Iris has a new friend-part 3 rough carving

The next step in this journey of the heart is the rough carving.  You can bring yourself up to date and review steps 1 and 2 by clicking here. Martin will typically draw bold lines on the surface of the wood he is carving to map out where to remove wood to create the desired shape and depth.  He gathers his carving tools together which includes a mallet and 2 scooped chisels, as well as a pencil.  You can see these tools in the photo below.

Carving is a reductive technique where you start with large, wide and deep gouging chisels to quickly  remove wood and then move to the smaller flat chisels.  The mallet is used to add power to the chisel.  Martin also uses the thick area of flesh on his palms to hit the chisel as you can achieve greater control in any tricky areas with this method.  The wood we chose for this sculpture, walnut, is a hard, dense wood so it takes a lot of force to  carve it.

Martin began this stage of carving by focusing on the ears.  He removed wood from underneath the ear to capture the delicacy and expressive quality of Iris’s ears.  This was tricky but he used fine veining chisels to create crevices and a small spoon gouge chisel to hollow out the ears.

In the final installment of this series we we will share with you how the defining details were created to capture the true essence of Iris' personality and debut the finished product.

To view our collection of architectural hardware and custom furniture, please visit our site at www.martinpierce.com

Iris has a new friend-Part 1

We recently shared a post about a dog sculpture we made as a birthday gift for a dear friend of ours that represented her amazing three legged dog.  At the same time we mentioned that we had been contemplating doing a bust of our beloved Iris for our own enjoyment.  Well, one thought led to another and the design process began: As with all of our custom hardware pieces, the design process begins with a drawing. Unlike her predecessor, Brie, Iris is not want to sit still and pose so Martin was able to create a video and, along with the photographs, he was able to capture her sweet nature in his detailed drawing of Iris' impressive head.

This was done on tracing paper which allowed Martin to roughly mark up the outline on each of the 4 pieces of walnut that would become the main section of her head.

The other decision we had to make was what type of wood would best suit this sculpture. We decided on walnut as we found a nice board.  We cut it up and essentially created a rough block with 4 major joints and 2 very small additional joints for the ears. The ears were made from one block of wood cut in half so basically 5 pieces of walnut. The walnut was 8/4 walnut or 2" thick.  As many of our readers know, raw wood used in furniture is bought and measured by the board foot and the thickness of wood is expressed as a fraction e.g. 6/4 being 1 ½”.  The board thickness is calculated by the width and length of board e.g. 8/4 x1’ x 8’ = 16  board feet.  If the thickness was 4/4 (i.e. 1”)  the calculation would be 4/4 x 1’ x 8’ = 8 bd ft.  Welcome back to algebra class!

We have been referring to this piece as "Iris' brother", in part because the sculpture is a tad larger than life size.  Oddly enough, Iris seems to recognize it as a dog's head as she wags her tail and sniffs it every time she walks by.

Join us for part 2 of the story of Iris' bust to see how five blocks of wood become a life-like version of our dog's head.

To discuss your own custom piece or to view our entire collection of custom architectural hardware, please visit our site at www.martinpierce.com.

How Iris enjoys the dog days of summer

August is one of those interesting months in which summertime activities come to a screeching halt yet work activities have not picked up the pace.  I think people must be hesitant to let summer go so, even though school is back in session in many areas and lazy days are over, we just can't seem to get in the mood to go back to work. Iris, our pit bull, certainly agrees with the idea of enjoying one final month of summer.  Although, if truth be told her days are really the same all year round--eat, sleep, play, rinse and repeat.  Oh to be able to enjoy the dog days of summer for just a few more weeks!

Here is Iris barely able to keep her eyes open while she naps in the warm southern California sun.

As you can see, her days never really change as here is Iris trying to stay awake in August of 2013!

One of her favorite past times is to play with her boyfriend Hoyt the corgi.  She is looking longingly for  him from the front steps of the warehouse, their favorite spot to meet.

And, finally, Iris whiling away a sunny afternoon.

Martin is making progress on the bust of Iris that he has been working on.  He decided to carve it out of walnut and it should be beautiful.  I will share details as the work progresses.

In the meantime, if you would like to view our entire collection of custom hardware, please visit our website at www.martinpierce.com.