A wonderful thing happened over the holiday. A treasured creation was returned to me and now I can share with you the very second thing I ever carved from wood.

Los Angeles county, California, and I, very much into hiking at the time, with the Pacific Crest Trail just beginning to be planned and built.

The section in our area was just a series of dirt truck roads joined haphazard until a permanent trail could be built. We were an impatient bunch, however.

We climbed the Moody Truck trail during the hottest time in memory, and where we encountered Perspiration Point, with this sculpture being the result of all the time I spent thinking.

It is carved from one slab of walnut which, in hindsight, is not the best wood to use for this particular application, but youth and ignorance are an expected blend at that age. I mean who else would execute such a hike during the summer in the first place? The eyes are made from ivory nut and after these decades, still contrast the walnut well.

At about my 16th year, a travelling wise-man-fool gave me my first dremel tool and a piece of ivory. Both were broken, but usable. Many projects later I still remember him saying that he was not a special man and that anyone should be able to carve these. At that time he produced a buddistic scene carved in-the-round from an identical slice of ivory to the one he gave me. It depicted a sleeping man under a tree with his dog and hawk at his side, campfire burning. As you progress around the piece you see the fire become a dream of the man which is of a fiery bird-dog which then becomes the tree the man sleeps under. He called it a netsuke from the Japanese.

The skeleton you see is from the same tradition, albeit much limited after the scene I just described. It invites the observer to go around it, and to handle it. I have since given up carving ivory in favor of the risky but suitable ivory nut. The vegetable variety is so close in consistency and substance to the real thing that they even smell like the dentists office when you burn them a bit.

On occasion I am asked to produce awards for different clients. You know, trophy figures and the likes. Following are several skate board grand prize original one of a kinds. First off is the Thrashsaurus Wrex, the shreddingest monster to ever terrify it's elders, which went extinct for obvious reasons, but being captured here below at right for the first time in many epochs.

This example (right) at 12"x7"x5" was crafted from bocote, zebrawood, ash, rosewood, maple, bubinga and walnut, and was composed of so many parts that I cannot recall their number.

The sample on the left is a mid-eighties style shredder made from a single block of wood whose name I cannot remember for the life of me. This one came mounted on a half pipe, while the Thrashasaurus came with a sliding handrail.

I have photos of the presentations. One shows a pride of ownership while the second photo showed a subject seemingly confused by the award.

Speaking of awards, a client commissioned me to sculpt a light-hearted illustration of hang gliding to present to one of the great pioneers of the sport, a shy guy who will go unamed at this time. While this was going on, I dabbled into the sport a bit myself and got a feeling for what kind of stuff goes on in a pilot's head. Here it is, presented in bubinga, bocote and muslim cotton.

It was about 10 inches wide and about 8 inches tall. About the size of the illustration on a 25 inch tv monitor.

Then there were the boats. I nearly drove everyone mad during my sailboat craze. Fortunately we met boat people who always need crew and I am okay without ever having had to buy one. However I did amass a collection of one-of-a-kind models from scratch distributed as gifts of course.

They say every wooden boat modeller should begin with the schooner U.S.S. Bluenose, a coast guard cutter and Americas first commissioned military ship. Here is my rendition, simplified. It is composed of birch, rosewood and walnut with ironwood blocks for the rigging and measures about 12 inches by 12 inches by 4 inches wide.

This is, as you can see a friendship sloop. It has no romantic connotations and is simply a sloop constructed in the port of Friendship, Maine. They were common on the east coastal waters and plied many different trades and functions, as well many were outfitted as yachts.

This 10 by 10 inch one has an ash hull, rosewood fittings and roof. Birch stovepipe and bulkheads and ironwood blocks as before. I added brass rings and a cotton sail set.

Other boats in the set were a rendition of the first America's Cup winner and the craft the award was named after, and the 3-masted H.M.S Endeavor, which was destroyed by one of my cats, quite by accident.

I just remembered, there is a collection of railroad miniatures I will round up in time for the next improvements in the site.

Here at last are some of the toys I made either as a child or for a child. I have always had a great love of all things flying. In metal shop I turned out so many miniatures that I was able to maintain an A average without having to do any of the required projects. Here is the only one left and I had to steal it back from my sister. It is the Fokker DR1 triplane flown by the likes of Werner von Ross and the Red Baron. It is made from a pipe, some washers and sheet metal with brass solder.

When my boys were growing up they also showed an interest in aircraft as so many children growing up in the Antelope valley have, and so I made for them a collection of sorts, not all of which are available to share.

This is a figment of my imagination spaceplane inspired by Werner von Braun's original space shuttle design, which was suppose to fly independent of external tanks, boosters, etc. It uses some kinda new fangled gravity drive to get around and is armed with Star Wars laser blasters. It is made of maple, rosewood and mohagony. Missing from the collection are an F-18 hornet and an F-16 fighter jet.

The favorite, hands down by both my boys, was the RS-71 also known as the SR-71 blackbird recon jet. The model shown here is only 2 1/2inches long and made from goncolo alves and mohagony.

This is a model of a Southern Pacific locomotive of the type that killed a beloved stepfather. This was therapeutic and cathartic. I feel pretty good about our railroads today. This model is composed of so many woods, just see if you can recognize any of them.