The little elephant – Sigve Astrup Lien

My good friend Jess likes elephants, so I wanted to make her one for her birthday.

Often when I make gifts, I like to use the opportunity to utilize techniques I have not tried before. So, in this occasion it was woodcarving.

I also wanted to use a technique for rough shaping the figure. Here one starts with a cube (or rather a rectangular cuboid) and draws up the outline of the wanted shape on the top, front and side. Then one cuts out one side on the bandsaw, hot glues back the offcuts to re-establish flat working surfaces, and do the same with the other two (not gluing back the last pieces). This makes for a fast roughing out of the shape and made the whole process go much quicker. If doing this, one should know well how to operate the bandsaw, as it can be a bit dangerous.

As in a lot of my projects I let the technique (or rather production process) and material influence the design, so here the shape is designed to be easy to cut out from the front, side and top. In addition to that, there are also considerations regarding the wood grain direction and so on. E.g. because of where the trunk and tail are located, they are made stubby and close to the body so that they do not break off too easily.

The process of cutting and gluing back together. The bandsaw blade was a bit dull.

When I was making this, I looked trough what wood offcuts I had, and found a piece of oak that I cut out, but not thinking through it, that was way too hard to carve, so I went for birch instead. Which was much nicer to work with.

The first cut, before drilling the hole for the trunk, with the oak test in the back.

I made the elephant first with a bit Daliesque long legs to be able to hold it better when working, I was thinking of keeping them, but cut them off in the end to confine the shape more.

After rough shaping with the bandsaw and a knife. Still with the long legs.

Since I was going to send the elephant by post, I made a plywood box for it. Putting the little extra in to this as well, for practice, I mitred the corners and made a sliding lid.

I packed the elephant with shredded newspaper in the box. I really wanted to use wood shavings, but I did not have any nice long ones.

After taking the studio pictures, I sanded it some more (400 grit) and applied a coat of Osmo Hard Wax Oil, which I use on most of my wood projects.

After additional sanding and a coat of oil

This was a really enjoyable and meditative project, and I highly recommend trying it out. But it is vital for the enjoyment to have really sharp tools and honing them when they get dull, just watch the fingers as they can be easy to cut into.

A big thank you to Jörg and Pasi for lending and giving me carving tools for this project!