Our wood carving class at the Campbell Folk school made lighthouses out of cottonwood bark. The bark is harvested from large dead cottonwood trees that grow in western Canada and British Columbia. Our instructor, Tom, cuts the bark as seen below on his band saw ahead of time as seen below.
We chose our piece of bark and began carving down the square edges to start forming the lighthouse structure then continuing carving out the areas to create the light features. The light on the left was the results of my first carving the one on the right will become my second one. In addition to learning to carve learned how to use all sorts of new tools as seen on the work bench. We used pictures of various light houses as our models.
Once the light was carved I carved out the other parts of the bark to look like rocks, carved the steps and the little house, etc. The last step was to paint.
It took me roughly two days to make the two lights. I did not have enough time to start another one on Thursday afternoon so I carved a turtle based on a picture of one of Tom’s. He started as a square block of bark which I then carved away the wood to form the turtle. All the pieces are finished with a stop wax that seals the paint and gives the wood a deep finished look.