back to form razor sharp looking teeth.

Once the carving has been carried out, I'll take it to get it sand blasted.

I also reckon that it could very good mounted onto either a 25mm stainless steel tube approx 600mm off the ground, or even some how mounted with a bloody great stainless hook into the mouth.

Edited March 26, 2012 by EddieJ

[RobArb]

Is got giant squid written all over it:biggrin:

 

Sent from Rob's GalaxySII

[Swampster]

dunno man but if you don't do something quick I think those raindeer have they're eyes on it!

[EddieJ]

dunno man but if you don't do something quick I think those raindeer have they're eyes on it!

 

 

I finally got of my backside and had the 'creature' sandblasted today.

I can now see where and what I have to do make a start.

 

 

[wisewood]

Hi Eddie,

what's the cost of sand blasting mate? Is it your own gear? I've seen some hire shops do small ones for hire. Never done but results look great.

Si

[EddieJ]

Hi Si,

 

Sadly it is one of those jobs that I have to take to someone to be done. The average cost is £30.00 which I don't mind paying, but it it would be lovely to have the kit to do it myself.

 

Talking to the guy that does it yesterday, he was saying that there is a lot that can be done with a sand blaster on wood. Depending upon the medium used and air pressure, you can round off hard edges, shape wood and raise the grain as much or little as you like.

A friend of mine who used to dabble with stained sculpture would have the gran raised, stain the wood, then either sand the wood back down again or have it blasted again to just remove the surface stain and leave the deeper parts. I quite like the idea of trying that.

 

Blasting certainly opens up scope for using wood that would otherwise just be left to rot away.

[wisewood]

£30 doesn't seem too bad. Is that based on per piece or an hourly rate? I would imagine it's much quicker than sanding and it's a one tool sands all rather than having numerous power sanders. Be interesting to see how well it carves wood.

[EddieJ]

I'm not sure what the hourly rate would be as I have only taken two pieces in to be blasted and there was a good six months between them. I think that it very much depends on how busy that they are, whether they have to change the blast medium especially, and also if you just turn up at the weekend in the hope of getting them to do a bonus job.

I think that the cost is quite reasonable, and there is no way that you could ever achieve the same result by hand etc. Having your own equipment to do it would make it more convenient though, but sadly I can't imagine setting up a sand blasting unit etc would be a cheap thing to do.

 

The guy that runs the business does have a very good eye of what needs to done and how far to take things. I'm going to take in a sample of stained oak and see how he gets on with that.

[agg221]

Setting up for blasting is surprisingly realistic with a bit of ingenuity. I have an old land rover to do, and couldn't be bothered to ship the parts around. I also want to do it a bit at a time. You need a decent sized compressor (£150 secondhand on ebay), a small blasting pot and gun (£50 new) and some media (price depends on size and type but approximately £7/sack). The clever bit is, use a tent as a blasting cabinet. The flyscreen works fine to keep the media in, with a couple of cut down jeans legs sewn in as armholes. I bought mine for a fiver on ebay. Just buy a tent as big as the biggest thing you want to blast.

 

You do need to be aware of noise, grit in eyes and silicosis though, so you need proper eye, ear and dust-mask protection, together with heavy rubber gloves and tolerant neighbours!

 

Alec