Ice Skating Santa

Received a special request to carve another ice skating Santa. Here’s the progress.
Cutting out on the bandsaw.

Next, sketching in the lines after cutting the outline on the bandsaw.

Next is to remove the waste wood around the legs. I also re-sketch as I remove the wood.

Next is starting to round off the square edges to get down to a rough out.

More rounding and approaching the final shapes.

Finished the skates and began painting. Since the grain runs vertically through the carving, the back of the lower skate is very weak because of the cross grain.

Here’s the finished carving. The base is a piece of pine with a small piece of basswood glued to it and carved as a snowbank at the edge of the ice. To attach the Santa to the base, I drilled two 7/64 inch holes up through the skate into the boot, and two matching holes in the base. I cut both ends off a couple of 8d finishing nails to make steel pegs to hold Santa to the base.
Claude

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