General

Carving Demo & Clinic

by Dierk Neugebauer & Jeff Shortt

At our December meeting, Norman Haddrick gave a presentation on carving deadwood on bonsai trees. Norman brought in his ample supply of carving tools as well as a number of beautiful drawings that he had created, each of which illustrated the natural forms that trees take when buffeted by winds, rain, snow and ice. One of these was raffled and won by Gregory Quinn.

Norman focused his discussion on the nature of deadwood and its reasons for existence. He encouraged all of us to go out there and study trees, especially those growing in exposed areas, so that we developed more of a feeling for what actually happened in nature. Naturally, whatever we decided to do with our trees should be not only a reflection of what happens in nature but also appropriate to the particular tree. In other words, we should not just be carving because we can!

David Johnson & Mike McCallion presented a slideshow of pages from "Bonsai Today" magazine, issues 103-105, where the author illustrated through a series of good photographs and comments the methods that might be used in creating deadwood, including both carving and burning of the wood on the live tree - a challenge indeed!

Jeff Shortt in turn commented on the relevance and impoirtance of Norman's presentation: our need to understand what deadwood is and why it exists; carving because it is appropriate for the style of tree we are working on.

Norman showed the membership the kind of traditional hand carving tools that were available, including some rather costly, hand-made Japanese tools, whereas Mike and Jeff focused on the use of power tools to facilitate the rapid removal of wood.

In all cases, all demonstrators stressed the importance of making one's carving look as natural and appropriate as possible. With that ultimate end in mind, members were encouraged after the break to to "get their hands dirty" and do some hands-on carving on cedar trunks brought in for the purpose by Otmar Sauer.

What follows is a series of photographs that I took during the various demonstrations.












Mike's cedar trunk was used to illustrate how using a combination of power and hand tools could quickly lead to some interesting deadwood.
Jeff is using a Dremel tool for carving.
A close up of Jeff's Dremel at work.
Stripping bark to create the illusion of major trunk damage to a tree.
A close up of bark being removed by hand.
Mike is drilling a 1" diamter hole into the end of a branch so that the remaining shell of wood can be worked more easily.
A close up of the thin layer of wood and bark being shaped with a pair of pliers.
David is using a carving tool to remove bark around a potentially dead branch.
A member working on one of Otmar's cedar trunks, imitating the techniques just demonstrated by David.
A close up of that process.