Thread: Southern Right Whale

It's a bit of a hike from your place to Carbatec but well worthwhile by the look of it - an impressive project. Will we get to see more progress and finished photos?

A couple of sessions latter the work is progressing...



I used two arbortec wheels for this stage, the 'Industrial Woodcarver' (IW) and the 'Turboplane' (TP). Both of these really remove material quickly when you are in the blocking out phase. The IW is good when you have to go deeper into the wood, the TP is leaves a better surface finish. I had them mounted on two separate grinders so I could switch back and forth quickly without having to spend time changing the mountings.

As is typical for me, I got caught up in the work and forgot to stop to take photographs... The one below shows most of the shaping and rough sanding done. The shaping on the top of the head is still pretty rough. None of the detail work is done. By this time I'd switched to chisels, rifflers, rasps and files, sandpaper in a variety of ways, from orbital sanders.. large and small, to blocks, to small folded squares for the 'nooks and crannies'.



The next shot shows the start of some of the detail. By this time I was using an 'Archer' rotary carver with a wide variety of cutters. I think I forgot to mention that the wood was Jelutong so pretty easy to work. As a concession to the wood, I made some of the extremities a little 'bulkier' than real life so they wouldn't be quite so fragile.



In the mean time I started work on the base for this thing. My original concept was a piece of driftwood with a projection that would allow me to mount the finished whale to look like he was swimming over roughly contoured ocean floor. The photo below is one I did a while ago but on the original small scale (total length about 250 mm).


I began to realise that there was a world of difference between mounting a whale in this fashion that only weighed a few hundred grams and one that weighed over 15 kg! The piece of driftwood I found months earlier and had set aside for this project was completely unsuitable. The base of the drift wood was so small that the finished work would have been far too top heavy... an accident waiting to happen.

When we first bought our block I found a number of piles of mallee root stumps, burn and plowed into mounds during the original clearing of the land in the early 60's. An early project of mine was to collect them all and make one big pile from which I could then, to my everlasting shame, draw on for our wood fire. This was several years before I took up carving and the stumps that went up in smoke still haunt me. ( Fortunately, I 'saw the light' before they were all gone and so I still have a reasonable pile of stumps left which gets raided by a number of local carvers from time to time. I made the trip over to the pile which is about 250 meters away from the shed. I took a wheel barrow figuring that anything that was heavy enough to hold the whale firmly, was not going to be all that easy to carry in my arms. I was right... the one I eventually selected weights just under 30 kg.

It had a vertical projection in the middle which was what I was looking for. I don't have a way of calculating the lateral forces on it, but I didn't want to trust any projection that was holding the whale too far off the center line of gravity. This meant that the hole in the whale's underside, had to be drilled close to its balance point. It was disappointing that I couldn't get it further to the rear of the whale to give more of a 'floating' look to the finished piece, but I just didn't want to take the risk of the base projection breaking off. As it was, it was off center sufficiently that I was worried about the lateral forces on it. I was also concerned about how the projection would fit into the hole in the whale. Being a natural root projection, it wasn't perfectly round in cross section. I decided to solve both problems with one solution.

I cut off the top part of the projection and drilled down its remaining length with a 10.3 mm twist drill, into the base itself. I also found a piece of old wooden curtain rod just a whisker under 35 mm in diameter and drilled this as well. I used two pack epoxy to cement this assembly together. There was a lot of jiggling and juggling, including getting out the Turbo Plane again, to produce a base that was flat on the bottom, didn't wobble, and had the projection at 90 degrees to the floor. This took a lot longer than I thought it would to get right.

About this time I had a small role to play as convener of the woodwork competition for the Port Elliot Show. I took the whale down there for two days and did some of the detail work on the head at this time. Nothing like having an audience watching your every move... no pressure!

Anyway, eventually the detail was done but I still had not drilled the mounting hole in the underside of the whale. I knew that it had to be at precisely at 90 degrees to both the 'y' and 'z' axis and this was causing me some concern. I don't have a pedestal drill large enough for this which meant doing it by hand. To further complicate the matter, the underside of the whale isn't flat, but rather gently sloping. Getting it right was equal parts bravado, guess work and prayer. I don't think I did manage it exactly in the end as the whale has a slight 'forward' tilt but it looks ok I think. At least he isn't listing! (photos a bit later). I drilled the hole just deep enough to completely hide the curtain rod so as to maximise the height of the whale above the base without the rod showing.

Here's a few photos of the detail on the head of the whale.



By now some of you will have noticed that this whale has no flippers. All my previous small scale attempts at this pattern had incorporated the flippers as part of the one piece of wood. That was never going to be possible at this scale so my original concept was to leave the area for the flipper mounting unprocessed so that I would have a flat surface to attach the flippers to later. That is what the large drawn circles on the whale are marking in the early photos of the blocking out process. Unfortunately, in my creative fog, I cut these surfaces off in the process of rounding the body. Now I had a sloping surface to try to match so as to minimise the glue line in attaching the flippers. I needed this glue line to be minimal as it was never my intention to paint the finished product. Thus I was unable to use any kind of bog or filler. I really stressed about this, trying to imagine how I could exactly match the rounded side of the whale to the attachment surface of the flipper. I know there are ways of doing it but I didn't feel my skills were up to it. In the end it was a process of refining ideas gleaned from a number of sources... (thanks guys... you know who you are..), until eventually the final solution was reached. I used a 54 mm Forstner bit to drill into the sides of the whale to produce a flat-bottomed hole. Next turn a couple of disks just a bit thicker than the hole was deep and exactly 54 mm in diameter. Next glue the disks to the flipper rough outs. I used two pack epoxy for this and struck my first problem. There was no way to clamp the sloping surfaces. In the end I just had to set them there to dry. This resulted in a slightly thicker glue line than I would have liked but it was the best I could manage. Once the glue attaching the disk and the flipper rough out was dry it was a simple matter to finish forming the flippers.



Next I dry fitted the flippers to the whale. Every thing was nice and tight. Perfect... So then I went ahead and put some glue on the disks and in the holes in the side of the whale and tried to fit the flippers. Guess what.... the moisture from the glue had expanded the wood and the disks would not go in the holes. Panic! Wipe off the glue quick, run to the disc sander and CAREFULLY remove a fraction of a millimeter of diameter off the flipper disks by eye... run back to whale, re-apply glue, fit flippers.... Whew!

I wasn't worried as much about these glue lines as I knew I could hide some of it when I carved the folds of skin around the base of the flippers later. So here they are fitted but not yet carved into match the curve of the whale body.

Final stages: It was never my intention to paint it even when it became clear that the lamination lines would show. The glue up of the block was done very well but there are always subtle differences between the pieces of timber that make it up. Its inevitable. I still would rather that than have the wood covered up. In my opinion if you can't tell its wood, it might as well be plastic.

Originally thought about using two tones of shellac on this whale to differentiate between the skin and the callosities but I just couldn't be sure of what it would look like. In the end I chickened out and just used a clear de-waxed shellac over the whole thing. I was very happy with the callosity texture achieved during the carving process and decided eventually that the texture could carry the effect. I've no regrets about that decision. I finished it off with 'Triple 'E' cream from U-bieut.

I also debated with myself over how to finish the base. My original idea was to leave it natural. However, the base, having spent many years in a pile of other mallee roots was covered with sand and insects and spiders etc. It definately needed to be cleaned at the very least so I went over it with a pressure hose. The result, when it was dry once more made it look far too 'muddy' brown. I asked a lot of people for advice but in the end I decided to give it one coat of dewaxed shellac. Not enough to give it any shine, but enough to darken it up a bit. Very happy with that decision. The contrast with the whale was just what I was looking for... light to dark.... shiny to mat.

Anyway, here it is. We took it down to the cliff and set it up on a couple of saw horses for some promo shots before packing it up and transporting to Art Images Gallery who are featuring it in their Christmas exhibition. They are having a launch of this exhibition on Friday evening 6:00 to 8:00 pm at 32 The Parade Norwood for those of you close enough to attend and have an interest in seeing it 'in the flesh' so to speak. I'll be there so if you do come, make sure to say g'day.

Beautiful work!

Claude

Wow.

Fabulous. I'm so pleased that you didn't paint it = it is carved wood, show everybody.
Thanks for taking time-outs for some process pictures.

well done love it.
I like the fact you didn't paint it

Awesome!

Thanks guys. I can see heaps wrong with it and there are things I will do differently if I ever do it again.... but we're all our own worst critics. The piece goes on public display this evening at Art Images Gallery, 32 The Parade Norwood as part of the launch of their Christmas exhibition from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. I'll post a photo of the event later...

Whittling, I can't believe that there are "heaps' wrong with it. Go ahead, try again.
In the meantime, I believe that wood carvings are quite elastic sorts of things where the carver's "wood-sense" makes the shape come out, one way or another.
Also, I think that the public accepts the carver's sense.
I can't help but believe that you carved what you could "see" in the wood. I do that, whatever the shapes may be.
I can only sense from your illustrations that much the same has happened to you and I can respect you for it.

Most of my Ravens, from 9" to 34", show exagggerated beaks, heads and shoulders. That's what I see, particularly in the deep snows of winter.
Blizzard all dang day today, Enough snow that I'll feed them something tomorrow. They recognize people, they are waiting and watching.

Hi Whittling. That is a very impressive sculpture of a right whale. You have got really good detail of those warty looking bits over the eyes and on the front of the nose. The base also seems to represent some sort of reef the creature is swimming over really well. There is a quite big bronze sculpture of the same type of whale down here in Tasmania, as far south as you can drive. Guess the thing must be 4 or 5 metres long. The detail on it looks sketchy compared to yours, plus it looks like it is sitting on a giant golf tee ready to be driven out to sea by an imaginary monster golf club. see link....http://www.think-tasmania.com/cockle-creek/
Well done, great job.

Magnificent! Like other posters, I like the fact that it's still the natural wood colour.

that's some piece well done I could even turn that into a handle for a walking stick on a small scale of coarse
even temps me to do something on a larger scale
I liked the way you fixed the fins and mounted it get the base flat must have taken some time as well as balancing it