I just keep working my way upward on this Chickadee and Blackberry Bramble walking stick. It is ending up being much more detailed than I realized it would be when I first started. I seem to have a habit of making my job harder and harder with each new project.
My next step is to establish the diameter of the hand grip. As shown in one of my previous posts, the hand-grip will be Blackberry vine twisting around the stick’s shaft. I’m using my Arbortech Mini Grinder to make depth cuts.
After chipping away the wooden rings that I made with the mini grinder, I use this angle grinder to smooth the surface. I’ve left the shaft thicker below the hand-grip area because I still have more designing to do. But in the end I will use the same technique to reduce the rest of the walking stick’s diameter.
It took me quite a while to realize that this particular winding pattern was only possible for me to do by carving three vines instead of only one.
I started refining the shapes from the base of the design and am working my toward the top, saving the Chickadee birds for the last.
In order to carve the beaded texture in the flower centers, I used a diamond bur to carve a nice, little concave shape into a stone bur.
This technique works well for small eyes and It will also work nicely for shaping the individual sections of the blackberries.
Here I am detailing the serrated edge of the leaf using an inverted cone bur.
I use this type of bur a lot. It’s especially helpful for undermining the subjects and removing unwanted wood from negative spaces in tight places.
I’m hoping to spend a lot of time out in the country this year, and with this portable power station. I’ll be able to take my work with me.
The power station is able to power my micro motor and hand piece as well as my mini grinder. I will be testing it’s limits this summer.
Thanks again for stopping by! I’ll stick with it and keep on carving! Hope to share my progress with you next week! For those of you who are carvers or know someone who would like to carve, I’ve included some associate links to some of the tools I’ve mentioned here. To see other tools that I use or recommend you can visit my amazon associate store where I also earn fees on qualifying purchases.
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