10-25-15 Finished. After some “clean-up” and final touches, I applied a coat of Danish Oil and when that was dry, several coats of Briwax paste wax, my favorite finish!

Finished and wired for hanging!

10-10-15 Back at it again after a series of diversions. This guy is almost finished. There is just some “cleaning up” to do and I need to finish the eyes. I always leave the eyes for last. I see the eyes as the finishing touch, giving the carving it’s personality.

7-11-15 Finally getting back to regular carving!! Here are a couple of updated photos. As you can see I have started on texturing the knitted watch cap. The deeper I get into the wood, the better it is to carve, but still chippy and splintery. Getting there! 🙂

Much more refined and more detail.

6-13-15 Progress. This buoy is very difficult to work with. The wood is old, weathered, soaked with salt water many times, and brittle! I will prevail!

6-4-15 First cuts made.

First cuts

Since this will be a wall hanging, we wanted the back to be flat. The buoy is just over 7″ wides and 18″ in length.

There were a couple of cracks, so I band sawed close the biggest of them to cut the buoy into two pieces

For this carving, I’ll be using the piece on the left since it has fewer cracks and looks a lot more stable. By the way, these old buoys are made of eastern white cedar. Sometimes it carves well, other times it can be a bear to carve.

Now to start carving!!!