I am carving a small totem pole this week -IT'S FINISHED

[Frank Pellow]

Day1:

Along with 5 other people as well as our instructor Lloyd, I spent eight hours at the Lee Valley Toronto East store today starting to carve a four foot high totem pole out of an eastern white cedar log.  Although the cedar is eastern, all the traditions we are following are those of the First Nations of the north-west coast of North America.  Here is a photo of my log:

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The log is resting on a jig attached to one of my old Workmate benches.

The first order of business was to select two of the many options for totems to carve into the pole.  I chose two that are quite representative of the Lake Pivabiska region because the pole’s home will be on Pellow’s Island.

I chose:

• Beaver –Skilled leader in industry and construction who strives for peace but will fight if he has to,  Creative, artistic, and determined.  Know to dig underground tunnels that cause earthquakes and landslides.
  
• Raven –One of most important spirits, she/he is the trickster and is credited with bringing mankind to the world.  Symbolizes creation, knowledge, is ever hungry, ever curious, deviant, compulsive, crooked, deceptive, but somehow always likeable.

I also chose to carve the Raven carrying the moon in her beak both because that is one of the legends I like and because of the great views we get of the moon rising over the lake at Pivabiska.

By tradition, a bird is always higher on  the pole than an animal.

Here are then two patterns that I chose:

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The first step was to draw a grid onto the best side of the log:

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Then, I drew portions of the two patterns onto the log:
 
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Finally, it was time to start the rough carving:

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All the work today was done with a small hatchet and a rubber mallet.

Here is photo taken a few hours and several chips later:

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Here is my log as it was at the end of day 1:

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[Wood_Junkie]

Wow Frank, that is pretty cool!  Definitely a neat and unique woodworking opportunity.

On a very tangential sidebar... Is that a Fiskars small hatchet?  How do you like it?  Good heft?  Keeps an edge?  I've been thinking about one as a camping hatchet... replace the POJ no-name I currently have.

 

[Frank Pellow]

Thanks.

Yes, it is a Fiskars (made in Finland) hatchet.  I have had one of their larger hatchets for about five years, have used it a LOT, and really like it.  It's the best hatchet I have ever owned and I have owned and used hatchets since about the age of 5.

The one that I used today is, I believe, the smallest one that they make and I plan only to use it for carving.  To that end, I ground it down more after I took the picture shown above.  I removed a lot of steel including the majority of the bevels on each side.  I experimented until it seemed to carve best.  Here is a photo of how it looks now:

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I might shorten the handle.

 

[Ken Nagrod]

Frank,

What's that handle made out of?

 

[Frank Pellow]

Frank,

What's that handle made out of?

It's made of something called FiberComp® which I think is a type of fiberglass.  The handle is hollow and light but, at the same time, very strong

 

[pugilato]

That is way cool... I like the way that you have made your totem have significance.

 

[Frank Pellow]

Day 2:  

Today was all about shaping and smoothing.  I didn’t add any new features or any details, rather I just worked extensively improving the features that I chopped out yesterday.

Before getting into that, I will show a photo of the simple but very effective jig used to hold a log on a Workmate:

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The jigs were designed and built by Jennifer at the Toronto East Lee Valley store.

The first step today was to use chisels to smooth the rough hatchet cuts:

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I also used the chisels to further shape some features, such as the raven’s beak:

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Further smooth was done with a wood file and with a 40 grit paper on a small sanding block:
   
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And, finally, everything was hand sanded with Festool Granat 120 foam-backed sanding pads:

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aside: the sanding block and the sanding pads will probably be the only Festool products that I use on the entire project. It's a long time since I had a woodworking project with so little use of Festool.

Here is a photo of the pole at the end of day 2:

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Tomorrow, we get a day off, then we get back together on Friday and Saturday to finish to job

 

[pugilato]

sweet... i like this project

 

[Theshipstore]

Frank              As usual you have some awesome things you get involved with. This is one of them for sure, stained glass, lazy susans etc.  now this.
It is looking great
Have fun  [big grin]

Sal

 

[Frank Pellow]

Frank              As usual you have some awesome things you get involved with. This is one of them for sure, stained glass, lazy susans etc.  now this.
It is looking great
Have fun  [big grin]

Sal

Thanks Sal.

I'm very fortunate that I am retired and have both the time and the means to try out a lot of different crafts.

 

[Frank Pellow]

Day 2.5:

We got the day off on Thursday but I cheated and brought the totem pole home with me Wednesday in order to add a special “Frank designed feature”.

Traditionally a beaver is carved holding a log that he is chewing upon –as pointed to with the arrow in this partly carved beaver:

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I drilled a hole through the spots where the paws would be grasping something:
   
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Then carved out the spot where the stick would normally be.  Then I inserted a stick:

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I’m very happy with this modification, and I think that no native carver would mind the change.

I should have mentioned in the notes for day 2, the First Nations people would not have used sandpaper.  They are skilled enough with hatchets and chisels that there is no need for it.  Another important point is that the Haida carve their poles so that there are no cavities in the pole where water can gather.  I am making sure that I take the same precaution.

 

[Frank Pellow]

Update:

I don't have the time to write notes this evening, but here is a picture of the pole taken after I added lots of detailed carving today:

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[Alan m]

great job frank
what did they think of your branch idea

 

[Theshipstore]

Frank  Awesome job  [thumbs up] [thumbs up]

Sal

 

[Frank Pellow]

Day 3:

I spent today carving details into my totem pole.  First a detail was drawn onto the appropriate spot and then carved.  Most of the carving is simply a V gouge as seen in this photo where I am working on the tail of my beaver:

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The small tool shown cuts these groves very well when going with the grain but, when going across the grain, I often had to resort to the use of a small very sharp carvers knife and chisels.

We learned that almost all the details on totem poles are carved using variations of these five shapes:

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Lloyd has made and collected several small templates that can be used when drawing on a pole:

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In this photo, I am using one of the templates:

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Sometimes one does a bit of carving between uses of the same template as in this case where I am flattening a portion of the moon’s face:

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After flattening, I redrew the parts that I had chiselled off.

I didn’t realize before just how many special purpose carvers tools there are.  A case in point is this gouge that I used to hollow out the beaver’s nostrils:

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I used no power tools at all my totem pole.  Everyone but me used powers sanders.  Only one person resorted to power carving:

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And she only used to tool for about half an hour in order to carve some small difficult cross-grain grooves.

Here are a couple of views of my pole taken at the end of day 3:

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[Ken Nagrod]

Excellent work, Frank!  Seems like you enjoyed this enough to do more.

 

[Mac]

What a cool thread...I'd love to have a go at one of these!  Thanks Frank, as always.

Cheers,
Rick

 

[Frank Pellow]

Excellent work, Frank!  Seems like you enjoyed this enough to do more.

Thanks Ken, and yes I do intend to carve more poles.  Untilmately, I would like to try to carve one that is about 3 metres long with a diameter of about 40 centimetres.  Such a pole would take a LOT more time than the 36 hours I spent on the pole that I just completed.

 

[Frank Pellow]

Day 4:

The course is finished and my pole is complete.  I had a really good time both working on the pole and talking to my fellow carvers and am really going to miss the activity, the place, and the people.

You can see that a bit of unused space remained at the top of the pole as it was after day 3.  I had a feeling that the pole was incomplete and that it needed an addition.  I did quite a bit of research on the internet on the evening of day 3.  Early on, I found this description of the meaning of the Loon symbol:

The Loon symbolizes tranquility, serenity and the reawakening of old hopes, wishes and dreams. The Loon relies on water and water is a symbol for dreams and multiple levels of consciousness, therefore Loons teach us to pay attention to our dreams, wishes and hopes. A Legend says that to see a Loon is a symbol of a dream come true or an answered wish.

This is perfect!  Lake Pivabiska is the home to many loons and my feeling about the Lake itself is much like above words about the loon.

So, I knew right away that, somehow, I needed to add a loon to the pole.  The problem was that nowhere could I find a photo of a loon stylized for use on a totem pole.  I did find pictures of a couple of poles that had loons represented on them but, on those poles, the loons were depicted as women –something that I now understand was common.  So, I ended up drawing my own pattern:

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Showing a side view is probably cheating but I did make use of an ovid, a circle, 2 trigons, and 3 S shapes.  One can recognize a loon but it doesn’t look very lifelike and that’s what I wanted.

This morning, after checking with Lloyd to see if he thought it would be OK to do so, I carved the loon onto the spot on the pole that would normally be occupied by the raven’s forehead and eyebrows.  In this photo, I have drawn the outline and am starting to carve it in:

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It’s OK, but in retrospect I would extend the bottom part of the loon so that it would look more like that part also served as the raven’s eyebrows.
   
The carving finished, I applied a coat of Varathane Golden Pecan oil-based stain, first with the pole upside down, then right side up in order to catch all the projections:

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This brings the colour closer to what one good get using western red cedar.

Of course, I had remembered to carve my initials and the year into the pole (near the bottom at the back):

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The stain dried very quickly in the hot sun and, soon, I could start to paint some of the features.  

I restricted myself to the use of the four pre-contact colours that the First nations carvers achieved using natural materials combined with salmon eggs and saliva.  These materials were charcoal (to get black), iron oxide (to get red), copper oxide (to get turquoise), and ash (to get white).  The paint was “mixed” by chewing the material together with the salmon eggs.  

Not having a ready supply of salmon eggs, I resorted to the use of fast-drying acrylic paint:

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I found the painting to be a lot of fun in that it brought out the humour in the figures that I had carved.  In the photo below, the painting has almost been completed:

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The last step was to conduct a ceremony where the poles are awakened.  In this ceremony, the poles lie horizontally in the middle of the room, the carvers with some of their carving tools dance slowly around the poles accompanied by the beat of drums.  Three circuits are completed and each carver blows onto each totem on each pass in order to blow life into the totems:
   
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Here, the six students are gathered with their totem poles together with Lloyd (in the middle) and the pole that he, somehow, managed to find time to carve along with us.

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Not all the poles are quite finished, but I guess all but Lloyd’s pole (which missed the ceremony) are alive.

Here is another photo, just showing the totem poles:

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After taking the pole home, I added a coat of Helmsman Spar Urethane (again oil based).

Here are two photos of my finished pole:

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[Theshipstore]

Frank    This turned out great, its good to see someone have so much fun in doing and accomplishing what you do

Sal