New Gnome For The Garden

[dmatias]

Re: New Gnome For The Garden

What a great imagination you have for your jar lid. My son, husband and I were blown away. I also love your gnome and will try and carve one soon. Keep up the fantastic work and keep us posted.

[chaboinken]

Re: New Gnome For The Garden

Great carving,he will look real good in the backyard,or front yard.Keep um comming,and thanks for showing him.
Lennie.

[Claude]

Re: New Gnome For The Garden

Christopher:
Thanks for the explanation about the B/A...I've been on travel and wasn't able to respond earlier...

Claude

[GardenGnome]

Re: New Gnome For The Garden

Thank you, Thor. Your a gentleman and a scholar.

Sorry I haven't been by this forum much recently. My diverse interests are never idle, but it keeps me amused.

Christopher

[Thor]

Re: New Gnome For The Garden

GardenGnome, my hat is off to you for your tree house. I suspected that you had more to offer after some of your posts, and I went back and searched to find what else you had contributed...what a great tool this board is....
Anyway, your talents and patience are apparently in the scale of oceans.
Wonderful to see your work. I am humbled, and greatly amused.
Thor

[rayhobby]

Re: Thanks for the coments.

If you would like I could post the plans. It wouldn't take me long to draw them up. He was fun to carve.
Christopher the Garden Gnome

I like your Gnome very much, great job all around. Also, I visited your train photo albums and think the "fish tank display case" is cool.

I read all the posts and quoted per above from one. If you are still offering I would like to get a set of sketches. This little guy is just what my mother's garden needs. (Here in Picton, ON, we do not have any gnome related crime ...... yet)

If you have already posted same, I apologize but I could not find them.Cheers

[tnartist05]

Re: New Gnome For The Garden

OHHHHHHH WOW!! Super work on the little banjo also!!! Just excellent!!

[tnartist05]

Re: New Gnome For The Garden

Really nicely done Christopher!! Plus thanks for posting him so we can see the wood! I know he will really come to life once you have him painted!

Forrest

[Tom-H]

Re: New Gnome For The Garden

Christopher, Some fabulous stuff you make. Thanks for sharing . While the Gnome is perfect, it's the little stuff like the banjo that really gets to me...
Tom H

[Al_Hillis]

Re: New Gnome For The Garden

Phenomenal work Christopher , had to replay the pbl video many times to see all the work you put into that piece. I like you like a challenge , when some one says can't be done , look out cause I'll do my darndest to make it work

[GardenGnome]

Re: New Gnome For The Garden

Mischief, no I bought characters on the tree house. those kids started out as a group having a snowball fight and they all had winter gear on that I had to carve off them, boots, coats, scarves and hats.

Patrick, I do enjoy finding ways to incorporate my love of woodcarving into my model train hobby. This is one of the reasons I cut my own scale lumber.
Here is a banjo I made for one of my models. The fret is carved from a toothpick.



Keoma, I'm glad you showed your son and he liked it. That's good. Some of the gears look like tinker toy indeed, but I made all you see there. I used a hole saw to cut out the disks, then I put the disks on a bolt for an axle and held it on edge to the blade of my band saw to scribe a slot down the center of the edge. Then I used a ball bur in my Dremel to carve the dimples for the chain in the slot. Took some fooling around to get them to run true without skipping.
I'm a patient guy and I almost never say experlatives in regret and alarm. Just a waist of energy in my opinion. Took me five months to make the tree house. It started with the idea for a tire swing, then I got the notion to make the top door open and the sign pop up. While I was building that I noticed there was no direct movement coming from the top disk so I thought up the truck bouncing idea. While I was close to being done I thought up how to make the dogs move. So you see, it wasn't like I just thought the whole thing up at once. It developed over time.

Tell your son, "You have to know what you can do and then invent something that works within those parameters. That's why it's important to learn all you can."

Never looked at it as folk art before, but you are most likely right.

I'm glad you all enjoy my work.

Dream a dream, then build it.

Christopher

[Keoma]

Re: New Gnome For The Garden

OMG! What a cool thing you built! I had to replay it and have my son watch. He was amazed! He was just certain that one of your gears was a tinker toy I have to ask you, how many times do you think you said "Oh Dang...or Oh s***?" The gears and all the levers are just amazing. I cannot even fathom the amount of patience it took! Congratulations to you-what a wonderful piece of folk art!

[Irishman]

Re: New Gnome For The Garden

Wow you are really clever. The characters you've carved and painted are something else...and then you show us this treehouse! Thanks for sharing your rough out of the tree. It gives a good idea how you came to the finished product.
Patrick

[Mischief]

Re: New Gnome For The Garden

Wow Master Garden Gnome....your carvings are truly inspirational. Are those people and cat carved too?

[GardenGnome]

Re: New Gnome For The Garden

Sure, Claude. It's simple really. I am a model railroader and I scratch build all my structures. Not only do I scratch build , I also cut my own scale lumber.

The technique is what is referred to as a weathering technique in order to add an aged look.

It's called "Black Alcohol" stain or "B/A" for short.

It's made by taking 1 pint of rubbing alcohol and mixing in one tablespoon of black India ink. Be sure to use at least 99% pure alcohol and water soluble ink. If the mixture separated into globs of black floating around then you have something wrong. The right mixture will be dark and clear as the ink dilutes evenly in the alcohol. Why alcohol works better than water is that it is thinner so it pools in the cracks and depressions better. It also evaporated faster is it's less likely to loosen any glue.

B/A works on all kinds of stuff. Figures can be painted with it to help bring out details, and in fact that is exactly what we do with little plastic people who inhabit our layouts. The B/A helps to bring out small facial features. The gnome's face has a wash of B/A to help define it's features.

Painted on wood it gives the effect of the wheelbarrow. The idea is to mix a weak solution of the B/A and this way you can give your project multiple coats to build it up just as you want.

Here is a pic of a tarp I made that is part of a tree house diorama. Weathered with the B/A. This is 1/87 or HO gauge.



Here is the whole tree house complex. Lot's of B/A was used on this model.



The tree was carved from a cedar block. Cut out first on the band saw.



Once cut out then knives, chisels and a Dremel were used to carve it to shape.



If you would like to see more photos of this model and the gnome, check out my photo albums here:

http://public.fotki.com/TrainClown/

Yep. On my model train forum I'm known as TrainClown. Oh and by the way. That tree house model is only as big as it is because it was part of a "Peanut Butter Lid Challenge" I took part in where we were challenged to make a diorama using only the size of a jar lid as the footprint. My model was a little more unusual because it is animated. View the model in action here:

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-7992040025458360272

To see more of the hand carved mechanisms look at this.

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=8156962816497309594

Lots of fun!

Christopher