Because I do not have a band saw, I have to build up the body and wing sections by laminating together pieces of 3/4" thick white pine. This is somewhat time consuming, but if properly glued, the pieces will become very carvable blocks of wood with no gaps or seams. The profiles I developed from the plans and photos are shown below.
The upper profile is a side view of the body, with the legs extended. The lower part of the foot with the toes will be made separately from epoxy clay over a wire armature. The portion of the legs in the profile represent the feathered part of the leg, which will be carved out of wood, and the foot and toes sculpted from epoxy clay will insert into the ends of the carved wood stumps. The spread toes will eventually extend just past the end of the beak. All the above body profile shows is the wood part.
The lower profile in the photo above shows the configuration of the partially folded wing. It was based on several of the photos of diving osprey as well as the plumage details from the plans I bought. I went through several iterations at the drawing board before I was happy with it. I will use the same profile for the left and right wings, but they may vary somewhat when I carve the curvature of the wing and the feather detail. The photo below shows the pattern traced on each wing with the wings meeting at the midline. For reference, the boards are 8.5" wide and 14" long. Because the wings are folded, the full half-scale wingspan of more than two feet (4-5 feet in the real bird) cannot be fully appreciated.
The body itself will have four laminated layers, two on the right and two on the left. Why? The body in the half-size plans is about three inches wide, and four 3/4" laminations will take care of the full width. In advance of any gluing and carving, I labeled the four pine blanks that will become the body profiles as outer right, inner right, inner left, and outer left. The inner left and inner right blanks were drilled to accept two 3/16" dowels to hold them together in proper alignment when the two sides of the body are ultimately glued together. After drilling these holes, the inner and outer left pieces and the inner and outer right pieces were glued together. This stepwise approach - one body half at a time - was necessary for me to be able to carve and define the legs on each side separately. The legs extend from the hip joints to a point underneath, but somewhat lateral to, the head, and the separation of the legs from the body would be difficult to achieve if the body were a solid block.
The legs are not extended straight out from the hips, parallel to the long axis of the body. Instead, they extend forward and somewhat toward the midline, so that the clawed feet can be close together and form an eight-clawed, deadly fish trap positioned right in front of the bird's eyes. I have seen somewhere a photograph taken from directly in front of an attacking osprey (probably through a telephoto lens), and the combination of the clawed feet, sharp beak, and yellow staring eyes is really scary. I wouldn't want to be a fish in the sights of a diving osprey!
Once the legs are defined and roughed out, I will glue the two body halves together so I can carve the head and tail. This seemed to me to be the best approach, and took me a few 4.5-mile walks around Thornton Heights and through Calvary Cemetery to figure out. I imagined each step of the carving, and the piecemeal approach I have been outlining seemed to be the best way to accomplish what I wanted. Here is one of the body halves being glued together this afternoon.
I used every clamp I had. I later made a trip to Home Depot and bought a few more clamps, so I could provide an evenly distributed compressive force over a wider area when I clamp the two layers of the wings together. Why a laminated wing with two layers? The wings have a noticeable curvature when viewed from the front; they rise a little from the body from the shoulder joint to the equivalent of the bird's elbow, dip down between the elbow and the wrist, then rise up again from the wrist to the tips of the wings. The S-shape of this curvature can just about be accommodated within the 1.5" thickness of the laminated wing pieces.
When the profiles are cut from the two body halves and the two wings, the 4" flat portion of the body profile along the back will be the attachment point for the wings on each side. Again, I won't glue the wings to the body halves until I have done a considerable amount of thinning of the wings and shaping the curves. It will be easier to carve and shape each wing while it is still separate from the body than it would be if I tried to carve with the whole assembly glued together. It is a big carving, and handling it would be awkward. It is hard to describe what I am trying to do, and I am sorry if it is not clear, but the approach will become evident as I proceed with the carving.
In an attempt to summarize: I will shape and define the legs on each of the two body halves; I will glue the body halves together to allow carving and definition of the head and tail; I will shape the right and left wing profiles to produce the curves described above; I will glue the wings to the body halves; and then I will glue the body halves together. At this point, most of the major shaping and definition of the various body parts should be done, except for around the glue joints. I will smooth out these areas so the joints are not obvious, and then the detail carving can begin. This point will be probably not be achieved until sometime in July! I am in no rush, because I want this to be a good carving.
Because of a half-day with grandchildren tomorrow, I will probably not do too much more on the project until Thursday. Stay tuned.
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