3 Bears in a Canoe

A customer in Maine is building a home and wanted a unique decoration for one of the large walls. This piece is a real 12′ canoe with part of the side sliced off to go against the wall.

The architects sent me this as a concept sketch…

Next, I drew up a sketch and went back and forth refining it until they were satisfied.

I recommended we make the bears out of HDU foam since this would be a wall hanging. The finished bears ended up weighing in total around 60 lbs! Not bad for their large size.

The bears would be carved out of foam blocks made from laminated sheets of foam which would be cut out on the CNC. It was a challenge to envision and plan out how to slice these 3D objects so that the laminated form wouldn’t be missing anything.

 I began screwing and gluing the foam cutouts with gorilla glue.

Here is the canoe they sent pre cut…

Next, I started carving with my battery saw to form and fit the bears into the canoe.

After the chainsaw work, it was time for detailing the face and fur with an angle grinder with sanding disc, dremels, rasps and hand sanders.

Look at what the dust did to my arm!!  Creepy!!

Next, it was time for painting primer on the foam.

Next, they were sprayed with black and the eyes were glossed.

Here are some finished pics…

Here are some videos from this project.

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