9 Ft. Grizzly

      

This was a commission by the estate that houses Chip’s Pub in Clinton, CT. I went to my tree service friend, Nelson, who has a collection of large logs and I picked a 3 ft. thick 10 ft. long hemlock log. We set it up on his property with his front loader. (This series of photos are still clips taken from video footage. sorry about the low quality!)

I started with looking at photos on Google and then made up a sketch to scale.

 

I took my 18″ bar and started blocking out the big chunks.

 

Then I went to my 14″ quarter tip, (my favorite) and began defining the face.

Next, defined the neck, shoulders and chest.

Next, drew in the details of the face and started using my power tools to define the eyes, nose and lips. Here are the tools I like to use.

 

Next, it was time to define the arms and torso.

Now to draw in the claws and use the arbortec to define them.

Now to add in the fur on the torso with a 12″ dime tip bar. It was getting dark 4:45 PM so I had to set some lights. I also pierced between the legs and started to define the legs and feet.

Next, it was time to fur the legs, define the feet and round out the top of the base so water will run off.

Now it’s time to transport and install. We put blue stone pavers as spacers underneath to prevent the carving from sitting on the ground. We also took l brackets and secured it to the pavement.

Next, it’s time to burn the surface to soften the texture and prepare the wood to recieve the wood preservative. I got to use my new flame thrower! It drew a nice crowd at night ime.

Now the wood preservative. I use cedar toned TWP – total wood preservative. It contains sun, water and mildew protection and soaks into the wood fibers real nice.

And finally, the application of black and brown spraypaint topped off with glossy spar varnish on the eyes, nose and lips for a wet look.

I recorded video footage each step of the way to make an instructional video called “How to chainsaw carve a 9 ft. Grizzly”. Here is the preview of the video…

Thanks for looking! To see my full gallery, visit www.customwoodcarvings.com

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