Palm is one of my favorite woods to carve. The Tikis
in Hawaii are hundreds of years old and made of Palm. Palm doesn't crack
as much as other woods. It's relatively soft and doesn't really have grain,
it's fibrous, so any direction
you go in is ok - as opposed to woods with grain that can crack or split
if you cut them the wrong way. With Palm, the tighter the fiber, the harder
the wood. I like to choose the tightest fiber possible.
They don't like to
cut down Palms in Southern California, only
if they absolutely have to, so it's not easy to get - and when you get Palm,
you understand that the entire tree was taken, not like with others where just a percentage of the tree may have
been cut back.
Palm is very heavy because of the water content.
As it ages, it will lose 20
pounds in the first 6 months, but interestingly the sculpture doesn't shrink.
I always elevate my sculptures on a couple of
bricks or a pedestal, because you do not want to put a wooden object on the
moist ground. It is ok to place
them on concrete, but not where water can pool beneath it - because it's organic,
and will decompose with time if not treated with proper consideration.
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My bears range in price between $300 and $2,000.
Custom orders a specialty!
The harder the wood, the harder the work. So when I
work in Pine, it actually takes me twice as long to carve than a piece made
out of Palm. There are different kinds of Pines that have their own particular
challenges. There's a type called Canary Pine which is extremely sappy and
dense. It can gum up my tools and it can ooze sap afterwards. There's another
type called Cement Pine, for obvious reasons! |