Sappy Mistakes

Most of today was spent cleaning my room, which is mess of objects and wood shavings. I did, however, do some whittling by cutting down a limb to wand-size. The sickly-sweet fruity smell should have been my first clue that this might not have been a good limb to use. No, I had to get the wood all in my saw and cut two pieces of bark off before I realized that I was dealing with a soft wood filled with sap and getting it on my knife.

Great. <_<

After some scrubbing and giving up for now on trying to clean the saw, I threw the branch out. That was depressing because it looked perfect for a wand. Well, that was my firsthand experience with trying to work with soft woods. Never, ever again...

What Did I Bring Into My Room Now???

I did it again. I brought another fallen branch into my room with the idea that it would be perfect for any huge projects in the future (cane, perhaps?). However, this branch proved to be a lot more difficult than the last one, starting with the fact that it was bigger than the last branch, which took up almost the whole floor span.

There was first the manner of carrying it in. I tried the back entrance to my dorm, which leads to staircase going straight up to my room, but the branch was too long to fit into the hallway without setting off the alarm first, so then I had to carry the whole thing around the building and to the front where the main doors are open for five seconds whenever someone is getting in. Getting it in that way was only one of the two easy parts of having that thing.

Next came getting it up to the third floor by way of the center staircase. After attempting to do it alone and failing miserably, two people from the specialty hall passed by and offered to help. Thank the Universe. So we carried it up stairs, holding it as vertically as we could until we reached the third floor. Getting it into my hallway was the second easy part since that only required turning the thing around and having one of the people keep the door open.

I am still surprised that we somehow got the entire thing into my room. That required careful turning and much patience. Remember the first branch and its length. Yeah, this branch had to have one end propped against the fridge while the other end had to rest against the top bookshelf. It was that big.

Now came the hardest thing of all: sawing. I spent a very nice (oh, there's that sarcasm again!) time sawing it in two places to make it small enough to lean against my wall rather than lay across the floor. If I don't get muscles from three P.E. courses, I'll certainly get it from sawing.

Now the bug problem. I haven't found ants yet, but I've found two spiders and littler bugs that I can't identify. I'll take a hairdryer to it again and see what that does. Hopefully the heat will kill them.

You're a whittler when you bring huge branches into your room with your thought process being "I can use this for something!" and are willing to put up with the problems of insects for the love of your hobby. That's dedication right there. :D

Skipping Steps With Awesome Results



I skipped the step of carving and painted the outside black. I was eager to see what it would look like since it wouldn't be sanded. Looks epic if you ask me, but then again, I'm the whittler, so my opinion is biased. XD Anyway, today I'm going to start carving the interior designs. Not sure how to carve, much less sketch the rice, but one thing at a time.

Project 2 Status: Initiated

With Project 1 finished and delivered, it is now time to begin Project 2: Sushi Rolls. This is in appreciation of a cook at the cafeteria who everyone loves, especially me, and who may be leaving sometime this semester. Thus, I want to create something that will show her that I appreciate everything she has done, especially the sushi.

 

 

I began with a good small chunk of wood whose ends needed to trimmed off to make smooth flat surfaces. After a good (oh excuse me, the sarcasm is dripping from my lip) time sawing and some good (there, the sarcasm is gone) stripping, this is what it looked like. Since sushi is never that big, this was a good opportunity to saw the piece in half and create two sushi pieces instead of one...

 

...which resulted in this. I am going to base the designs off of my friend's sushi rolls, which contain red peppers, mushrooms, and some green vegetable of whose name I do not know (the whole roll is like a California roll in basic structure). Since the outer part of the sushi is the seaweed, and seaweed has texture, I am not going to sand the sides. The carving of rice and vegetables on the tops and bottoms will most likely be the trickiest part, so I better equip myself with plenty of patience for this project. Nonetheless, I am very excited thus far, especially since I don't have to saw anymore.

Project 1 Status: Complete!

 

Done! Here is the finished product of my whittling. I love how the Acrylic Sealer left a nice gloss on it, and darkened the wood a small shade.

 

Red Oak, thirteen and a half inches, core of the four elements, unyielding.

 

I was going to add a constellation on top of the wand to give the impression of the night sky, but after sketching it, it looked unfitting, so I left it as it is.

 

I used a shirt piece, a ribbon, and twist tie to wrap it. Looks tacky, but it works. At least the ribbon and twist tie helped keep the ends down so that they couldn't expose the wand.

 

So after a month of hard work and dedication, the wand has been completed on schedule and my friend loved it. I even got to do the Ollivander shpeel. Now we just have to make sure she doesn't go around trying to cast unforgivable curses on people. X) Wouldn't work anyway; the wand was designed to create, not destroy.