foleyisland.com

Tiki Update!

After the second tiki went up, the City of Cape Canaveral honored us with a beautification award. Tikis Rock!

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A different take on a new tiki

This is the second tiki done for our front yard. The details of how the first tiki was created follows this entry.

Rugg Expecting the setup, it passed his inspection.

This tiki would be done in a more conventional style. A revised ’sawhorse’ was constructed so Don could work on the tiki laying flat. Also, Don would use a Rotozip to outline the deepest parts of the tiki and use these guides to cut into. In the above photo you can see small 2×2 wood segments that are mounted into the horizontal brace to keep the palm segment stable. The legs on the sawhorse brace are 2 feet long, so you can buy two 2-by-4s for the legs and one for the horizontal braces to build the same setup. This is ABSOLUTELY much easier of a setup to carve a tiki.

Instead of working with a template, this tiki was destined to be ‘freehand’. Using a ‘Magnum’ Sharpie marker, Don just stood over the palm and drew out the tiki. Absolutely not symmetrical, but that actually is OK, sometimes it’s good to avoid perfection. The goal on this one was to be a “laughing” tiki. He’d be a bit taller than the first and was to be displayed on the right hand side of the yard and to have a slightly different ‘feel.’ If all worked out well, he’d look like a ‘cousin’ of the first tiki, with some similar elements, but still have his own personality.

Tiki drawn out

With the tiki drawn out we’d be taking a new direction on this tiki. Most of the work would still be done with chisels and gouges, but the deepest parts of the tiki would be outlined with a rotozip. The rotozip is a spiral saw used most often for drywall and cutting out plywood blanks. Don had the idea that if you used a rotozip to define the deep cuts, you could carve down to them with traditional tools.

The RotoZip with the Jigsaw attachment

This is really the coolest tool. A spiral saw is sort of like a drill, but it removes wood, and kind of like a band saw, but it’s hand-held. Don has had one for several years and recently upgraded to the latest version. A variety of his props over the years have been built using this tool. The new ‘jig-saw’ atttachment is a great addition and helped with this project.

Don, diving into the tiki

“So, here’s the drill” OK, bad pun. Don used the RotoZip to outline the parts of the tiki that would run deep. The idea was to bore into these areas instead of having to chisel deep, which sometimes damaged the surrounding area. Using traditional chisels and gouges the rest would be carved away. Why bother? Well, lots have folks have used power tools to work on tikis…the most popular being chain saws…but Don has never heard/read/seen of anyone using a RotoZip on a tiki.

Tiki Hauling Vehicle

After a couple hours of carving, the laughing tiki is done and stained. This one is much larger than the first and hauling to the front yard in the hot sun was something we weren’t looking forward to. So we employed our Tiki Hauling Cart. Actually, it’s a dinghy trailer, but with a couple nylon tie-down straps between the bunk boards it worked perfect for effortlessly hauling around a couple hundred pounds of Tiki. Once in place we just tilted it up and slid the tiki into the hole.

Tiki in place

We poured half a bag of quik-crete into the hole around bottom of the tiki hole to make it a challenge for anyone to remove, and once the concrete was set, filled in the hole. The front-yard tiki project is done. Using the Rot0-zip to define the deep edges did take out some of the guesswork while carving and did speed things up, but it also made the process less organic. Kind of like coloring in between the lines, so it might not be a good fit for everyone. Highlights of this tiki include the creation of the horizontal work area, and the use of the Tiki Hauling Cart.

Tiki in place, inset shows the back

The carving of the Tiki was finished on Thursday. Since we’d be seeing the back of it from the front door, Don wanted to put an accent on the back, so he carved the icon of a sea turtle. Wayne Coombs (a local tiki artist who is world famous) inspired Don as a youth to carve tikis for his parent’s house when he was a child, includes wonderful details such as this (his are much better).

On Saturday the top and bottom were saturated with a sealing stain to help preserve them and when it was dry, a three foot section of a pressure treated 2×4 was screwed on the bottom. Once buried, this would help prevent someone from pulling it up from the ground, since it wouldn’t be buried too deep. We dug a hole near our front yard walkway and put the tiki in. With the tiki installed, Don used a light colored stain to change the wood from white to an oak color and to protect the exposed surface. For shading he mixed a dark stain with the oak stain and brushed under the eyelids, eye brow, nose and lower lip. With that last step, the tiki was done.

Tiki is blocked out

The ‘welcome’ Tiki is almost done. There’s some definition yet to be complete, as well as some staining.

Tiki blocked out, and a view of the carving station

Another hour of carving. Gave some more definition to the nose and teeth. The details are good enough to call it a day for your basic tiki. The goal is to get this in the ground this weekend, so Thursday will be spent adding some more depth and cleaning things up. Friday will be for staining (Don’s got some stain ideas brewing). But today was a good day, we laid the foundation on some details for the eyes and the teeth and rounded out the nose a bit. His eyes and nose gave him some personality today. In case his clients were wondering…this all was done after five p.m. today!

Another hour into the carving

Before Memorial Day got lost in activities such as walking on the beach, napping and (yikes) working, Don got an hour or so carving time into the tiki. Some features are kind of flat at this point. The goal here is to ‘block out’ the main features and then carve deeper into areas to help give them better definition.

Marple Straight Chisels

Once the section of palm sits in front of you, your tiki is done. All you have to do is remove the wood that’s in the way of the final product. Tiki carving is a subtractive process.

Of course, to make it work, you have to remove the right wood. A lot of this work is done (at least by Don) with the straight chisel. At this point in the process, that’s all he’s using. The goal is to get rid of the wood in the way of the final tiki. Above are Don’s Marple’s straight chisels. They actually could be used alone to create the final product, as most of the work is done with them and the fine tuning and curves could be achieved with the same tools.

As you can see, the 1″ chisel is absent. This is the result of an accident where the poor tool ran into a nail and destroyed the edge beyond recovery. It’s a shame, because the 1″ straight chisel is a great tool.

Once the ‘blocking out’ is done with the straight chisels, the hand and palm chisels will do the detail work. But make no mistakes about it, at this point the straight, bulky chisel is doing all the work.

In short, if the club is being used, it’s being used with the straight chisels. It’s all about getting rid of the big wood. And at the moment, the club is being used and the straight Marples are designed to take the brunt of the work.

A pineapple tops the tiki

Why put a pineapple on top of the tiki?

This tiki is destined to be next to our front porch garden. The pineapple has long been a symbol of hospitality and welcome. It goes back to the days of Christopher Columbus (first recorded instance) when he was welcomed with a pineapple. In hindsight, bad call on the natives’ part. Just the same…

In time, seafaring captains impaled fresh pineapples on their porch railings to show that they had returned from exotic ports and to invite friends to visit. In America, from colonial times, the pineapple became a sign of open arms and hospitality. The tradition has spread around the world.

Carved pineapples have become a mainstay of coastal architectural design.

So, our tiki near our front door will have a pineapple on top, in honor of this tradition.

Tiki after about an hour’s work

With the stencil done, it’s time to carve. Most of the early cutting is done with a 3/4″ straight chisel whose whole goal in life is to remove the top layer of fiber. While it’s nice to have some of the outer bark for detail, such as the eyebrows, there’s a fiberous layer before you get to the core wood that will allow you to do real carving. Every tree is different, but about 1/4″ to 1/2″ of the layer under the bark is useless to carve. It’s just a fiber that will quickly rot away.

So, on the above step you’ll see the pineapple and eyebrows left in bark, but the next level is carving deep to get to the core wood. The uppermost level of the eye on the left is carved down until the fiber is gone and the core wood is present. For the rest of the tiki face, this will represent the shallowest level of the carving.

The above work was about an hour’s worth of carving. The BBQ and the beach called…but it was good to get the tiki started. No detail work yet, just chunking out the big stuff. About half the time was spent whacking away with the maul and the 3/4″ chisel, the other half just hand-carving with a 1/2″ straight chisel.

Note the full club on top of the tiki.

Don’s Oak Club

He’s not quite sure, but Don’s choice of mallet is an old oak club. It’s shy of 2 feet long and has a bent nail at the end for hanging up. He came across it at an estate sale years ago and bought it for a buck fifty. No hesitation on this overlooked gem. He would have paid much more for it.

It’s anyone’s guess, but Don thinks it’s an old Live Oak maul. Live Oak was the prized wood for centuries. In fact, when they built ‘Old Ironsides’ of Revolutionary War fame, it wasn’t iron at all, but southern live oak from Cumberland Island off the coast of Georgia. The wood was so strong, cannon balls would bounce off it like the ship was made of iron, hence the name.

Palm is A GREAT deal softer than oak, so the oak club keeps going without incidents.

Hammers and mallets are fine, but they all have a particular balance and strike requirement to stay true. A big old oak club doesn’t have that. In fact, Don’s club does have a flat striking surface, but he doesn’t use it. If heavy cutting is needed, he holds it down near the hilt. If chipping away, he holds it near the point of impact. You can’t do that with ANY striking tool designed today. You could put a display in Home Depot or Lowes with a big oak maul and nobody would buy it.

Das Maul

You can hold this old maul in your hand and know that it’s been used for decades in an era long gone. In a world full of rechargeable power tools and plastic accessories, there is a huge comfort in holding a chunk of wood and getting the job done…old school.

Some of the carving tools…gouges

A lot of tools can come into play when carving tikis. Some of the best use a combination of everything from chain saws to fine chisels. On this tiki, Don is going to avoid using power tools (and to those who know him…this is hard) and stick with his chisel set. For carving wood, Don has three sets of Marples English chisels, one for large, straight cuts suited for smacking with his oak club, a more defined set for hand carving, these are ‘gouges’ (above) and a small set of ‘palm chisels’ for intricate work.  A wooden mallet is good; metal ones have more punch, but will tire you out quicker. Don prefers an oak club, very likely over 100 years old that he found at an estate sale. A wetstone is needed to keep a fine edge on your tools. Professionals might use an angle grinder to save time. Sharp tools are important as they make work easier and the resulting carves clean. Don uses a wetstone and oil. If he did this more often, a grinder would come into play. Eye protection is key too. Lots of flying wood chips.