wood carving a FSH!

What do you call a fish with no eyes?…a FSH!
After last months HWA meeting where we had a demonstration of wood carving, I was inspired to try my hand. I decided that a fish is a relatively simple shape, and should be easily possible with just a basic stanley knife, no need for fancy (expensive) carving tools.

The theory is fairly simple, get yourself a block of wood, and draw the side profile of your shape on the side, and your top down profile on the top. Then use a fairly fine bandsaw blade to cut out your shape to at least it’s rough shape. Obviously you either need to hold the block back together after the first set of cuts, or you need to draw one of the profiles on the wood afterwards (because you will cut off the surface with the outline on if you don’t)

It seems I was sufficiently carried away by this that I failed to take any ‘in progress’ shots. Most of the work was in sitting in front of the tv, whittling away onto a tray to catch the shavings. I actually briefly considered making a rocking chair, just so I could sit whittling in a rocking chair on the decking. But managed to hold myself back and just complete the carving on the sofa.

The carving alone isn’t really terribly good, however I mounted it copying an example from the HWA meeting, using a tilting, tapering cylinder. With the cylinder sprayed black, and the natural spalted beech of the fish, the combination actually looks pretty good (In my opinion)

I’m also reasonably pleased with the feeling of movement. I wasn’t sure when it was just a fish shape with a bent tail, but once mounted I think it works pretty well as a fish swimming around the column.
And of course I didn’t have anything to use for eyes, so it is most definitely a FSH.