A look inside my shop

Over the past couple of months a lot of folks have been asking me to show a little bit of my shop.

Ive been healing up my hand since my december ordeal.

During the six or so weeks I took a break from carving, I really was carving mentally. I went thru so many designs over and over. It’s all I could think about and I started to feel a bit crazy.

So just this week I started my first kuksa of the new year, and today I started my third. I had to shoot from the tripod and if you know me personally I’m not one to pose.

I dislike it when I photograph other people and certainly don’t like the idea of it when I have to be in front of the lens.

 

What you see is what you get… my sorry looking shop shirt, unkept beard & hair, wood chips stuck on my hat, funny looks on my face, and what looks like wood chip tornado came thru the building.

 

Also I just feel a good photo is a capture of a great moment. Rarely do you capture at the split second your eyes caught it.....But that's why it's fun...

I call it 'The Chase' I was talking to another great carver from the northern Wisconsin about this exact thing.

Jarrod sold me a bowl and I could tell he sort of regretted it. I offered it back but he resisted because that is just part of the game.

 

Now he will make another 50 before he carves one just like 'the one that got away'. This is in some ways why I carve everyday. "The Chase".

As you can see there is a snow fortress surrounding the shop. Still two feet of snow and ice covering everything.

People that come in to visit and take a peek at the carving, always look confused by the bare wood walls.

No insulation, and the doors are wide open. My first year and a half of carving was spent every single day underneath a lean to tarp facing the forest with a long fire to take the edge off.

I liked being in the daily weather changes, and literally watching & listening to the seasons change. The woods sound much different in winter than summer.

Reminiscing.. makes me want to tarp it up again like old times.

This one made me laugh. Im not sure why I looked up all of a sudden but the camera happen to catch it on timer.

Finally getting some real carving time on the Joonas puukko.

This is sort of a prototype that Nic Westermann from the uk made for me. I put a really long and crooked handle on it for some herculean cuts.

Since my hands were obviously being punished for just about carving a kuksa in black cherry every day with gouges and spoon knives…

I wanted to start this new year with a new means ofmaking and progressing my designs, but with less strain on my bones. And sorry, the new methods won’t include Zeus or his electricity.

You could really just use this as is right now. I like to take the axe work right down to the last possible slice.

This should really be in my work in progress thread but I figured it was time to have a 'shop' thread.