Carving a Climbing Santa
13 comments
Each Christmas I try to carve my mother a little Santa out of wood. I’ve been doing this for the last 4 or 5 years and have made a bunch of different Santas…. everything from a Banjo playing Santa to a Santa painting a candy cane. This year, I decided to make a Rock Climbing Santa climbing a chimney. I took pictures to document the process.
The process starts with a block of wood. After I sketched the basic top, front, and side views onto the block I used a band saw at work to cut the basic shape.
Once that was done I brought the wood home and used my dremel to carve out the basic shape. I used a coarse bit to remove most of the excess wood and then a sharp end mill type bit to clean up.
Unfortunately my pictures of the carving process itself came out pretty poor. This one shows the later stage after I had separated the arms and cut between the Santa and the chimney but before the details of the harness and face were added.
Once the carving was complete, I sanded down the figure with a sanding bit and a few strips of sand paper. Then I applied one coat of white paint to the whole piece.
After that dried, I painted the brick with a dark red paint. I kept my brush very loose to keep the red out of the carved area that defined the individual bricks. This gave the brick a really rough look.
Finally I painted Santa himself. He got a bright red coat with ivory white details.
He also got a festive green harness.
The only real problem was that Santa’s left foot is magically passing into the chimney. We can either pretend that:
1) there are some missing brick’s where Santa’s left foot is.
2) Santa is magic
3) Mike D miscalculated the size of Santa’s left foot.
Either way, I consider this Santa a success.
6:39 pm
Probably because I know nothing about rock climbing, I thought he was falling off, clinging for dear life. You need a disgruntled Rudolf to be up on top of the chimney, about to step his cloven hoof into Santa’s hand. “Reindeer game this, Santy Claus!!”
[Reply]
7:04 pm
That’s awesome Mike!
I don’t think Rudolph would do that, Ryan. I could see one of the other being jealous and pulling that, but not Rudolph. Better to have Santa using a reindeer’s antlers to help him climb. They’d still be on the reindeer of course.
[Reply]
8:40 pm
Rudolf is younger, and is easily manipulated by the other reindeer, due to a childhood of ostracism and a burning desire to be a normal reindeer and not a misfit. It was Rudolf, but maybe he was set up by the others.
[Reply]
8:46 pm
Yukon Cornelius put him up to it. He has been planning a coup d’etat ever since he discovered silver and gold beneath Santa’s Workshop. He will use the brute force of the Bumble to enslave the elf population in his secret underground caverns to mine gold, while turning on the Bumble itself, forcing it to haul carts of precious metals from the underworld on a cog railway.
[Reply]
10:32 am
I believe Rudolph has an incorruptible heart. Therefore: he was framed. I submit that the true culprit was Olive (the other reindeer) who used to laugh and call him names. (though I love your theory about his childhood trauma making him desperate for approval)
I defer to your greater knowledge of Bumble.
[Reply]
11:38 am
I maintain that Rudolph is only employed part-time, on “foggy” Christmas Eves. He spends the normal years either holed up drinking egg nog, dodging hunters, or polishing his weapons collection and plotting his revenge on “Olive”. I just don’t buy that he got over all that trauma because he got to be lead reindeer once, and it wasn’t because they had a change of heart, but rather because they needed his nose. I know people don’t like to talk about the darker side of the story, but there it is.
[Reply]
1:29 pm
1:06 pm
That’s true Jes Saint. Nobody likes to talk about the fact that elves are used as slave labor either. You think the big guy ever shares those cookies? I’m starting to think he deserves to get stepped on. And maybe Olive spiked Rudolph’s egg nog and put him up to it. I still hate to think of Rudy doing something to underhand (though technically it would be more overhand) but one does wonder.
And Olive does have a history of subversive “blame the boss” ranting. She probably went into some diatribe about how Santa fosters competition and discord between reindeer who should all be part of one big happy herd.
Never trust a man who wears red all the time and creeps around with a sack full of stuff in the night. Only working one night a year–what a loafer!
[Reply]
11:03 am
He can’t fix a broken heart. I’m still waiting for my card.
[Reply]
12:20 pm
Sounds like a job for time and super glue. Sorry about your heart Aaron.
[Reply]
« Skyline 21! Next Post
Cooking and climbing »
Categories
- A Day In The Life… (723 posts)
- Acclaim To Fame (22 posts)
- Advice (2 posts)
- Astronomy (13 posts)
- Blogroll (112 posts)
- Books (23 posts)
- carving (2 posts)
- china (44 posts)
- climbing (61 posts)
- Conversations (102 posts)
- Dad (10 posts)
- Dreams (27 posts)
- ExtremeWeb (785 posts)
- family (46 posts)
- Features (426 posts)
- Food (124 posts)
- Geekdom (87 posts)
- House of Rock (120 posts)
- Humor (7 posts)
- interviews (4 posts)
- Kiteboarding (10 posts)
- KungFu (64 posts)
- MOVIES (19 posts)
- paintbrush (1 posts)
- PaintBrush! (235 posts)
- MSPaintContest (73 posts)
- Phoenix (3 posts)
- Photography (47 posts)
- Augustography (32 posts)
- Poetry (14 posts)
- Politics (30 posts)
- Puzzle (4 posts)
- Quickthoughts (1568 posts)
- RockStar (132 posts)
- RollerDerby (55 posts)
- Ryan-Schenk-Is-So-Awesome (11 posts)
- school (67 posts)
- silkscreen (12 posts)
- skyline (38 posts)
- Smcquaid (84 posts)
- sweaterthursday (37 posts)
- teamD (16 posts)
- The Page (126 posts)
- travel (186 posts)
- Ukraine (19 posts)
- Ultimate (2 posts)
- Uncategorized (2 posts)
- VIDEO (60 posts)
- Weekend Update! (152 posts)
- What-were-they-thinking? (4 posts)
- Work (265 posts)
- Writing (4 posts)
Comments
- momd on Sylvie Character Sheet :
Wow. That is even better..an At Will Ability. Thank yo... - King of the Nerds on Sylvie Character Sheet :
Not so much a 'skill' per se, MomD, but more of an at-will a... - momd on Sylvie Character Sheet :
Is the ability to cause confusion by rendering all surroundi... - Alicia on Sylvie Character Sheet :
Oh, man. "is AN elf"... - Alicia on Sylvie Character Sheet :
KotN, I used dramatically poor grammar. I should have writte... - King of the Nerds on Sylvie Character Sheet :
Is that Auto-hypnosis a racial ability or is it due to some ... - Alicia on Sylvie Character Sheet :
I would like to note that Sylvie is an elf and should have a... - mike d. on Sylvie Character Sheet :
Dear KotN, I have received your private e-mail on how to ... - King of the Nerds on Sylvie Character Sheet :
I see some glaring errors in your character sheet. 1: ... - Kurt from Home on Isn't she lovely :
YAY! Congratulations! -1 to uncling MikeD....
11:22 am
It’s GREAT! I love it! Thanks, Mike!!!
[Reply]