Hand Carved Skateboards

My brother, is a carver. He started out carving masks and moved on to, believe it or not, skateboards.

Here is a pre-skateboard carving:

There are two carved hands in the back attached to cords and an ignition coil. When the hands are pulled the eyes rotate and each bird sparks in turn.

Below is his first octopus.

His Skateboards are in the shape of birds and marine creatures. He seldom shows his work and never promotes it. I think his carvings are incredible and figured others might appreciate them too. Living in the northwest he uses available woods, alder, red cedar and yellow cedar. The adz is used for major wood removal; you can see the adz marks in the picture below.

He makes his own carving tools. The adz below is made from an old rasp. Others are made from saw blades. Tree branches form the handles. Here is an adz he made for me but I’ve never gotten very good at using it.

Here are some of his tools:

The smaller carving tools are made from carbon steel knives bought at thrift stores. He heats them up wth a torch to take the temper out, then grinds or bends them down to the desired shape and then reheats them with a torch to retemper which takes a little practice to get right.

My favorite, the crocodile:

Another octopus: