Developing Their Skills

At the Creede Woodcarvers Rendezvous, John took classes in relief carving and chip carving. There were lots of other opportunities to develop carving (and painting) skills, as well. Most classes had samples of the project people were learning. The variety was amazing. You can click on any picture to enlarge it.

Some people were decorating walking sticks.






























And then there was bark carving. That work really produces lots of wood chips.






























How about carving in stone?

There were lots of different santas to carve and paint.















































Have you ever wanted to make and decorate a kaleidoscope?




Or carve a fish?






























Gourds make good canvas for painters.








































This is called carving in the round. The support you see supports figures that are too large to comfortably hold in your hand while carving. And the wood can be rotated at will.






















For this class, animal figures were roughed out by the instructor. The class members could choose what they want, complete the detail carving and then paint it.











































If you want to learn how to carve or develop your skills in a new way, Creede, Colorado, in July is really the place to come.

Finding Supplies

Last winter I learned to turn bowls on a lathe. When we planned our summer travel to Colorado, I knew I wanted to bring back some aspen wood for use this year. After research on-line, I learned I should look for standing aspen that had been dead for at least a year.

The next step was to find out if I needed a permit from the Forest Service to gather 2 or 3 4-foot logs of dead wood. Yes. So I paid my $20 for a permit to gather fire wood. That allowed me to gather up to 2 cords of wood. I certainly don't need that much. But realizing I had paid $16 for a piece of ambrosia maple that measured about 10" by 6" by 4", the $20 wasn't too bad.

I asked the ranger in the Rio Grande Forest Service office in Creede for directions to a good location to find my wood. He showed me an area that was no more than 10 miles from our campground, so Friday we headed out with gloves, a hand saw and a small reciprocating saw.

After inserting the blade in the small saw, John used it to start his cut into the aspen.

Then came the hard work, sawing two standing trunks that had been dead for quite some time and another that has already been cut down.

John did most of the work. I just served as gopher, carrying things to and from the truck. I carried 2 of the logs he cut. He carried the other. To top it off, we even found a large chunk of aspen that had been cut and used as a chair around the campfire. It was way to large for John to cut with our old hand saw, but it will be a good size for turning.

Success! Here are 3 of the aspen logs in our truck.

When we returned to our RV, I attached the Forest Service permit to one of the logs.

I look forward to working with wood when we return to Arizona for the winter.

Why We're Here

We came to Creede to take part in the Woodcarvers Rendezvous. John is a carver and he enrolled in two classes. I am not a carver, but I did enroll in a wood burning class. Before the classes began on Saturday, we helped set up the vendor area and some of the classroom areas. The gathering is held in the Creede Fire Department which is located in old mine tunnels in the mountain at the north end of town.

This is the vendor area.

These are some of the classroom areas.

The tables were brought in on this pickup truck. Since this is the area where they keep the fire trucks, there was plenty of room.

My wood burning class met on Sunday in the Fire Department Annex, a metal building across the road from the fire department. It was pretty cold in there until it warmed up later in the day.

I am not good at drawing and I don't intend to do a lot of wood burning, but I think it might come in handy at times to add some decoration to the bowls I turn.

John attended a relief carving class on Saturday morning and Wednesday and today. The boards that carvers use in class are designed by the instructor, John Engler. There were samples to show what was possible. They are absolutely beautiful.

Here is John, working on his carving.

He also took a chip carving class, a type of carving he had not tried before. It met on Sunday in the same building where I was learning pyrography.

You can get a little better idea of what chip carving looks like from this photo of the work being done by one of the women in the class.

Mining Relics

Walking north out of Creede one day, we saw the remains of the Humphrey Mill.

Construction of the mill began in 1901 and it began processing silver ore in January 1902. The ore came from several mines along the Amethyst Vein, the largest vein of silver in the Creede Mining District. The "vein was between 4 and 6 feet wide and the silver consistently assayed in at an incredible 200 troy ounces of silver per ton of ore." (Forest Service sign near the mill)

Gravity separated concentrated silver ore from waste rock in the mill. The silver ore came out of these chutes and loaded into train cars, to be shipped to a smelter in El Paso, Texas.

Ore came from area mines in ore cars pulled by donkeys and mules on this track across Willow Creed from the mill.  Remember, you can click on any of the photos to make them larger.

Think of all the hard labor that went into shoring up the rocky hillside around the ore track. I can't believe what it took to work, on foot with hand tools, cutting the logs and building the retaining walls on these steep hills!

The valley where the mill is located is very picturesque.

This Is a Fun Place to Visit

The year-round population of Creede, Colorado, is 290 people, split just about half and half men and women. The median age is 52. In the summer, the population blossoms with tourists who like to fish and/or escape the summer heat by spending time at 8700 feet in the Colorado Rockies. Many of the summer residents, perhaps 50 to 60%, are from Texas.

Creede is interesting to visit and shop. There are hanging baskets of flowers all over on Main Street.

One of the shops in town has lots of gift items, including a lot of natural wood decorations. This photo is taken from the stairway to the second floor. You can see the items for sale down below.

Here are two of the tree roots that have been made into decorations, as well as a bowl turned from a burl.

An empty lot has been turned into a small park.

The facades of many of the old buildings have been restored.

There was a neat old Ford truck parked in town.

This land across Willow Creek, leading to the area where the Woodcarvers Rendezvous is being held, was really spruced up.

These two boys had the boat and paddle, but they weren't on the creek.

Obviously, the nearby pond is used for ice skating and hockey during the winter.

The county courthouses in Texas are very ornate, often with a dome on top. Courthouse square is always an attractive place. I am sure the many Texans visiting Creede are very disappointed in the Mineral County Courthouse in Creede. There is no courthouse square here.