tributesinwood

A New Addition – Ada’s Carving

Not just a new addition to my carving website…but, most importantly a new addition to my family!

My daughter, Emily, gave birth to Ada on July 1st…Canada Day. With the quarantine going on, we’ve been extra careful so that we would be able to manage to safely get in a few visits over the summer. This weekend, we had a terrific visit with the new Mom and Dad where Ada received her first carving from her Papa. I’m banking on her growing up to really like carvings!

I wanted to do something from a Canada Day / Ada’s Birthday standpoint so I carved another rendition of my little 150th Canada Day beaver that you might recall.

I started with the body roughed out on the bandsaw followed by a Typhoon bit on a Foredom tool. The combination makes pretty quick work of the roughing out process. The tail was added separately so that the grain of the wood aligned along the length of the tail for strength and all of the detail followed with a knife, a few small gouges and a wood burning tool.

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This little fellow’s handiwork had to be a cut log fashioned into a sign from Papa to Ada and just had to include a maple leaf. I used the centre section from a piece of Butternut that somewhat already looked like a log. The maple leaf that I added is made from Basswood. The wording was pretty easy…July 1st was definitely the best Canada Day ever for all of us. A bit of carving followed with some wood burning and acrylic paints doing the trick.

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The base was made on a lathe from two pieces of Bloodwood ( beautiful grain ) laminated together and hollowed out like a bowl to accommodate a music box. I used water based Carpenter’s Glue to glue down some sawdust and wood chips on the top of the base where the little beaver had been doing his carving.

” You Are My Sunshine ” is a song that I sang often to Emily as a baby and as Ada has already heard repeatedly in our few visits together! I didn’t show it in the photo below, but opposite the side where I placed the music box, I drilled a number of holes in the bottom plate so that the sound could resonate somewhat like a guitar.

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The first of Papa’s finished gifts for my Ada…