I grew up on a farm and have always loved the sound of crows because they remind me of the farm. Before we had to cut our beloved Black Locust tree down a couple years ago, there were several crows who loved to hang out in the tree. We still have them around in other trees so it is still nice to see and hear them.
After we finished our gazebo, I decided it would be great to carve a crow to put in the gazebo as a reminder of our tree and the crows that loved it too. I of course had to give my crow a name and soon he became Joe the crow. I saved a piece of wood from our tree for the carving to make him even more special. Black Locust wood is very VERY hard wood so it was a battle to even make a dent in the wood, but I persevered because I wanted to make him out of the wood of the tree, it just had to be. I carved out a hole for his eyes and got my hot glue gun out and on a piece of metal (so it wouldn’t stick) I put small amounts of the hot glue similar to the size and shape of the holes for his eyes. After the hot glue cooled, I cut it into the shape of his eyes and then glued the hot glue eye shapes into the holes. Then I added a touch of paint to the hot glue for a more realistic look to his eyes.
I originally was going to put him up on one of the ceiling beams, but the grain in the wood was so beautiful we wouldn’t have been able to see it, so I decided to cut a forked limb from our wisteria bush to attach to one of the beams inside the gazebo then Joe will have a limb to sit on – down where we can see him better. I used a black walnut stain to show off the wood grain, but that was a little too light for a crow, so I touched him up with some black paint here and there.
Here are my photos of the progress of my carving of Joe.