The Cabin in the Woods

In my last post I showed a tree that I had power carved.  Since then I've gone a little crazy and started a forest.  I didn't plan on them leaning in the same direction, but the lean is useful as you can position them leaning in different directions around a carving of a house/cabin.  So what am I going to do with this forest?  I started thinking, and then I started carving ....

I started a cabin ....

and then a well which I'll detail below how I created...

The well was created in about an hour with power.  I'm fairly sure that I could crank these out a lot faster now that I've worked through the process.  The tools I used are in the below picture.  A simple diamond taper, two carbide flames, one at 1/8 and one at 1/4, a diamond cutter, and a detail sander.  I also used some Scotch Brite (not shown).  I'll detail the steps below the picture of the burrs.

Start with a piece of cottonwood bark that is a bit larger than you need.  I started with what I thought was going to be the height of two wells.  The decision to make it this tall is based on holding the piece. I figured it's probably better to make the piece two or three "wells" in height and then cut each one on a scroll saw once you're finished.

Once you have the piece, round it with a knife.  Then drill the shaft of the well to whatever dimension you think fits the carving.  In this case, it was a 1/4 inch.  From there its the same process you'd use to carve stone. I used the diamond taper to carve the outlines of the stones.  Then I used the flame shaped burrs to make the stones more irregular and introduce gaps, as well as, undercuts to create shadows.  Finally, I used an engraver with a rounded over tip to texture the stone.  That concludes carving the base.

The next step is to create the branches that serve as the frame that would support a pulley over the shaft of the well.  I milled some bark to around 1/4 to 5/16 inch thick and then cut a "post" and split that into 3 pieces and then glued to the base of the well.  You have to be careful to get the posts as flush as possible with the well on both sides of the well or your glue joints will show.  A little burnishing with a wire wheel helps to hide this, but the more time you spend on making the posts fit, the better.

From there I used the flame burrs to shape the posts into the branches.

Final detailing is done with the diamond cutter to texture the branches as if the bark in still on them.

And now back to my original thoughts ... 

by combing all of these elements an idea is born ... 

and a scene created ...

 

 (needs tweaking, but you get the idea)

 Stay tuned for more as I start to figure out the layout, glue up, and final details of each of the pieces!