Ridgway Rendezvous 2003
Notes 2
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I saw a wide mix of tool use--some people are chainsaw-only purists; others simply VERY good at adding detail with a chainsaw, yet others not interested in adding detail at all, and a substantial segment hauling generators or batteries out to the field so they could use electric tools for finishing. Some people char with a hand-held propane cylinder; others were using flamethrowers and grill-sized gas tanks. Only a few people are adding color to their work and I didn’t see anyone paint with the level of detail in my beasts and birds. Then again, I couldn’t have painted in freezing weather, in an open field, so maybe I wasn’t seeing the full range of painted work.
"Huh? What was that?" With most people in earplugs and the rest suffering some degree of hearing loss, conversation on the field could be difficult. It's hard to know how loudly you are speaking when you are wearing your own earplugs. The noise dropped off pretty quickly as you got away from the field, and it was at a higher pitch than I expected--more like a hive of bees than a roaring engine. With so many chainsaws going at once, the sound evened out--none of the revving and whining that are so irritating when a single chainsaw is running. In the midst of 180 people running chainsaws, it's still possible to find a certain solitude and calm--put on your earmuffs and pull the starter cord.
The Saturday morning group shot. Not all carvers made it to the field in time for the picture, yours truly among them. Another group shot was taken on Sunday morning. © 2003 Doug Ricks.
(Suggestion / complaint alert—skip this paragraph if you’re a “Ridgway is totally perfect” purist.) Although NC is a tobacco state, it's been a long time since I've seen as many people smoking as I did over the weekend. A large number were hand-rolling. Elk County, PA, allows unrestricted smoking indoors. Five days later, my lungs are still clearing second-hand smoke. I would hope that some accommodation for non-smokers could be offered in the future; we were isolated from late-night events because there was nowhere in town for non-smokers to congregate. When the meeting halls got too smoky, we each went back to our individual rooms and missed out on group activities. In 20 years of attending other meetings, I have watched the “party room” transition from smoking to non-smoking; it used to be that the really lively people hung out in smoking; now the real fun is in the non-smoking hospitality suites. It might take another 20 years for that to happen in the carving community. (End non-smoker’s soapbox.)
Ice carving is wet work—imagine how wet you’d be if all the sawdust a chainsaw generates is ice that melts the moment it hits your shirt. Rumors are that ice carving pays well, but the raw material is expensive, and heavier and more demanding, than wood. One block of ice weighs 300# and it's not at all hard to use two if the carving needs width. Plus, you can drop wood off a truck and still have something to carve! I was pretty focused on the carving; didn’t want to back into someone else’s saw and the footing gets tricky when the “scrap” is chunks of ice, rather than wood, and didn’t notice we’d drawn a crowd. It was a shock to come back from lunch and suddenly realize I was part of the "talent," rather than “audience,” and these people watching thought there was something special about chainsaw carving. Hey, the birds were there all along, as were the cranes, bears, unicorns, and all the other creatures that appeared around the (ice) fountain by the end of the day—all we did was let them out of the ice!
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