Amazing sculpture carved from patterned wood

In this video I'm going to make a pattern block of wood and carve it into one of the world's most expensive snails. But I'm going to let you guys be the judge if it deserves that title by giving you a full price breakdown and hours spent to make this sculpture come to life. And I know what you're thinking. Why a snail? Well let me tell you. We recently took a trip to Hawaii and my daughter took me outside first thing in the morning to show me something totally magical. One of the snails was much larger than the others and it soon became my daughter's favorite. She named him Charlie and began feeding him every morning. Soon it was our last day and as I took my morning coffee outside on the patio. So to honor Charlie's short life on this planet I'm going to create this sculpture to remember him by. Now let's talk expenses. Lumber isn't cheap. Walnut is around $20 a board foot and maple is around $10 a board foot. I spent a whopping $1,406.95 just on lumber. I'm using a tutorial by Feldhaus Family Woodworks and about a year ago I used a design to carve this bowl sculpture and just loved the way it turned out. And I think I have a really cool pattern by them that's going to be perfect for the snail shell. Making one of these patterns is a very extensive process of joining, planing, resawing, gluing up and basically doing the same thing over and over again with very precise measurements. So sit back, relax and watch this pattern come to life. And in a little bit I'm going to tell you how to price your art pieces if you're just starting out and how I broke into the don't know how to price your artwork. This is one of the most frequently asked questions I get. When you first start out all you want to do is basically break even on materials. For the first year or so if you don't lose money consider that a win. You simply just need to sell as much product as possible. And this most likely means that you will need to find another job at the very beginning. Find a job that has flexible hours, that allows you adequate time to work on your craft. Easier said than done I know but nobody said this was going to be easy. You're going to have to work and work harder than you ever have before. Being able to financially support yourself through art is an incredibly difficult thing to do but also one of the most rewarding. I'll let you know how I got started coming up. I always ask you guys what you want to see me carve next and I gotta be honest you guys are all over the place. I get comments like carve my pet poodle Jane. How about a lion but with dragon wings and purple feathers. Or carve a rock. A rock? Really? But with all these comments I can always count on a good portion of you guys to want the same animal. You guys are never gonna let go of this peacock idea are you? That is besides YeastyG546 who if he's watching should immediately stop and go seek some medical attention. Anywho, so many of you want me to carve a peacock that I'm finally going to give in and make everyone happy. I'm going to carve what some say is the peacock's best friend. The giant African snail. You see Charlie wasn't just some ordinary house snail. His ancestors lived in Africa and in 1936 they were brought to Hawaii as garden ornaments and to be eaten. Anyways they can grow up to eight inches long and have a much prettier shell design in my opinion. The other reason why a snail interests me is because I can blend two completely different mediums. I'll be using the wooden pattern for the actual shell and then for the slug I want to use crystal clear epoxy and I'm really excited about kind of meshing up these two different mediums. I ran into some kind of issue here on the bandsaw and I didn't know exactly what it was but if you could listen closely you could hear some tinging. This does not sound good or look good and I have no idea what's causing this. I open up the bandsaw and give a thorough look and I find this crack in the blade going almost halfway through. This could have been really bad. I've had my fair share of bandsaw injuries especially if you watched that bull video and this thing was ready to go at any moment. So I'll open up a new bandsaw blade the only way I know how and add another $55 to my total. Now we're back in business and I can get back to some resawing. When I first started out in the art world I was in a very fortunate and kind of unique situation. I was still playing professional baseball for the Toronto Blue Jays organization and I had a full six months of off-season to devote to my artwork. It's actually kind of crazy when I think about it now. I actually wouldn't be here if it weren't for baseball, something I never could have imagined while I was actually playing. I sold art during my first two off-seasons basically just breaking even. I mean if I made any money at all it was a huge win for me and when I did this something kind of crazy happened. But first let's finish the planer, cut them down to size and then start mixing and matching the different boards to get the best design for this snail shell. As far as cost go, I have another $38 in wood glue for this entire thing. I used around a gallon and then something that often gets overlooked is the wear and tear of your machines and it's basically impossible to put a number on it but the carbide bits in the joiner, planer, the saw blades, they're not cheap and these things do take a lot of wear and tear. I mean I spent hours and hours using these machines for this build. You can see right here I actually made a mistake on one of my glue-ups and now the pattern's all screwed up. Luckily I'm pretty sure I'm going to actually carve this off so it shouldn't be a problem and I'm not super worried about it. And like I was saying before all my machines and tools do take some wear and tear during this process which does cost money in the long run. However for this build I'm not going to calculate any of that because you just really can't put a price on it. While the pattern block is in its final glue-up it's time to start sculpting the slug with clay. Throughout this video you may have noticed I've been using a new work table. This is the FlexiSpot E7 Plus standing desk with four leg design. This desk is a perfect workbench because I can adjust the height to match whatever machine I'm using like the planer or even elevate it so I can stand while I sculpt or carve something. All right we're going to put this thing to the test. 250 pounds. Let's see if it can lift me. Wow. Well as you can see this thing is pretty beefy. Wow. FlexiSpot offers a 15-year warranty and a free return in 30 days. I highly recommend this E7 Plus standing desk and right now they're having a huge sale for Black Friday with items up to 65% off. Use my code YTE7P50 to get $50 off the E7 Pro, E7 Plus, and E7L standing desk. Thanks FlexiSpot. And now let's get back to this build because I finally get to start carving this patterned block. By far the most asked question I get is what do you do with all those cutoffs and don't you guys worry I save every little piece of cutoff that I think I could actually make something out of and I have something pretty cool in the works with a fellow woodturner and pen maker but more on that later. Let's make this giant African snail shell come to life. So I was two years into my art journey selling work to break even and something crazy happened. I started getting repeat clients for the very first time. What happens is you start growing your portfolio. The more pieces you sell the more artwork of yours is out in the world and the more people can see and recommend your work. Soon you'll be getting more inquiries and guess what you can raise your prices and test what the market is willing to pay for your art. Years of years of this compound into a deep understanding of what the market is for your work. Sometimes you'll need to lower your prices when things are slow and other times when you're backlogged with work you can raise your prices and see what people are willing to pay for your work. The amazing thing is you get to do what you want to do because you're your own boss and you get to set the rules and you get to set your own prices. Now how do I actually price my artwork now? I'll tell you that right after I finish carving this thing. The shape is pretty much roughed out at this point. There's a couple small refinements I need to make. There's a little curve on the bottom of the shell that I need to take out make it more straight as you see right here with the pen mark and from there it's kind of just sanding a little bit and getting the spiral a little deeper and a little sharper using some smaller tools. So let's get right back to it. Believe it or not this is one of the easier sculptures I've sanded. There's no sharp curves or super fine details just smooth big curves which makes this an added bonus for the snail shell. Now that the shell is pretty much done it's time to start sculpting the actual slug. I'm going to sculpt the entire thing out of clay then make a silicone mold so I can pour a clear epoxy and make the perfect form fitting slug. At least that's the plan up till now. By doing this in clay I can also push down on the shell making an imprint in the clay so these things sit perfectly together and then if an eyeball antenna breaks you know you just redo it in clay. Easy peasy. The only thing that's not easy peasy is I'm attempting a brush on silicone mold that I've never done before but I have watched a lot of YouTube videos on it so I'm pretty much an expert now. I'm going to be doing five different layers of this and each take around an hour and a half to cure so I'm basically going to do this all day long. This also reminds me I forgot to tally the costs of these. I used a full bottle of that brush on silicone as well as some plaster paris gauze which you'll see me apply here next. The grand total of those two combined with shipping and tax was $179.40. Once the last layer of silicone was applied I used my plaster paris gauze to make a little slug mummy. I never thought I would ever say those two words in a sentence together but I kind of like it. Just so I know you guys are still paying attention comment that this one could have some clay deep inside those eyeball antennas and I won't be able to get it out. Oh and I have a fun fact for you guys. I actually googled what a snail's eyeball antenna was actually called. They're called eye stalks or optic tentacles. So anyways hopefully I got all the clay out of those optic tentacles. Now I'm just wrapping this slug mummy back up with tape and crossing my fingers hoping everything will work out okay. Like always I'll be using some TotalBoat thick set fathom. If you're interested in epoxy or the hundreds of other great products TotalBoat has to offer check out my description link for a discount and thank you TotalBoat for supporting my channel. I'm adding some metallic flake and light blue pigment to this epoxy. I'm hoping this gives it a translucent shimmery sliminess to mimic the real slug. I think this can turn out pretty cool if it works how I'm thinking. I gently rotate the mold to burp any air bubbles that may be trapped inside the optical tentacles of the slug mummy. And yes my two favorite words will be used as much as possible now. I then place the whole thing in the refrigerator and check out these color swirls. I think this could be the perfect color for the slug. While that's curing remember this big offcut? Well I'm gonna saw these two in half making two end grain cutting boards out of them. And remember when I said I keep all my offcuts? I wasn't lying. Some of these pieces I've had for over three years waiting for the perfect opportunity to put them to a good use. These pieces are awkwardly shaped or too small to turn into a cutting board. But they were in fact the perfect size to cut into some blanks for some pen making. The only problem is I'm not a woodturner or a pen maker. But luckily I found Keith Rose here who is an amazing woodturner. He specializes in pen making and I'm fortunate enough that he wanted to team up with me on this and turn these pens into not just ordinary pens but jumbo size pens that would be a perfect addition and statement piece to any desk or office. I am super excited to see these pens come to life and if you're over on Instagram do me a favor go follow Keith at Mr underscore K Rose. And while you're at it if you haven't already followed me follow me at BM Sculptures. We hope to have some of these pens finished by the time you're watching this video. So go check them out on my website there will be a link in my description.