It is of a hand with first finger pointing, and carved from a tulip poplar log about 16" diameter and just under 3 feet long. It came from a recently felled tree. (Kiln dried would have been easier, but EZ-Poly works either way.) The finished piece is about 27" long by 13" tall by 9" thick.

I draw knifed off the bark and painted the ends with a sealer. After about 2 weeks I found some time to get started. I first made a model of my right hand out of clay pretty close to life size, and then used proportional calipers to transfer key points to the log, and drew lines thereon with a black wide tip felt pen. I did the clay model first as I don't have the time to carve that I wish I did (and therefore the experience) and I wanted to "get a feel" for the piece, where the recesses would be, etc. ahead of time. I could, that way, also build in the "carver's license" of a slightly longer than normal pointing finger.

Then I used an electric chain saw to rough out the piece, followed by a special circular saw cutter on my 4 1/2" grinder. This brought it pretty close to where it would be productive to use mallet and chisels. It also made a sizeable mulch pile.

At that point I noted some starting end grain cracks. I mixed up some EZ-Poly, maybe a tablespoon's full is all, and filled the cracks and also the end grain fibers around the cracked area. This was especially important as I had uncovered new end grain surfaces due to the roughing out process.

Well, "life and survival chores" interfered, so I set the carving aside. In picking it up a week later I could tell it was lighter and a lot of the moisture had left the piece. I slowly used grinder and power sander to bring it more to size, and then carefully used the air compressor to clean off the piece (outside the house!) and get any sawdust out of all the drying cracks...and there were some more. I again mixed up a small batch of EZ-Poly, putty knifed it into the cracks and coated exposed end grain all around any areas showing cracks. This approach evens out the continued drying, helping to avoid really big cracks.

After a few days more I had time to use mallet and chisels to carve out recesses and fine tune dimensions. At that point I wasn't pleased with a couple accidental deep cuts made with the power tools, so when I mixed up a little more EZ-Poly I filled those carving errors as well as catching up on the small splits and exposed end grain areas.

I'll check for drying cracks and use EZ-Poly again. Then I will final carve and sand. When I'm comforted the piece has fully dried I will final EZ-Poly if needed and sand. Then comes sealing, sanding, gold leafing, poly coating, and mounting in the outside weather on a telephone pole inside my property at a "Y" in the long incoming road. The "goldfinger" will clearly and humorously point the right final direction to take up to my home.

If I were finishing the piece "natural" I would mix sanding dust with the EZ-Poly to color it exactly the same as the wood. As is it is pretty close anyway to the tulip poplar.

Sincerely, Bob