Harp Badge for Boat School

In April, I formed a woodcarving club - Limerick Woodcarvers. We meet in the classroom of the AK Ilen boat-building school in Roxboro in Limerick. The boat-building school has recently completed 4 traditional river Shannon gandelows (flat-bottomed river rowing-boats) and took them to Venice in Italy for a race. On request, I made harp-shaped badges for the stern of the boats, based on the logo of the AK Ilen organisation. They are each about 4 inches long, made of lime wood, and coated in Danish oil. The badges were finished just in time for the trip to Italy. I used two of the swirl-holes to pierce the badges to take wood-screws, for attaching to the gandelows.

Hurling Ball (Sliotar)

This is a wooden model of the ball used in the Irish (Gaelic) game of Hurling. The leather ball, or sliotar (pronounced shlitther) is hit with a wooden stick (a hurley). I carved this wooden copy of the ball from bog oak, i.e. very old wood recovered from a field. It was part of the deal, that my colleague Billy gave me a large chunk of bog oak in return for my carving a sliotar for him. After I used a saw and chisels to make the rough sphere, I carved the final shape with knives and palm tools. I sanded it then finished it with varnish.

Creation of Adam - bosting in

Bosting In - carving the hands down to different levels:
So I've started bosting in (as master-carver Chris Pye would call it) - I'm lowering different sections of the wood down towards the levels or planes that they will have towards the end. For example I need to leave the thumbs high, but I need to cut the middle fingers down to a lower level.
The old lime-wood is dry and tends to fray and splinter, even after I sharp the tool I'm using at the time, so before I wrap the hands in plastic for the night, I lightly spray a mist of water over them to add moisture.
The tools in the picture are: Pfeil (Swiss Made) gouges, a Robert Sorby gouge, an Allen Goodman knife and a Helvie knife (coloured handle).

Creation of Adam - setting in

Setting In - keeping it square: 
I have been setting in the sides of the hands. That means I've carved the edges of the hands to make a 90 degree angle with the top surface (and with the base). The tool I used to guide me is an adjustable combination square, because my try square is too long to fit without hitting against the base.
Then when I start carving downwards (bosting in), the hands will not lose their outer shape.

Creation of Adam - more grounding out

Continuing to ground out, using one of my favourite large gouges - a Robert Sorby 38mm type D straight gouge.

Creation of Adam - grounding out

Plasticine model.

I want to carve hands and I like Michelangelo's Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican in Rome, so I plan to carve a high relief version in wood of just the hands and wrists of Adam and God.  I made a plasticine (like play-dough) model of the hands on a laminated reduced-size printout, so that I could study where the high points are going to be.  I cut a 57 x 23 x 9 cm (22.5 x 9 x 3.5 inches) block of lime wood and I used carbon paper to trace print-outs of the hands onto the wood. From the near side of the wood, I started to ground out the background with a Pfeil (Swiss Made) gouge that is both deep (sweep no. 9) and wide (20 mm). On the far side of the hands ("above" them), I tried using Forstner drill bits to drill out much of the waste. I got this drilling idea in a Chris Pye book (Elements of Woodcarving).

Grounding out the background

The Finished Trout

Here he is, suitably mounted on a wooden chopping board, textured to represent flowing water. Both background and fish are varnished in high gloss as though they are permanently wet.