Carving a Torso Out of Wood and Epoxy

welcome to bm sculptures i'm going to be giving away the sculpture to one lucky viewer so be sure and check out the description on how to enter all right let's jump right into this build i'm using scrap wood here i have some cherry some white oak some walnut some more white oak here more cherry and more walnut and this ended up not being enough wood that i needed so you'll see a little bit later that i actually add some more wood now the first thing i'm going to do is i'm going to glue up each species of wood together i'm going to get the thickness i want because i'm going to end up making perfectly square beams for this sculpture so i just want to get the thickness here once these are all dried up i'm gonna grab my number six hand plane newly acquired by alex at under the water woodworks so this is my very first time using this hand plane and man what a step up this plane is from my old hand plane that you see here before getting this i did everything with this tiny little hand plane so this is really a treat to be using so enjoy this hand playing montage so and it's at this point that i'm just having a little bit of fun i am experimenting with this hand plane i want to see if it could take off this entire line in one run and sure enough it did exactly that and wow was i impressed and happy to be using this hand plane at one point i debated putting all these shavings inside my pillowcase but ultimately decided against it because i would never have gotten out of bed and this sculpture would have never been created so i dodged a bullet on that one who's a good boy see you later number six all right all my boards are planed on one side that way when i run them through the table saw i get perfectly straight cuts i'm going to be ripping these boards all the exact same dimensions that way it just makes it easier for glue up now i know what you're thinking this is the fanciest table saw you've ever laid your eyes on now truth be told this table saw has been great for me i will be upgrading in the near future but i can't speak highly enough about this it does the trick and it just goes to show you that you can make things work with whatever tools you have now that all the wood is ripped to the same width it's time to throw everything through the thickness planer to get the height to match the width and i'm going to make all these boards identical and perfectly square so i'm going to be gluing these up in different sections so here i just want a kind of random assortment of wood heights to basically make it completely random once all these sections are glued up together and i'm just going to take it over to the miter saw make all my cuts and go from there now if you haven't already be sure to check the description to see how you can win this sculpture once everything's cut up i'm going to go ahead and take them inside and kind of play around with the arrangement to make sure that it is random and that i have different species of woods in different order and before the glue up i'm going to sand everything down i'm going to sand the corners a little bit too because once these are glued up i am not going to be able to get into those tight spaces and sand them up and here i'm just kind of messing around with different arrangements making sure that different species aren't going to be glued up next to each other i'm just really trying to make it as random as possible once that is exactly how i like it it's time for the glue up and pretty simple process here just gluing clamping and waiting for it to dry and while they wait to dry i have all sorts of more layers to do because i am doing eight layers for each side which means i have a total of 16 of these to do uh yes this took a long time and it wasn't until around the sixth glue up that i knew i did not have enough wood to make this sculpture the size i wanted so here you see i have some brazilian rosewood a beautiful piece of wood that i'm going to add to the mix as well as some more white oak and cherry i'm just getting this back to the same thickness and dimensions as the previously glued up boards i don't want to bore you with that so let's cut straight to the finished glue ups because these pieces are all different lengths it makes it a nightmare to glue up so all of these aren't perfectly flat so what i'm going to have to do is make a planing jig in order to flatten them all so the theory is i'm going to put my glue ups on a flat piece of plywood run a piece of wood down the side that is the same height as those and by putting them all together on this long board i'm hoping to prevent tear out while also flattening the top because again the thickness planer is parallel to the bottom so if the bottom is on a flat piece of plywood in theory the top should be flat once it's all in the planer so here i'm kind of finding the correct orientation for these things to go down i'm going to do the tape trick with hot glue here and glue them all down and let's hope this works i've never done this before and i am extremely nervous but let's give this a whirl wish me luck flat and smooth just as planned and there you have it 16 pieces of perfectly flat glued up pieces of wood now's the fun part i'm going to arrange them in a random order making sure that the different species of wood aren't overlapping each other literally every store is out of latex gloves so the only gloves that i have to spare are some good old baseball gloves so brings me back to the glory days uh here we go good old baseball gloves epoxy pour let's go man is that guy annoying get off the screen already all right now i am using moss epoxy and i'm gonna laminate these things together so i'm using epoxy because i don't want to have any kind of glue squeeze out that will affect the eventual epoxy pour so i'm going to be using the same epoxy that i do the pour with that way if any of it squeezes out you won't even know once the main pore goes on once everything's all clamped up it's time for my favorite part of every epoxy project and that is murdering bubbles big daddy bubbles baby bubbles twin bubbles bubbles with googly eyes i take no prisoners once every last bubble is annihilated i could finally go sit down and rest and wait for this thing to cure well that was quick and here's the next day everything is cured and i'm going to put them in the orientation to where i'm actually going to do the final epoxy pour just to kind of see where we're at and i'm putting them together and i don't like this beam right here i want more open space in the middle so i'm just going to take a little pull saw here and i'm just going to cut it off and now it's time to apply the penetrating epoxy good news i found some gloves the last pair at home depot yeah they are uh kitchen gloves but they might work a little bit better than my baseball gloves so that's always a plus let's do it ah i thought we told that guy to stay off the screen so i'm going to coat every square inch of these pieces and leave it overnight to cure the next day you can see here that the wood actually soaked up a lot of this so i'm actually going to do two layers and here is the following day and as you can see there are no more dry spots on the wood which tells me that everything is completely sealed and ready for the final pour of epoxy off camera i made this mold here out of melamine and i made sure to seal it with silicone and tape and just to be extra sure i want to pour it with water and check for leaks no leaks so we are good to go all right it's show time i'm going to be using moss epoxy's deep pour i'm going to do three gallons at a time and i'm going to add a little hint of black dye in there just to give it a little bit of contrast now i'm going to put a link in the description of all the materials and items i used for this so go check it out if you're curious to what i used be sure to mix thoroughly before pouring your resin now i did this little makeshift pouring spout to try and minimize bubbles but it ended up not working at all look at this guy poor just not even close to it and i mean here i'm kind of getting it down there uh but still a lot spilling out so i really didn't have to do that i should have just poured it all in there i'm gonna be doing this in two pours so i'm gonna wait for this one to cure before pouring the next one so much for my mold not leaking i come out an hour later to find a puddle of epoxy on the ground i did my best quick fix by siliconing this but that night i could not sleep at all no joke this is four in the morning i could not sleep i was having nightmares of this entire epoxy mold spilling out on the floor so i did another fix because it was leaking out again at 4am [Applause] and this is later in the afternoon that same day and i get another unpleasant surprise there are cracks and fractures in the bottom of this mold i don't really know what happened but at this point there's no turning back i'm gonna do my second pour regardless and here it is and it is full and i just hope that this one works all right fast forward two days later this is completely cure i'm gonna take it out of the mold and from the top from the surface it looks like that second core worked way better than the first one so i'm extremely excited to take this out and see what it looks like my first impression of this thing having just moved it is wow is this heavy how heavy you ask well i'm glad you asked because i am doing a giveaway and all you have to do to enter is guess this exact weight hit the like button and subscribe to my channel for more information on this contest check out the description and here's the front side perfectly crystal clear this is the second pour with no fractures and right here is the back side you can see the small fractures and cracks but i have a solution because i am doing a sculpture i can actually carve around most of those fractures on the backside so let's get right into the carving i trace out my side view and then i trace out my front view so i have clear lines to carve around now i'm pretty nervous here because this is actually my very first chainsaw carving [Music] [Applause] to play it safe i'm keeping my distance around an inch outside all of the lines i have traced and i'm kind of just experimenting as i go along here kind of using the chainsaw in different ways like here i'm just kind of shaping the little bits and pieces and other parts i take off whole chunks like here this is actually really fun to do my very first chainsaw carving i didn't think it would be an epoxy pour like this but it ended up being really fun and it took off a lot of material quick exactly what i wanted and luckily i didn't get any tear outs and the epoxy didn't shatter because again i stayed my distance away from those lines causing a mess is an understatement here i actually filled up two massive garbage cans full of debris from this sculpture here i am about an hour into chainsaw carving and you can see the very rough shape of the sculpture kind of coming through i next use the chainsaw to round over some of the edges here again just taking away kind of bulk material and staying away from the lines i'm now done with the chainsaw and i want to remove less material more precisely so i'm going to be using this angle grinder with different carving attachments to refine the shape and curves of the torso and here it is after a little more refinement but there's still as you can see a lot of work to do to get into the smaller areas i'm actually going to be using a die grinder with again different carving bits to really complement the angle grinder and get into those narrower spaces that the angle grinder can't get into as you can see this is not the cleanest of situations here so if you plan on doing a carving like this with these tools definitely get the proper mask and face shield and i will put a link in the description of what i use here i highly recommend it if you plan on doing anything similar to this the shape is a little more refined i'm going to be using the angle grinder with a flap disc to really smooth over the sharp edges and lines as you can see now it's really starting to take shape here i'm really happy with how it looks now i definitely have to thin out some parts and then get to hours upon hours of sanding but before i get to sanding i'm going to be using my little rotary tool here to get inside the leg cracks and just areas that the larger angle grinder and die grinder can't reach now nobody dislikes sanding more than me and i'm sure you don't like watching people sand either so i'm going to do you guys a solid and not show you the painstaking 15 plus hours i did of sanding this thing down now before i sand this past 400 grit i'm going to wet this thing down clean it off and i'm going to take care of those cracks in the backside and here you can see the full extent of these cracks the shoulder there's got a big crack in the butt there's a crack oh wait actually there's two cracks in the butt butt cracks so to fix these i'm first going to clean them out by shooting some air in there making sure all the sediment and dust is out and then i'm going to fill them with epoxy which will hopefully make this whole backside seamless once all that epoxy cured on the backside i re-sanded everything and now i am down to my finish sanding work so i'm going to be doing wet sanding up to 600 grit get everything nice and shiny and smooth and clear now for everyone's favorite part let's put some finish on this wooden epoxy and see what it really looks like and here it is the finished sculpture if you want to see how to win this be sure to check out the description let me know what you think about this build in the comments if you liked it give it a thumbs up and please consider subscribing

Channel: BM Sculptures

Views: 358,059

Rating: 4.932291 out of 5

Keywords: carving, shaping, wood, sculpting, epoxy, resin, pour, woodworking, woodcarving, how to, diy, easy, sculpture, blake, mcfarland, making it, epoxy pour, art, epoxy art, ocean epoxy, ocean, table, tabletop, making, chainsaw, chainsaw carving, echo, engraving, whittling, chiseling, diresta, bourbon, moth, bourbonmoth, bobby duke, dukes, bobby dukes, artwork, asmr, amsr, pewdiepie, woodwork, building, laura kamp, tools, power carve, restoration, viral, Mas epoxy, Best epoxy

Id: EmsXgtO9w44

Length: 18min 13sec (1093 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 18 2021

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[u/[deleted]]

I feel like this could literally be an ad for a gym. :)

[u/dpaulhesk]

I’ve never seen anything like this. Amazing and beautiful.

[u/[deleted]]

Amazing!

[u/[deleted]]

Now thats art