Thread: Migration

Originally Posted by Cliff Rogers

I have heaps of hoop pine bowl blanks & some have cracked so they don't suit turning but carving into oval shapes would work.

Also have some rusty reo mesh (200mm grid) I could cut that out & bend it into a free standing form with the top edge cut to different lengths like waves on the ocean.

Position a string of boats along the top at different heights & angles.

I could call it 'Fleet Street'

I pictured all the boats the same height... straight rods...waist high... at least 20-30 of them.. "artfully" winding their way through the exhibition space..
and mabe rough hollow the bowls ..cut the outsides off and join ...like a canoe thingy..


..and remember.....repetition is the last refuge of the sculptor with no new ideas..
..(I speak from experience)

I did think of the roughing & cutting idea but some of these cracked blanks will hit me in the head if I try to rough them....
Maybe I can screw them to a face plate with lots of screws to rough the outside.
Then tape the outside with duct tape, remove them from the face plate & then reverse them onto a smaller face plate to hollow.
I'd leave a good big 'nub' in the middle to help hold them together & then slice them up on the band saw.

Progress.... sorry for the lack of photos & updates.

I hacked up several rotting worm eaten hoop pine slabs to make bowl (platter) blanks.

I roughed them out.... streamers of hoop pine went everywhere.

Then I used a couple of home-made scrapers to 'decorate' the surface inside & out.
Sorry, no photo of that step but I do have photos of the scrapers.

I then cut them in half on the band-saw & glued them back together at the rims.

I them roughed out an ancient boat profile on the band-saw & tidied it up on the belt-sander.

I drilled a suitable hole in them & mounted them on a bit of rebar.

Next I dragged out another old slab of hoop & roughed out 3 plinths with a hand held circular saw & then rounded them off on the band-saw.
I pushed them through the thicknesser to clean them up, ran the edges over the belt-sander, drilled a couple of holes for the rebar & bingo.

I then took another slab & tossed it out on the lawn, bunged a dozen holes in it & stood everything up on it for a coat of sprayed water-based clear.
Intergrain product meant to be slopped onto wooden floors but it worked well through the old CIG HVLP gun.

This morning they are all going to be loaded in the car & taken to the gallery for mounting/assembling/installing.
I'll get some more photos then.

I like both the composition and the individuality of the boats.
May I presume that all the boats will face the land when the install is finished?

There will be a fleet of 9 all headed in the same direction.

Where's the coast guard?

Nice work Cliff. Love the boats, not sure I'd be keen to put to sea in one though in case one of the knot holes blows out...

Elegant. Time to paint the rods deep blue?

Nope, it is installed.

There are few things I'd like to change, painting the rods would be one, getting the bloody things to stand up straight would be the other.

The rotten timber for the plinth is too soft so the rods won't behave themselves.

I like them.

Shiver me timbers !
Very cool Cliff

Interesting
Promise I won't make an offer

Well done Cliff, I woudn't be worried about the leaning rods, aren't you supposed to imagine they're not there anyway?

Just re-read the entire thread. I don't think that Raffan-style boats would look as good as yours. Human migration, in the distant past, was likely a simple, primitive affair.
Your boats remind me of dug-outs made from logs. Which set the tone and the time of the entire suggestion of migration.

Ta, I was aiming for a look like reed boats but with an Asian influence.