Carve The Whales: Accessories

Project 10: Howler Monkey Light Switch Cover

I’ll have to post this here for now, until the sister blog Cast The Whales is up and running.

It all started with a feverish late night vision. As fast as possible, I reproduced the vision in Microsoft Paint, lest it be forgotten like the last 2000 pages of Kubla Khan.

What do YOU think about late at night?

I won’t recount every step that followed, there are not enough megabytes on the internet. Here are some of the highlights.

My original model, before I comprehended how impossible it would be to melt enough brass for a three dimensional head this size.

Half a head is better than none.

The inimitable and indispensable David Silva packing sand into the casting flask. I could never have done this project without him. He is a master of metal and fire.

Making the impression.

Melting down the brass. Yeah!

As cool as this looks … still not hot enough.

Once the brass casting grains turn into liquid metal straight out of a special effect from the early 90s, a quick pour and then you just hope.

Looking good ….

Great success!

And then there were two. This must be how god felt after he made Eve from Adam’s ribcage.

After a few days worth of compulsive grinding and polishing, it looked like this.

Making the background was harder than I expected. I wanted the look of metal accidentally spilled into the pumice stones, but it took a lot of practice before we could produce this effect deliberately. W.K. Kellogg probably had the same problem when he tried to replicate Corn Flakes.

Kids - DO NOT spend an afternoon splashing molten metal straight into pans of pumice stone. I promise, it’s really boring.

David brazed together the pieces of splash metal with silver solder, another difficult and lengthy step that I am almost completely eliding over.

I won’t even mention the polishing, pumice-stone removing, acid staining and whatnot that happened in post-production. Let’s just go straight to the pig picture.

Who has the cuter gorilla face???

Almost forgot. This is …. a …. uh … light switch cover.

Originally posted December 2011

Project 9: Fish Fan Pull

I was feeling anxious. So I put down my worries and picked up a block. And then … a fish!

So far so good. But here’s what happened next. The wood had a knot, almost in the area where an eye should have been, but not quite. It would have been a really weird place for an eye. So I drilled out the knot, pounded in a peg, and cut it flush. This wasn’t the best idea. Now, instead of a small circle of discolored wood, there was a big circle of discolored wood. At that point, the only thing to do was keep going and drilling all sorts of holes all over the place, sticking pegs left and right.

Before long, the fish was a spotted fish. Point being, the solution to the problem made things worse, then it made things even better than if there had been no problem to begin with. This could be a philosophy I guess, but I don’t want to make too much of a piece of wood on a piece of bread.

I was pretty happy with the tail. Like the ones in One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish.

After polyurethane and some plastic eyes, we were in business.

Originally published November 2011

Project 7: Whale Stapler

The original idea was for a whole whale on the top part of the stapler. But that didn’t seem right, because in the wild you never see a whole whale with the bottom half of a stapler stuck underneath it.

Better then to make the whale and the stapler coterminal. This way it could fit right in on a shelf at Office Depot or on a continental shelf in the great blue deep.

Katy: Was this our only stapler?

Me: Yes.

Katy: Does it still work?

Me: I don’t know. The baleen-paint on the staple magazine might make it more likely to jam now.

Originally posted July 2011

Project 6: Gorilla Multi-Head Trivet

Real gorilla heads are also naturally connected this way.

This project arose because we had nowhere to put our dishware.

I was really tempted to keep going and make a grid of thousands of gorilla heads, and then use it to hold up the world’s largest frying pan. Someday.

Originally posted June 2011

Project 5: Armadillo Handled Toothbrush

Prototype for an idea first suggested on the excellent blog http://dumbcoffeeshopideas.wordpress.com/

Ergonomic for easy handling

I didn’t mean to take so long with this project, but I was beset with difficulties.
First I developed respiratory problems from all the sawdust in our apartment,
and couldn’t continue carving until Katy came home with some surgical masks.

Then, once I could breath again, I accidentally decapitated and dismembered
the first armadillo. I started over, and so went the legs on the second armadillo!
At that point I decided it would be better to just fuse some toothpicks together
with wood glue, which is sort of how real armadillo legs look anyways. They
dried upright in some potting soil.

Breeding legs out of the dead land.

Originally posted April 2011

Project 4: Gorilla, Gorilla and Crab Toothbrush or Pen Holder

Started with one gorilla head, then it grew.

Versatile - For home office or for bathroom.

Attaching the two heads in a durable fashion was a precision job
that required many toothpick dowels.

Almost drilled a hole in my hand a few times when performing
the brain surgery.

Originally posted April 2011

Project 3: Hippo Key Holder

Inspired by:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3NueKXS6dk

The hardest part of this project was shaping the mouth, which required cutting straight down into the grain. This was pretty much impossible until I sawed deep lines down into the grain and then used the knife to strip down vertically from the saw cuts.