NUTCRACKER UPDATE

While I was on vacation during Christmas I decided that I would create three nutcrackers for my children for the following Christmas. That would be Christmas of 2011 which is little more than seven months away. I know that I have been preoccupied with making a cradle for my youngest daughter's first child. I have also had a fairly heavy travel schedule this year, shuttling between China, Mexico and the US. I did manage to prepare my first piece that I would like to sell; The Master. In between all of this activity I have not lost sight of the nutcrackers. I thought a lot about what each nutcracker would look like and I discussed each nutcracker with each of my children. What I do have are three working drawings, one or two for each of the nutcrackers. Here they are. Please do not judge these drawings on their artistic merit. They are only meant to be a guide while I am working on the nutcrackers so the drawings are not of the highest quality.

The first two drawings are for the Nutcracker for my son. They are based on one of his favorite video game characters from the video game, Halo. The character's name is Cloud. I did several drawings of Cloud before these two. These two drawing are full size so that I can take actual dimensions from these drawings. When the nutcracker is completed it will stand approximately eighteen inches tall. All nutcrackers have some part of their anatomy that moves which enables it to crack nuts. Traditionally, it is the mouth that opens and closes that makes the nut cracking device. I did not want to change the face of the character so I decided that the arm holding the sword would move up and down. This will be the nut cracker.

 The next two drawings are for the nutcracker that I am creating for my oldest daughter. She wanted to have a skater nutcracker. I decided that I would use an old fashioned Victorian skater. The clothing and the skates make a quaint figure that gives the character a whimsical look. Like Cloud, the warrior, the skater uses her right arm as the mechanism that creates the nutcracker. When the skater is in the normal position there is little indication that it is also a nutcracker. I have not developed the full size drawings yet for the skater but they will just be larger versions of this drawing. Like Cloud, the skater will be about eighteen inches tall.

 

The third nutcracker for my youngest daughter only has one drawing at the moment. It is going to be a nurse practitioner nutcracker. My youngest daughter is finishing her studies to be a nurse practitioner. It was only fitting that I would create a nurse practitioner for my youngest daughter. Like Cloud and the skater, the nurse practitioner will stand approximately eighteen inches when it will be completed. As Cloud and the skater use the right arm to create the nutcracker mechanism.  

There is a tradition of nutcrackers using a variety of mechanisms to crack nuts.

The Nutcracker Museum in Leavenworth, Washington has graciously allowed me use some of their photographs in my posts about Nutcrackers, The Nutcracker Museum.

This graceful nutcracker of a French courtesan was one of my inspirations for the three nutcrackers that I am working on.The top of the nutcracker lifts off and the nutcracker is inside. There are more pictures and details in the Nutcracker book that is available fro the Nutcracker museum. It is an excellent book. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in nutcrackers.


The pictures above is courtesy of the Nutcracker Museum in Leavenworth, Washington.

The carving of a Chinese girl is also delicately rendered with careful detail and expression in the face and body.




The pictures above is courtesy of the Nutcracker Museum in Leavenworth, Washington

The actual cracking mechanism is hidden from the front. It is a screw mechanism where the nut is inserted in the back and the screw is turned down until the nut breaks.

The pictures above is courtesy of the Nutcracker Museum in Leavenworth, Washington

The nutcracker poses a special challenge. one is making an interesting figure that is attractive and usually novel in some way. the second challenge which completes the first challenge is that is must also be a working, nut cracking device. To me, it is a challenging combination of the artistic and the mechanical.

THE MASTER

For some time I have been thinking about selling the pieces that I carve. When I started working in wood I never thought about selling any of my pieces. Over the years, I have given away many pieces to friends and family. Actually, I have made specific pieces for friends and family that I would give to them. Now, I am at the point where I have no more room to store or display the carvings that I have done. I have more ideas for projects that I would like to start but I have no room to display the pieces once they are finished.

It has taken a lot of thought but the first piece that I would like to sell is one that I call The Master.The Master is a special piece for me because it was one of the first pieces that I carved out of reclaimed wood. The wood was reclaimed from a privet hedge that I had planned to move because a property survey revealed that my property line was seven feet past the privet hedge. When I started to dig up the privet hedge I realized that almost all of the bushes were diseased and infected with parasites. In the end, I dug up all of the hedges and threw them away except one. The one hedge that I kept I have carefully nursed it back to health and it sits in the south east corner of my property. I kept as much as the wood from the other hedges as I could. I kept some of the larger canes and made them into walking sticks. I also kept most of the bottom stock and the roots of most of the hedges. It is from one of those roots that i carved The Master.

Here are some pictures of the completed carving. If you turned The Master upside down you would have the orientation in which the hedge grew.

By and large I followed the natural flow of the wood. I wanted to use the flow of the wood to express the energy that emanates from The Master. As I mentioned, the hedges had been damaged by parasites so there were holes and tracks that had to dealt with and incorporated into the carving. When I carved the face I wound up opening one of the holes in the wood. I could have left it but it gave me a feeling of negative energy instead of positive energy. Instead a took a piece of ebony and carved a patch to fill in the hole. To me, it gives the carving a sense of yin and yang, light and dark, a balance of positive and negative energy.

In the back of The Master, there was a long fissure created by who know what. Instead of trying to remove it through carving, I incorporated it into the carving. The idea being that The Master has so much energy that it is fairly bursting out.

The object that The Master is holding is a glass marble that I found while walking in the ravine near my house. I find so many objects in the ravine that I consider it to be a legitimate source of material for my carvings. The glass marble is very old, I have not seen one like it since I was a very young boy and that was some time ago. So I consider it to be an antique glass marble. Like a ball of light emerging from a period of dormancy in the earth, it is now at the center of The Master's energy or qi.

The top of The Master's head is a series of waves that reach up into space. It is a suggestion of waves of energy or fire. The Master is rooted in the earth. The dark wood of The Master's stand represents the earth. When you look at the arrangement of the grain of the wood is looks like the sedimentary layers of the earth.
The Master is firmly rooted in the earth. The position of his feet is a classic martial arts position to make one rooted or immovable. He reaches into the air emanating energy and fire shoots up from his head. He epitomizes three of the four elements: earth, air and fire.

The Master needed a solid base to stand on. I used a piece of south east Asian mahogany that I recycled from a packing crate. I sanded and polished the mahogany to high luster. I drilled two holes in the base and attached The Master's stand to the base.

There are some Chinese characters on the stand. The character on the left hand side of the sign means 'master' and the character on the right means 'great'. I used Chinese script that predates the Han dynasty which means that the script was used over 2,000 years ago. I like the ancient script, it is closer to the ideographic origins of Chinese characters.

 
I will be posting The Master for sale on Etsy in the near future. For those who may be interested in purchasing The Master I will be posting the link once it is on Etsy.

Baby Cradle Update #5

It is a great feeling to be very close to the end of project that took much longer than you had originally thought it would take. I have finished all the parts of the cradle and put it together. It is interesting to note that the manufacture of the two simple wooden washers took almost as much time as some of the other aspects of the project.

 I decided to manufacture the washers out of a left over piece of ash that I had used to make a small table several years ago that now sits in my office. It is extremely hard wood and will stand up for many decades without any wear. I cut the wood to size then carved each piece into a rough circle. It did not matter that they were perfectly round because no one is ever going to see them once they are in place. I sanded the washers as smooth as possible then applied cabinet makers wax to reduce any friction that there might be on the surface. In the picture above you can see that the washers fit nicely on the doweling that I used to tie the cradle to the frame. The washers will sit on the dowel between the cradle and the frame. The idea is to make sure that the cradle never comes in contact with the frame.

Everything is nicely sanded. The next step was to drill the holes on each end through the frame and the cradle then attach the dowel, the washer and the cradle to the frame. It sounded easy but it was tricky holding all the pieces together while I lined up the dowel with the cradle, the washer and the frame. But I finally figures it out and got everything together in the right order. Here is what it looks like.

The cradle swings nicely in the frame. It was a good idea that I waxed the dowel and the washer. The cradle seems to swing back and forth without any resistance at all. To make sure the dowel did not move I drilled a hole through the frame and through the middle of the dowel to hold it in place. Afterwords, I covered up the hole with wood filler.

All that remains now is to paint the cradle and frame. That part of the project I am giving over to my wife who does a much better job of painting than I do. So, the next post that you will see on the baby cradle will be the last one showing the freshly painted and complete cradle. I have to say that I am happy with the end result. It has turned out better than I thought it would.

Baby Cradle : Update #4

The cradle is complete, at least the construction of the cradle is complete. It took a bit of thinking and a bit of trial and error to get the correct angle for the support of the bottom of the cradle. In the end, I used a protractor to measure the angle of the side of the cradle then I adjusted my table saw to that angle. I tried a few test cuts on some scrap wood and fine tuned the angle.

Once I got the angle right it was just a matter of cutting the supports to length and gluing them into place. I had to do it in two stages because I do not have enough clamps to glue all four sides at one time. So I glued the ends on Saturday morning then glued the sides on Saturday night after the glue on the ends had cured during the day.

Once the supports were fully cured I put two wood screws in each end and three wood screws along each side. The glue alone should be enough to hold the supports in place but I always feel better if there is mechanical attachment as well. All that remained was to cut the bottom of the cradle to size, glue in place then hold everything together with half inch finishing nails; to hold everything together until the glue dried and cured and to add a bit of mechanical attachment as well.

I thought it would be a good idea to see how the cradle looks in the actual nursery where it will be located so I took it to my daughter's house tonight and took these pictures in situ.I think it look pretty good. It will look even better when it is assembled to the stand and painted.

Impressions of Nanning, Guangxi, China

Nanning is a city located in Guangxi China. Nanning. I refer to it as the wild west of China. It is about as far west and as far south as you can go and still be in China. I have been told that it you get on a bus in Nanning you could be in Saigon, Vietnam inside of forty five minutes. This gives you an approximate idea of where Nanning is located.

I go to Nanning (via Hong Kong) at least once a year, sometimes more. There is a company in Nanning with which I have business ties. I am obliged to visit and meet with them periodically. some people might see this as a hardship, others might see it as a fascinating adventure.

During my recent trip to Nanning in March I was invited to dinner at the Gui Jing hotel which was not far from where I was staying. In fact, I have stayed at the Gui Jing hotel, Guijing hotel, during past trips to Nanning. During  the meal i could not help admiring the painting on the wall of the private room where we were eating. I was a picture portraying an entourage on horse back. I love horses and any art portraying horses draws my attention. at the end of the meal I went to study the painting more closely. On closer inspection I realized that it was actually composed of several wooden panels. the figures were carved in relief and then painted. It is one of the finest carved panels that I have ever seen.