Remember Al Phillips the Cleaner??

If you've been in Las Vegas for any amount of time you probably remember his ads on television.  Someone would ask him "how do you do it?" and his reply was always; "it's easy when you know your business".  Well, here's a picture of our own Dennis Patchett, when asked how do you carve -- yep he said: "it's easy when you know your business".




He gave us a demonstration on how he does some of his carving and brought in some samples as well.  It's pretty obvious that he really loves what he does with his carving and furniture making and that's always the key.  As easy, as he says it, but there's no denying that he has an artistic talent for the work because it's way past just being technically perfect, it's artistic as well.  I like how he explained the way he obtained his tools, every payday for about a year he'd get one or two more.  From my limited carving experience I've found that there are so many different chisels you could go crazy!  Seems as if the key for Dennis is to basically get them as you need and then plan your carvings around the tools you have.  Last night he showed how to carve/incise letters and explained some of the architectural work he has done.  It just so happened that Richard brought in a book of reproduction furniture that had plans for a shell carving that Dennis had done as well.  Here are some photo's of his work.

Carving the straight section of the letter.

Adding the curve to letter end.

Fan Carving for a Drawer Front

Sample for Cabinet Top

Thirty Hours of Work in Maple    Notice the chain in the lower right corner.

For all of you that we're wondering, including you Dennis.  If you go to Facebook and do a search for Dennis Patchett you can find his page.  I scrolled through it and found the most beautiful work.  Dennis my friend, if a computer resistant 'ole dude such as myself can figure out how to get a website up you can too!  My wife has helped me a lot but I used a fairly easy program.  I won't say it's the easiest or the most enjoyable thing to do but if nothing else you can use it like an on-line portfolio so potential clients can see the type of work you are capable of. 

September 15th. Meeting

     Our meeting for this month is scheduled for Wednesday the 15th., as usual it starts at 7 pm and will be at Jamie's shop/school.  Dennis Patchett will once again demonstrate his carving skills to us.  He plans to bring several examples of his work and also show how to carve a chain as well as a few flower designs.  My first exposure to carving was way back when in Cub Scouts.  We were given a bar of soap, a knife, and the simple direction of carving a whale.  I seem to recall that there was a picture of a whale, maybe Moby Dick, that we were to use as a guide.  The only advice I remember getting was to just "cut off everything that doesn't look like a whale" -- yea, like that really helped!  Good thing it was soap and I was able to use it for a bath later that week.
      Hopefully, Dennis will give us a little better understanding on what it takes to take a flat piece of wood and carve a recognizable feature on it.  From seeing his demonstrations before I'm sure we'll all walk away with some of his knowledge.  To carve as well as he does takes a certain artistic eye, the ability to see what the outcome will be as you selectively remove wood and shape it to become whatever it is you're carving.  Hope to see all of you at the meeting.

 

Composition Ornamentation

Thought I'd share a couple of photo's of the completed TV Lift Cabinet with you guys.   Did any of you that took some compo after my demonstration have any results with your experiments?  Let me know how they turned out and I'll post them on the blog for the rest of the group to see.  Not my personal style of furniture but it sure opens up a lot of possibilities!

Front View

Side View