Swimming Whale Shark Sculpture

For this project you are going need some wood. Now the internet the best carving wood is Bass wood or otherwise known as Lime wood depending where you live. I disagree with this. The best wood for carving is "free" wood.

So I had these Pine 2" X 4" construction offcuts lying around in my garage. So that's what I used.

Now you'll need 3 lengths of approximately 500mm. Making sure they do not have any big knots or nails in them.

Material:

Pine 2"x4" construction wood Length: 3 x 500mm

Wood glue

4mm plywood or plexiglass

Small box hinges

ebony wood stain

white stain oil

Acrylic white paint

fishing line

Being that our material is of poor quality. We will have to plane the surfaces flat on the joiner to provide a good gluing surface. If you don't have a joiner then you could hand plane it, but seriously unless you are a crusty old woodworker that only uses power tools your going to want to find a friend that owns one and borrow it.

Once you have flattened both 4" sides on all pieces we are ready for glue up.

This is a pretty simple process of applying wood glue and clamping the surfaces together. Now you could go out and buy all this fancy glue and clams but considering this project doesn't hold any load your cheap nasty local hardware store glue will do the job.

Also remember to glue the wood in a way that the growth rings are apposing each other to prevent cupping or warping later.

When the glue has dried. It's time to trace our shape of our whale shark.

I used a projector to find the correct size for my piece then traced the top and side view.

If you don't have a projector you can calculate the rough size required and print out the shape on paper.

To allow the sculpture to move. We need to segment the whale shark. I did this part before shaping as it would be more difficult to but when the sculpture is not a rectangular piece of wood

When marking out where to cut your segments make sure that your cuts do not go through where a fins or dorsal fin would be naturally. As you will see the 3 last tail segments are a little smaller that the 2 body segments. This was for that reason.

Cut your segments up on the drop saw or which ever saw you have that will give you the straightest cut.
A straight cut will make alignment and regluing with spacers a lot easier

On the bandsaw cut out the X axis on all the of all the segments being careful to not damage the off cuts .

Then use hot glue the off cuts back on so that you can then cut the Y axis

Note: Be sure to use as little hot glue as possible as I used way too much and damaged my piece when trying to remove the off cuts.

With the hot glue gun, glue back together the segments with a 4 mm spacer in between. This is to account for the hinges. I used Plexi-glass but you can also use 4mm plywood or similar. In fact it is probably smarted to use plywood as it sands similar and you won't get ridges.

I drilled 30mm, 20mm and 10mm holes in the spaces. Depending on what size piece. This was so that I had minimal gluing surface. This was to make sure it was easier to remove later.

Using reference photos and a rotary cutting disc on your angle grinder. Rough shape your whale shark. Making sure to leave the areas where the fins and tail will be as flat as possible. I used a hand plane to make sure of this.

Using some 12mm offcuts. Cut 6mm deep tenons for the attachment of the fins. The tail I made with 2 pieces to make sure it was strong enough through the direction of the grain. I then chiseled out a groove for the tail join.

Using a small Dremel bit carve the mortise out where all the fins and tail will be attached. Be sure to test fit as many time as needed to know you got it right. I didn't

Trace you fin shapes onto your pieces. Cut out your shapes on the bandsaw and then rough shape using chisels or in my case a majority belt sander and spindle sander. If you do not have these you can of course do this by hand.

After rough shaping its time to glue them in place on the body. Just use the same wood glue.

The final shaping and blending will be done mostly with a Dremel and hand sanding.

In the photos you will see I added and the details such as the ridges along its back and blending of the fins ad tail to the body.

Before you can start painting you will have to fix some small things so it will be a lot easier later

Final sand the whale shark to 240 grit. A tip to get the surface smoother is to pop the grain. Use a wet rag and wipe over the surface of the wood. The fibers will stick up and then after the piece is dry. sand down the surface again. This is also where you may want to consider putting the eye in. I used two of my daughters necklace beads. Drilling a shallow hole and pushing into place. The when you are happy using some super glue to fix in place.

Next will to disassemble the segments. Most of the segments should come a part with a hard twist but as you can see in one of the photos I did require a saw to divide one of the segments

Find a small box hinge at your local hardware store. Then knock the pin out with a small pin punch. Making sure both sides of the hinges are located on the center line and screw in to place. Test fit the hinge pins to see if you get the desired movement. Adjust if required.

Now you are ready to stain and paint.

For the top of the whale shark I used a Liberon "ebony" wood stain.

For the belly of the whale shark I used a Osmo "Snow White" hard wax oil

After allowing to dry it is time to paint on some detail.

I had no special paint for this I found an old tin of window frame semi white gloss paint which I thinned down with a little water. The pattern used was from some reference picture online. But I recommend using your artistic license to get the feel you want.

To finish you can use a lacquer or oil. I used a universal gloss spray. but in hind sight a couple of coats of silk matte Osmo probably would have looked better.

For the finishing touches you will need to put together the segments and insert the hinge pins.

Drill three 1mm holes for the hanging fishing line. The holes are to be drilled on the trailing edge of the two forward side fins and in the top of the dorsal fin.

Then hang somewhere where there is a slight breeze and watch your whale shark swim around.