A friend of mine was in a terrible car accident almost a month ago. He severely injured his left leg and is still in the hospital. I was trying to think of something that would cheer him up a little and thought, why not carve a Good Luck Left Leg for him? Since his hospital is in Albany, NY and I'm in Kalamazoo it would have to be a small carving that could be mailed.
Since the piece is so small I didn't feel comfortable using hammer and chisel on it. So I used my Dewalt 4 1/2 inch small angle grinder to get the general shape. I wore my thickest gloves and held the piece in my left hand and the 6 lb. grinder in my right. Not too smart because all it takes is a slip and a nick with Dewalt to cause a bad accident.
It went amazingly quickly here it is after only 20 minutes or so of grinding.
After the initial shaping, I used my Dremel with a tile cutting bit to refine the "carving".
The original idea was to carve a left leg starting at about mid-thigh down to the foot. But as you can see above, the knee would have to be about where that bump in the shin is in the picture. That would mean the whole piece would have to skinny down, especially the ankle and foot. This would severely weaken the piece and since it is meant to be handled it would be too fragile.
So I had to move the knee up the leg in proportion to how the ankle and foot came out. The knee kept moving up until it almost disappeared and there was no thigh left. No more Dremel, only filing and sanding from here on.
More filing and sanding and starting on the toes below...
The toes were the hardest part for me.
Yikes!
I started with this 7 inch scrap piece of limestone.
Since the piece is so small I didn't feel comfortable using hammer and chisel on it. So I used my Dewalt 4 1/2 inch small angle grinder to get the general shape. I wore my thickest gloves and held the piece in my left hand and the 6 lb. grinder in my right. Not too smart because all it takes is a slip and a nick with Dewalt to cause a bad accident.
It went amazingly quickly here it is after only 20 minutes or so of grinding.
After the initial shaping, I used my Dremel with a tile cutting bit to refine the "carving".
The original idea was to carve a left leg starting at about mid-thigh down to the foot. But as you can see above, the knee would have to be about where that bump in the shin is in the picture. That would mean the whole piece would have to skinny down, especially the ankle and foot. This would severely weaken the piece and since it is meant to be handled it would be too fragile.
So I had to move the knee up the leg in proportion to how the ankle and foot came out. The knee kept moving up until it almost disappeared and there was no thigh left. No more Dremel, only filing and sanding from here on.
More filing and sanding and starting on the toes below...
The toes were the hardest part for me.
Yikes!
The toes went through several reworks and eventually I had to just declare them done.
The piece just fit into a small "if it fits, it ships" USPS box. I enclosed instructions for its use. For instance, the last picture above is how the Good Luck Leg can be used to ward off overzealous physical therapists.
Now, back to work on Jack.
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