Wings, head, and tail refinements; feathers

    I spent a few hours on the back patio today, making more sawdust.  The wing thickness is getting close to where I want it to be, but I discovered an error in the wings that needs to be addressed tomorrow.  I made the area covered by the secondaries and their coverts a little too big, a realization I came to as soon as I started drawing the feather patterns.  More on that a little later below.  First, carving progress.

    Using the plans I had purchased, I redrew head and body profiles from above and from the side, identifying wood that should be removed, and starting thinning out the body and defining the shape of the head.  This is a little scary, because the head comes to a point at the end of the beak, making that area susceptible to breakage if finished too soon.  Shaping the head helped me with the legs, giving them more definition along their length before they disappear into the plumage of the body.  I also refined the tail and trimmed back the border between the tail feathers and the contour feathers on the back and belly, to conform more closely to the purchased plans.

    Below are some photos from today.  In the first photo, the rough shape of the beak can be seen.  There is a very pronounced hook, which could be easily broken because the curve passes across the grain.

    The next photo below shows the thinned body anterior to the wings, the beginnings of the small feathered crest behind the head, and the shaped tail with a corrected border between tail feathers and body contour feathers.

    

    The last of this set of photos, below, shows the much reduced wing thickness, and the improvements around the areas where the wings meet the body.  Pay attention for a moment to the raised, curved areas on each of the wings, which will be addressed below.

    I made my first attempt at drawing the feathers on the dorsal surface of the wings, basing the feather pattern on the plan I had purchased and an especially clear photo from my "osprey reference" collection.  Below is a photo of the feather pattern I came up with.

    The mistake I referred to above had to do with the border between the primaries and secondaries.  In the third photo above, the curved, raised border defines the edge of the secondaries and their coverts, as the primary flight feathers are being tucked up underneath them during the dive.  It turns out that I made the "curve" a little too wide; it should curve around more sharply and point towards the bend on the leading edge of the wrist.  

    Why is this important?  The secondary flight feathers attach to the forearm, and the primary flight feathers attach to the bones of the hand.  The wrist (located at the sharp bend in the leading edge of the wing) marks the separation between the origins of the primary and secondary wing feathers.  Naturally, the overlapping border between the primaries and secondaries should end somewhere near the wrist.  I'm not sure how I missed this, but I am glad I caught this error before I finalized the wing thickness, since after that there would have been no way to correct it.  The drawing correctly shows the feather patterns on the right and left wings sweeping around and heading toward the wrist area of the leading edge of the wing.  Tomorrow, I will re-carve the overlapping border and locate it correctly.  I will have to re-draw the feather patterns in this area, but that's not a problem.

    This may seem like small potatoes, and few people viewing the carving will be knowledgable enough about wing feathers to notice anything wrong, but judges in a carving contest easily spot mistakes like this.  Since I will enter this carving in the next Spirit of Wood Show in October (if I get it done!?), I want the feather pattern to be correct.  Actually, who am I kidding?  Whether I enter the carving in a contest or not, I want the feather pattern to be correct.

    Each step in this carving marks progress of one sort or another, however gradual. But, somehow, drawing the feather pattern on the wings seemed like a really big step that changed the appearance of the carving and the impression it makes.  When I eventually carve out the feather outlines with a fine point carving bit, the pattern will become part of the wing, not just a series of pencil lines.

    I worked about four hours today, including the time spent drawing of the feather outlines, for a running total of 26 hours.   This is actually going a little faster than I thought it would!