Post #370628 by Paipo on Tue, Apr 1, 2008 2:44 AM

Whoa...lots of interest on this guy! I better get busy...

Cheers Kinny, Jonesey, timid, Robin, JP, BenZ, harro, Babs, Polynesiac, keigs, Benjamin, hank and seeksurf...I really appreciate the feedback!

I guess the eye worked out OK then? :wink: I spend a lot of time on doing the eyes on my carvings - they really are the finishing touch in terms of creating the right feel. I wanted this fella to be mischievous, but not too evil. The idea was to scale down the technique used on big carvings where a whole paua shell is set into the socket, with a raised peg in the middle to secure it and create the pupil. The concave shape really grabs the light and gives it life - so it's not really my idea, but another concept borrowed from the master artists of old.

Question time:

On 2008-03-30 17:00, timidtiki wrote:
Hi Paipo - A super nice way in which you did the eye . . . cleaver and beautiful. Can you show us sometime how you manage to hold, shape, and polish such small pieces. I just picked up a small piece of black coral to use in a similar "eye" on something I'm working on. Thanks, Timid

Well, it's just a matter of improvising with what's at hand. Each time I go through a process I usually find a new and better way of doing it.
In this case, I had nice little tapered rod on hand (much like the one used in the MOP piece on pg. 94), which is just turned on the diamond wheel and then finished on the sanding drums. I use these tapered rods in many of my designs and always have few kicking around in various materials. I cut off the end I needed with a little disc burr, then I realised I had the perfect holder sitting in jar on my desk - these are irrigation tubes I use for my gravity feed water supply:

So, just jammed the tapered end in, and domed the cut end on a little diamond drum, then finished it with fine grit burr. No need to sand with such small piece!

On 2008-03-30 17:09, Robin wrote:
p.s. I just realized that the pin wouldn't have showed much. I originally pictured it as a silver dot like the inlay....anyway....what you did is perfect.
And I have a question...do you cut those curves in the greywacke or grind them in...or some other method? Thanks Paipo.

Yep - the silver leaves a smaller dot, so it looks very similar, but because it's shinier than the mop (and metallic) I decided to disguise it and keep the look more organic. I also obsessively put threes into my work, so I liked the balance the 3 MOP elements create.
The negative curves were cut with core drills first (always my #1 choice for getting rid of as much stone as quickly as possible) then refined with cylindrical or bullet shapes, then mostly hand sanded with diamond cloth on dowel (or just rolled up).

On 2008-03-30 21:22, Polynesiac wrote:
this may be a stupid question (so please excuse my ignorance), but for the shell eyepiece, does the pin hold the shell in place, or do you glue it too?

It's a good question! It did hold it reasonably well as the hole was tapered to match the peg, but stone being what it is, I still put a dab of epoxy into the hole and around the edges where the low points of the shell sat in the socket. I 'm trying to move away from gluing at all wherever possible, but teeth are one thing that seem to always require epoxy. I figured out after I'd finished that I could've made a little ebony peg that would probably work without any glue.

On 2008-03-30 19:21, Benzart wrote:
Don't stopdoing this stuff, what ever it is that you are doing, but Please just a few more pictures :lol:

At your service!

:down:You can see here where the piece came out of the bottom lip, but it created a great transtion from worked -> rough stone

:down:This angle shows how the entire form was suggested by the top of the stone. All the work up here is already done!

OK, that will do for now - I'm off to make something really shitty so I don't have to type so much....
:lol: