dervishcarving

Hi Im based in Aberdeenshire, Portlethen. have a look at https://www.facebook.com/DervishCarving to see some of the stuff i have been doing and feel free to drop me an email if you want to chat [email protected]

it dosnt in any way detract from the effect

dam good piece. details are good, proportions are a bit shortened for a true viking (v tall chaps) but you carve the wood you have eh? dam good for 1 year experience. did you use hand tools on the eyes? looks like it is sanded smooth too, should last well if they oil it plenty

you could try making an A-frame high enough that as you lift the a-frame (log suspended under it) the log would move onto the back of the truck if you had people to help of course, plus probably a winch to help with the lift i have access to forestry machines where i carve, helps a lot

Tom is like an ant, he can carry up to 40x his own body weight in wood

welcome to the club... you know you can never leave right?

offer something in return too. I have bowl turning mates (im ok at it, they are great!) and they offer a bowl (or something) in return for a batch of suitable wood for turning. If you offer to carve something for them if they give you a load of carving wood you not only get to carve something they want (good practice, customers often ask for weird things ... and no, im not posting the pics of the willy and boobs i carved last year!) but its also dam good free advertising if local tree surgeons are aware of you then they will give your details to customers who have just had a tree removed. I have 2 big jobs coming up soon which came from referrals from tree surgeons

I work for my wood. Found a woodland-owner and i exchange days of work for as much wood as i want. Do you have a local woods? or contact local tree surgeons, offer them days of ground work if they give you carving-wood? I like the barter system, paying with money is ok but i find i learn much more working for carving lumps

I was commissioned to do a lot of carvings at a local School and one huge beech stump i was carving into a story-telling throne was full of mails. Some i could see an i marked for removal. some i could not see and they marked my chains for replacement. after loosing 3 chains in a day i got a cheep (about £30) metal detector off ebay. It might be cheep and it might not be good at descriminating between ferrous and non-ferrous but since then i haven't lost a chain to a nail. If the nail is 5 or 6 inches inside the tree i might not see it but i check teh whole log at the start and then now-and-then as i progress (as i assume you would). a cheep one is better than nothing and if you give the log a swipe after a couple of passes of the mill wouldnt you then be detecting any metal deeper in the wood?

dam, i just dropped 250 with Rob for a new toonie bar and a replacement dime-tip (plus chains). I really really shouldnt go spending another 100 on a samuri bar + chainsa... should i? somebody tell me i shouldnt quick!

ignore the stihl bars, over priced for what they are.

good reason. As for the bar, its a case of which will last longer. Canon have a bit of a reputation for failing pretty quick. i guess it depends on whether you think you will like carving. if you do tehn i would go for the extra 30 quid. if you are not sure then go for teh cannon, get a years use out of it and then decide if you want to continue. contact Rob and get his unbiased opinion too

have a word with Rob D, he owns and runs chainsawbars.co.uk knows his chains/bars/sprockets better than most. Wondering why you want a quarter tip and not a dime tip? Sugi vars are not much more than oregon but better quality, i would go Sugi myself (in fact i just ordered 2 sugi bars from Rob)

scary that Si. i let my larger saw swing too far on a lateral cut and relaxed my hold too much, it swing right behind me and JUST touched the back of my carving trousers... gave me a heck of a shock. since then i learnt to pay more attention!

Hey Doobin. "im not a carver".... then it might be hard to understand the issues... using a chainsaw to cut wood in half is safe, you use the main part of the bar, you dont go anywhere near the tip and so kickback is highly unlikely, its a simple straight cut and assuming you dont pinch teh chain nothing can go wrong when you are carving with a chainsaw you are rarely doing simple 'cut it in half' cuts, you use all of the bar including the tip a lot, you do a lot of plunge cuts, a lot of full depth penetrating cuts, a lot of half or partial depth ones too, you use the saw on its side and upside down, you use the side of teh chain a huge amount and you are chucking that saw around all the time. so many things can go wrong, teh chances of the tip touching something is huge especially in complex pieces, damaging the piece and making the saw buck like a mule. unlike simple logging-cuts you cant just let the saw do the work, you have to guide the saw and sometimes force it to go against the 'easy path'. this is why we use small saws when we can, its why we dont use standard bars if we can possibly avoid it and why we dont tend to use full chisel standard chainsa and if we do use a standard chain the chances are we have modified it to work with our carving bars. its teh same when we use other bits of kit... a rasp-grinder (flat-burr disc, rotating plane-discs and all of that sort) are great tools and if you are working on teh flat with them and you have the guards in place then yes, they should be nice and safe BUT... its nto often that you have simple flat surfaces when carving. the chances are that you have complex shapes and that brings in big chances of teh disc touching an edge and kicking back. i suspect most accidents that carvers have with these tools are just that, the took touches an edge/angle and kicks and things go wrong. Im 99% sure thats what happened to me. i had on my gloves (which is the other possible cause, a thread or somethign from teh glove got snagged on teh rotating chain of the lancelot tool which dragged my finger onto the chain) and the guard but maybe the took touched a raised spot and dug in and twisted teh anglegrinder in my hand and it caught my finger. others have had the tool suddenly bight in and pull out of their hand, i even know of 1 man who was using an arbotech and it riped out of his hands and cut his thigh! luckily it missed his femoral artery otherwise he would have bled out in about 20 seconds! we accept that carving is a dam silly dangerous activity but we do all we can to try to keep teh risks as low as we can. that usualy includes keeping knobs wel away from tools hope that helps with the understanding doobin:001_smile:

they kick and gloves stand up to them for about 0.00000seconds before you loose skin/bones/tissue etc they also kick like a mule

the only thing you should use on a angle grinder is a sanding disc. anything else is just going to cost you skin/nerves/tendons and finger-articulation (trust me, i know from experience... 2 operations down, 1 left to go and i will never use the tip of my index finger again) even using it for sanding is a risk but the damage is minimal. as previous poster say, use a carving bar and practice and you will be able to do a better job and get better skills keep carving and post pics, we all started somewhere

thanks for the advice lads, always appreciated

nice use of the heart wood

probably not worth the trip, if i remember right its not particularly big and has split trunks

unfortunately its in N wales and I live in scotland now so i cant go down and mill it for him. if he lets it season for a year should be good in the woodstove im hoping

my dad has a yew fallen, any good for firewood?

came out great.. kinda inspired for a bench idea now...

nice review I need to sell my husky 440 to make space and then consider couple of new saws..

dam! i thought you had foind pictures of something i did last year....i had a rude commission , a torso + boobs (and a corresponding male version) to be placed in the garden of somebody who was off on honeymoon. safe to say it caused a bit of a stirr (i thought it was going into a garden out in the country, not in the middle of a housing estate!) and was removed pretty quick I didnt post the pictures on my website/facebook either