Woolygoats Chainsaw Carving

Still need to get a few more coats of varnish on the right side bear as soon as the weather permits, but this is pretty much gonna do it for my first bench! All this rain lately has put a real damper on my carving time so I didn't get too carried away with the design on the lower portion of the second bear.

Finally dried up for a bit today for me to get started on the other end of my bench. I'll probably throw another cub in there somewhere before I'm done but I'll figure that out next time I carve on it. It gets tough to do the finish work this time of year being so cool and damp so I'm kinda putting a rush on completing this one now before the snow starts flying..

One thing that has kept me away from making benches so far has been my inability to rip wood with the grain with any accuracy. Since I'm determined to make that last bear into a bench end, I decided to order a Granberg chainsaw mill and take a shot at making my own slab lumber. I've never done this before so I'm just taking my time and learning on the fly but I can tell already this is gonna be just as addicting as the carving itself! Here's my first batch of 6ft cherry I sliced up today!

Well that's about it for this bench side. Really happy with how this part turned out! Not sure when I'll get started on the other side, or what I'll even carve for it but I'll give it some thought and see what happens.

Little more progress on the big sitter today. Here's a little tidbit I left out of the last post. This piece will definitely be used as a bench end and that's why I went for this pose with all the features showing on one side. This log came from a tree that split down the fork so it's almost flat on one side which I'll clean up and use as the inside of my bench. I like it for making it up as I went, so once I finish this up I'll see what I can come up with for the other side of my bench seat. Still plenty of clean up and finish work to do before I get to that though.