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Description
Burly girl is carved from a 4" thick slab of spalted elm burl. The simply cut figure is a great bill board for the amazing wild grain and color. She is 2/3's life sized and on the thin side but she has all the curves you need/want and to close your eyes and hold her is almost as nice as looking at her. She is roughed in by chain saw, refined with a wood cutting grinder, gouges break down the ridges and chisels add only a touch of detail. Several areas of wood were a little soft so they were hardened up by a soak of cyano acrylate, the spalted parts literally smoked in a chemical reaction but it did allow the wood to be worked down without the crumbling and chipping. Tool marks remain but when her form was close I switched to a rasp and rounded her over then sanded her till she is smoother than your baby's bottom. She is treated to a couple coats of tung oil and rubbed out with paper. Obviously the 'burly girl ' title is a pun on the wood but she does have a kind of aggressive forward posture. Don't mess! She stands a bit less than 23" tall. Part of her neck in back is left with natural wane edge which shows another aspect of the nature of the wood.
The wood is special and has it's own story.
Once again the RI wood connection comes through! My good friend Mr. Jack Hoover told me about a couple fat elm logs laying in a burn pile in Little Compton RI. 42" diameter at least he estimated. He had seen it and thought I might be interested. I usually am but I have a lot of wood blocks, boards, logs, much is not even stored because there just isn't the room. "Good stuff huh?"I nudged.."once in a lifetime" he said in that strange RI accent. Well I took my big saw and some gas an took a two hour ride. "Grew in a field and about died six years ago", the fellow who cut it, George Goulart, told me. I gassed up and started cutting and by the time I left for the day my little station wagon had six hundred pounds of blocks and slabs in it. I limped home. The wood was everything he had said and I have a thousand to fifteen hundred pounds of it waiting for my next trip out there! The center of the tree was straight grained but something happened and the outside 10" to a foot thick solid burl. I almost want to say wood this good doesn't grow on trees.. but it does! Several fine gents, turners, sculptors and furniture makers who often provide me with wood came by and all were impressed and took chunks and slabs so the good will continues on.

Description
Burly girl is carved from a 4" thick slab of spalted elm burl. The simply cut figure is a great bill board for the amazing wild grain and color. She is 2/3's life sized and on the thin side but she has all the curves you need/want and to close your eyes and hold her is almost as nice as looking at her. She is roughed in by chain saw, refined with a wood cutting grinder, gouges break down the ridges and chisels add only a touch of detail. Several areas of wood were a little soft so they were hardened up by a soak of cyano acrylate, the spalted parts literally smoked in a chemical reaction but it did allow the wood to be worked down without the crumbling and chipping. Tool marks remain but when her form was close I switched to a rasp and rounded her over then sanded her till she is smoother than your baby's bottom. She is treated to a couple coats of tung oil and rubbed out with paper. Obviously the 'burly girl ' title is a pun on the wood but she does have a kind of aggressive forward posture. Don't mess! She stands a bit less than 23" tall. Part of her neck in back is left with natural wane edge which shows another aspect of the nature of the wood.
The wood is special and has it's own story.
Once again the RI wood connection comes through! My good friend Mr. Jack Hoover told me about a couple fat elm logs laying in a burn pile in Little Compton RI. 42" diameter at least he estimated. He had seen it and thought I might be interested. I usually am but I have a lot of wood blocks, boards, logs, much is not even stored because there just isn't the room. "Good stuff huh?"I nudged.."once in a lifetime" he said in that strange RI accent. Well I took my big saw and some gas an took a two hour ride. "Grew in a field and about died six years ago", the fellow who cut it, George Goulart, told me. I gassed up and started cutting and by the time I left for the day my little station wagon had six hundred pounds of blocks and slabs in it. I limped home. The wood was everything he had said and I have a thousand to fifteen hundred pounds of it waiting for my next trip out there! The center of the tree was straight grained but something happened and the outside 10" to a foot thick solid burl. I almost want to say wood this good doesn't grow on trees.. but it does! Several fine gents, turners, sculptors and furniture makers who often provide me with wood came by and all were impressed and took chunks and slabs so the good will continues on.