Art, craft and other hobbies

Skiing is not a hobby, it is something we do as part of our lifestyle. Guns, bikes and golf have their own threads. But do you have some interesting non-sport activity that you might like to share? A needlepoint you created while watching the Presidential debates? Hand-tied fishing flies? A photo of your laptop and and the first page of your novel? The kitchen you just built in your spare time? Your latest watercolour? Hopefully the drift is clear.

I'll start. Since we heat with wood, I come into contact with many pieces of wood. Some seem too nice to burn and I have been setting them aside for a better purpose. Here is part of the stockpile (burnable stuff is neatly stacked):



With a few specialized but relatively inexpensive tools, I am using "powercarving" techniques to turn these stubborn chunks into bowls. Or maybe vessels. Here is some more stock, and various tools of the trade:



The Lancelot cutting head is a serious wood remover. Nothing like 10,000 RPM of whirring chainsaw teeth to keep you focused:



Safety fourth!



Next step is smoothing and further shaping with the Kutzall head:



It is kind of an organic, go-with-the-flow process. Much like skiing, you start with an idea, then let your tools, abilities, nerve and the terrain determine where you go. Getting there, on a two-stage vessel that might make a nice jewellery holder for a special someone:



The carving is followed by a lot of sanding. Upper bowl is being sanded, lower one is roughed out. The wood grain is starting to show. I need to seal the punky wood in the the lower bowl with epoxy before sanding. The rotary sanding thingie is a Godsend:



Here is a finished bowl I made for a wedding gift. Note cool Cuban rock imbedded in hole with that acrylic bar-top sealer stuff. On this bowl, I tried using fire (blowtorch) to hollow out the shape. Never again.

That is so cool SBR. Knowing you it makes sense too.

I don't really have anything for you.  In my life now, skiing, blogging and cabin life take up all my time outside of work and family.  I guess you could call blogging a hobby, but for me it is inseparable from skiing.

But before I got into marketing I dedicated about 8 years of my life to art.  I studied and taught photography and ceramics.  I was an OK photog, ceramics was really my thing.

When I was 28 I gave it up as a career. I was tired of working on my own all the time, and being broke and cold. (Went a year without enough money to pay for heat). I also didn't like feeling the pressure of production.  To produce enough quantity to be viable I started to produce work that I wasn't proud of.

I did own a fully equipped studio (still do) so for a while I continued to produce a small amount for myself, Zelda, wedding presents.  Eventually skiing became my focus and I stopped making pottery.

As it was a long time ago, I don't really have any digital photos to post.  This small bowl and plate is all I could find:

Sweet thread idea SBR. Nice wood work and your bowl/plate looks awesome Harv.

My most favorite thing to do outside of powder skiing and family time is trail building. It's kind of a weird hobby but I'm really passionate about it, sometimes I don't even get that myself.

This is a final feature on a trail that I may or may not have had part in creating. It's called The Happy Ending. Everything I do these days is legit and with the FS. I'll get some more shots up here of the stuff we worked on this past summer.

That is beautiful work, Harv.

Blue Toes and I took two pottery courses and made some fun pots, hers were better. Alas, the expense of wheel and kiln made further exploration of this craft a no-go. The powercarving craft comes from a dream of turning crazy big bowls on a lathe, except that the lathe is not affordable. But a cheap angle grinder and few cutting heads gets you set up for not much more than a few fancy turning chisels.

Maybe there will be a pottery studio at NYSBHQ when retirement rears its opportunistic head.

Trail building is totally craft: a blend of design, art, science, sweat and sport. Excellent work, RA.

The cabin was designed to be an outbuilding to a "real house" in the looong run, the art studio.  Neve is protesting. She feels it will ruin the cabin if it becomes subservient to a bigger, more civilized structure. She may be right.

I didn't build our trails RA, they were laid our by a pro, a retired forest ranger and all around great guy.  The legendary tBatt helped too. We don't have much vert - maybe 200 feet across 2 miles of single track/nordic. We do need more work though, could use more soil or maybe less not sure.

Somewhere around here I have a pic of a stone wall I built. Not really a hobby but a fun one time project.

EDIT to ad: SBR I have a great Shimpo wheel with an incredibly cool and innovative drive system that was $1200 30 years ago. While it is old the "mileage" on it is probably equivalent to about 50,000 miles on a Mercedes.  If you are really interested and you come to the daks this year, I'll bring it and give it to you.  It's an awesome piece of equipment.

Found it.

This took nine palettes of blue stone.  I had the first three palettes delivered sight unseen. Yooge mistake.  Took me 2 months to chip and stack them.

After that I got smart and selected my own stone. I put up the remaining six palettes in about a week.



It's been whacked a few times by our cars but it's dry laid and will last forever versus the railroad ties that were there before.

Sick! I love me some rock work. That's a proud wall Harv. It's my favorite thing to do with trail work. I'll get some photos up of the rock work we did this summer at some point.

I'm impressed by all of the above so far. I did my own patio after we had an addition put on the back of our house a couple years ago. It was a bitch of a job, a lot of pick and shovel and gravel work to prepare the base. I get a lot of praise from friends and family for how it came out but I've never been quite satisfied with my work on that one. My treehouse is a whole different story.


It started out as just a playhouse



Then I decided if belonged up in a tree for some reason and things got interesting.






There are times when my kids ignore it for long periods but whenever somebody new of the right age comes over, it gets a little renewed attention.

Woodworking , particularly repurpusing pallets lately. Nice thing is joints being abit skewed add to the ' charm '.

Whoah, Brownski that treehouse is off the charts. Freeheeln, dig the pallet construction. This thread is going places.

Great idea SBR! I have comments and things to add but need to get some work done here at my job

Lot's of talented people on here---very cool

CampArts+Crafts!  

HHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I have many hidden talents--- i can hot glue with the best of them

Serving tray. Perfect for the porch, holds 2 plates, bowls, mugs.

Step stool. Steps 6" and  12" , flip it 7" and 14" for the littler ones.

Check it out. I can spread out old trail maps and lift tickets on a table and take a picture. I put this up for my background on FB. Feel free to use if you wish.

The steps and tray are amazing by the way

Finshed these up for a holiday project.

Berm turn rock face thingy. This rock work took two full days.







Since August I've probably put in about 100 hours of volunteer time into figuring out this reroute of the Heart trail on Mount Elden. It was built in the early nineties and is a terribly built old school fall line hiking trail. Our proposed reroute in total is around 1700 vertical and 5 miles of trail. My friend and I finally walked and gps tracked the upper 1500 vertical just last week, it was a super gnarly bush whack but everything looked really good for that 4.1 miles at an average 6% grade.