Carved Driftwood Wings

One year in our annual summer holiday on the island of Corsica I got obsessed with carving wings.

It started when I was looking for two pieces of wood that looked like bird’s wings.
The year before I had promised someone on the campground to design a phoenix bird as a tattoo template for her upper arm. But then I forgot about it. Well, I didn’t fully forget, but the designs I came up with to me looked like sh*t, not good enough to release them into the open world. So instead I figured I might give her two carved phoenix wings.

After carving those two with the primitive tools I had at hand (a kitchen knife and a Swiss Army knife), I decided to build my own wing/feather groove carver. I used a of piece stainless steel tubing intended for a LED garden light stand, bent it with pliers and a rock and finally sharpened the edge with ceramic knife sharpening rods used for hunting knifes.

Which lead to this thing, looking a little like a ham.

After that it took off. It required a lot of time to find some suitable driftwood pieces, but in the end it was well worth it.

My favorite one is this one. It had some natural “feather” wood at the center, so it was only natural to make it into a wing.

Of all the wings I did that year this one was the most realistic and coolest-flowing one.

This big one here broke when I accidentally put my elbow on it on the beach when someone asked me to hand over some bisquits. After it was almost done. <anger> Gluing it together and fixing it on the back kind of worked though.