Thread: Green Sea Turtle Two

By May/2013 I was warming up to the idea that the shell could be a turtle body.
The more I looked at it, in and out of the shed, the better the idea seemed.

Design
There was enough wood that I could scale up my original turtle drawings 2X.
The pantograph is the Lee Valley 07K06.01. It was wood and very light-weight.
So, I cloned it with 3/4" x 1/8" aluminum strip. Simpified the mag factors for 1.5X, 2X, 3X and so on.

I had to decide on the final body posture. So, I consulted an expert = my brother.
He lives in Grand Bahama and lives to scuba dive. When the WX is good for the boat, he blows
at least 2-3 tanks a week. I asked him what the GST look like when they come in and do a high speed turn to their left. Probably the longest and most detailed email I have ever got in my life.

You can see the leftover grid from the Skilsaw, nice for the placement of a drawing. A bandsaw being useless in 3D, I use fretcuts to trim the body block.

Body
With the 2X drawings done, I did the transfers with carbon paper as all the lines would be cut away.
If the lines had to persist, I would have used graphite paper.
At this point, the body is 16" x 20" x 3.5" and weighs some 8lbs/3.6kg.
There were two pencil-sized knots in the block.
By jiggling the drawing over a little, I got what I wanted and dodged the knots completely.
The main shaping gouge was an adze (Kestrel Baby Sitka), then a 5/35, then a 2/30 to flatten things a little.

The Head
For my next trick, I selected 1/2 of a good shake block.
Step one is to prune off the inside face to look for little branches which
would have been overgrown in the next 500 years.
Then the sides, then the outside face.
The block cleaned up very well, you can see the scales that I split off.
The froe was custom-forged for me by Flatlander Forge. Everything I've ever wanted,
I can split 1/8" when I need to.
I got some work done on the head shape, the neck area will be mostly cut away.
In the meantime, I need waste wood to hang on to.
There's a big scale of wood on the LH side of the face which I expect to pop off.
The block has some serious cracks. If I don't lose that in the mess on my shop floor,
I'll glue it up and move on.
The head is about 9"long x 4" wide x 5" high, but lots of wood to come off.

Legs
For some reason, I didn't want to use cedar for the whole thing. I have a lot of carving-quality birch (Betula papyrifera) that cost me maybe $1/board foot (12" x 12" x 1"). I thought that I'd like to see the contrast in the wood colors and I have no plans at all to paint this thing.

So I transferred the leg drawings to birch, about 1.5" thick, and made the rough cutouts with a band saw.
As you might see, the undersides are quite hollow. That will change, will be reduced, as I shape the lower edges of the legs to form more fluid anatomical shapes in the turning.

There's a lot of waste wood attached to each leg. I need to see where on the body the legs attach. I need wood for clamping to the bench for carving. I need the flexibility to cut angles in the joints for the dynamics of the swimming posture in the turn.
The front legs are about 11" X 1.5". The back legs are about 5" x 5" x 1.5".

Showtime
The first GST is 1/2 this size. I set it out in front of a 32" x 40" submarine painting.
The Artisans' Exhibition was back in September 2013, the paint was actually dry before the show!
I'm sitting at my 3-legged carving bench with a couple of 60W desk lamps. The bench has a 5" x 5" hole in the
middle and an adjustable shelf below that. That way, I can work on end-grain carvings and raise and lower the carving for convenience.
I was hacking away at a pair of Raven dishes in Yellow Cedar.

In my home shop, I run 2 x 18W LED lights, each as bright as 150W incandescent. I work in "daylight" in the darkest days of winter. For my old eyes, $45 each was the right price.

That's it for the time being. I hope to get a lot more done this winter.
But, life has a bad, bad habit of getting in the way.
Ask all the questions you want but please don't hold your breath for a reply.
I found out tonight that my timeline (as a healthcare provider) has just been stepped up
by a week.
48 hrs to button the place up and move into the city for a couple of months. Booger.
Adios.
Via con Dios.
RV

Nice to see how its done properly!

Great start RV. Looking forward to seeing it develop as you get the time.

Thanks so much for sharing RV. I bet we are all jealous of your wood supply now. Looking nice and I look forward to see it develop more.

Warm regards

Derek

Thanks Derek. I can arrange to have 20,000kg of logs dumped on your front door step before the morning.
The self-loading trucks are really quite quiet, won't disturb the neighbour's beauty sleep one little bit.

Hindsight suggests that I'd have a different perspective on carving if it were not for the volumes of free & cheap wood. End-to-end, we estimate that there's still more than 2km of birch planks, stacked and stickered up in the mountains. $1.50 each. I admit that I have tossed 2/3 of my cedar stash, had to face up to the fact that it really was junk wood.

Must have been early autumn when I brought the body shell home = I can see grape vine leaves changing color in the background. Long time to see anything in that shell.

I'm away in the morning (-25C.) No choice. Taking the turtle and a couple of other WIPs to occupy my time.
We shall see what Friday evening (post-op) brings.

BTW: did any of you notice the lengths of the shadows when I took the last few pix of the shell and legs?
That was my dining room table at noon. Yeah, mid day. Sun slips behind the mountains at 1:57P and 3 weeks to go.

Yeak it didn't make a whole lot of sense with all that sunshine in your pics considering your sweltering in -24C at the mo

Would you mind explaining "dirty with mountain rock dust" please Robson?

The local mountains around the village run from maybe 5,000' to 9,000' with lots of rock exposed above the tree line. One hour east is Mt Robson, just shy of 13,000'. Much of the stone is very poorly consolidated sedimentary rock, like shale/slate that you can peel off and break with your fingers. Various forces of erosion take the surface apart, not to mention the scouring action of avalanches. In the occassional windstorm here on the valley floor, the 50-80kph wind blows that rock dust into everything. After a day or so, the snow out front is quite brown/gray.

I didn't get around to wiping off the interior/dash board in the Suburban this fall. In the sunshine, it almost glitters (mica(?) with rock dust. Same problem with leaving house windows open in the summer = the dang dust is on everything.

Mixed with rain and snow, the rock dust settles into the fine cracks in the surface of the wood that I bring home. Of course, that stuff is the kiss of death for the edges of good carving tools. By experience, I learned to skin every piece of wood. The GST body shell and the head block were filthy, being pulled out of old debris piles which had been stacked up with a D8 tractor.

I would've thought dust would give you bother where you are, just thought dust came with dryness stirred up by Willy Willy's or such like.

My landscape is rock, flowing water and green, dark forests.
Looking at my house windows, some days, I'd swear it was raining mud.
Some winter ranch pastures, hay fields and a few guys have wheat & oats.
There are grazing leases for the crown land in the high meadows for the summers.

I bought my mountain house in 2000. I was determined to always
look up at the vertical arrangement of the landscape.
Must admit, it sure looks pretty with all the snow up top. The usual
cornices are building up in the saddles between peaks. Chunks the size of houses
come down in the big melt in June. Unstable avalanches are coming down, as usual.

Actually, if you use Google Earth, you can see all around where I live.
It's sort of fuzzy but I can even find my garden shed!

I'm in the city for the next month (or more.) Brought carving tools, the GST,
a pair of Raven dishes and a Frog platter. Duties aside, I hope that I can get in
some daily carving sessions.