Documentation of the progression of my current project

This piece was inspired by a couple of colourful fall leaves I saw in our back yard in 2008. The Polar Jade block came from Kirk Makepiece's mine in northern British Columbia.

I will be updating this site as the project progresses. If you wish to be notified of changes please use the e-mail form on this page to let me know.

Burning Leaf (work in progress)

The 43 Lb. Polar Jade as received from Kirk at http://www.jademine.com/	My first model made with plastecine	23 lbs. left after cutting out the piece I kept. The excess was sold to lapidary club members at cost with the funds going directly to the miner. The line shows the planned first cut to be made on the lapidary club's 24" saw	First maquette (back)	First maquette (front)
Side view. This was taken resting against the block of Polar jade I will be carving it from. Thanks Kirk!! This view is the one I used to trace out the puppets from	My saw was just big enough to make these next cuts	After an afternoon's sawing	Second maquette, working out the frond curling the other way	Using the maquette to work out the cut lines to be done on the jade.
Tools for drilling the hole through the bottom	The plastic plate epoxied to the top is to accuratly locate the drill tip when starting the cut	I had to "borrow" the big drill press in the local welders shop for this one	Finished hole	Paper layout puppets. The right one is longer in the top part because this is a projection onto the sloping part of the rough rock. These puppets were made using the Bézier curve tool in Corel to trace digital photos of the maquette from various angles.
Right side puppet projection drapped on the rock	Spray booth on my slab saw with the slabbing stuff removed. The cloth lets me put my hands under to hold the jade at the correct angle.	The first roughing cut	Top of first roughing cut	The side showing the jade removed
The main piece is now down to 7.8 lbs. and much easier to handle. I will ude the "scrap" pieces for less formal carvings	Home made tool for rough sawing and grinding. Note aquarium pump used for water feed	This bit is noisy	Ganged $4 saws make a fast roughing grinder	Checking with the puppets shows where material is to be removed
Locating the hole to be cut in the back	Initial rough cut to set the center vein	Gringing out the interior of the curl	Short movie of the grinding action	Positioned in the drill press ready to bore the hole
2 holes in 13 minutes	Rough grinding reveals potential fractures that I will have to stabalize with Opticon epoxy	Close up of one of the fractures	Initial sanding of the bottom and starting to rough the fiddle head on the back	The nice "cloud" structure runs all through this piece of Polar Jade
The face needs better definition of the shape	The tricky bit will be the getting the detail of where the base of the fiddlehead meets the hole in the leaf	Cracks	Refining the curl. Turns out the crack problem went away with use of paleobond and the switch to soft tools

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