Chainsaw Carving A Baby Pygmy Hippo POPPY

This Carving of the Month was sponsored by Pennsylvania Great Outdoors Visitors Bureau, home of the Chainsaw Carver's Rendezvous. Hey everybody, what's up? It's Chainsaw Jenna, and welcome to June's Carving of the Month. What? What the heck? Banjo! Banjo has been watching a lot of Top Gun lately, so he's practicing his flying so he can fly mom and dad everywhere around the world. That'd be pretty cool. Anyway, Carving of the Month, have you seen the most adorable pygmy hippo on the internet? Poppy. Poppy lives in the Metro Richmond Zoo in Virginia, and I have the honor of carving her. And I kind of started her already, so come here, let me show you what she looks like so far. She is the Carving of the Month, and I'm so excited because she's just so little, and she's got all these rolls, and she's just such a cutie pie. So here is little Poppy's head. Isn't it so cute? I have it tilted up because not only am I carving Poppy, but I'm carving her mom, Iris, life-size. I'm carving life-size hippo. I love my job. My job is so cool. That's not brag either. I'm just like, it's so cool. I'm literally carving pygmy hippos. So I have her head tilted up because she's going to be looking up at mom. So to see where I got to this point of her adorable little head, we have to go back to the Ridgeway Rendezvous. Chainsaw Jenna, carving baby Poppy. Chainsaw Jenna, carving baby Poppy. In Richmond Zoo, beneath the sun, a tiny hippo's life begun. Poppy's flashes, Poppy's grin, the sweetest snout and chubby chin. She's rare, she's bold, she's full of play. A little hippo stealing hearts each day. Watch her wiggle, smash and spin. Zooming round with a big old grin. From mud to pond, she's queen of cute. With stumpy legs and a sassy toot. Chainsaw Jenna, carving baby Poppy. Chainsaw Jenna, carving baby Poppy. Saw those broom and the chips fly free. Bringing out the hippo we all came to see. Chainsaw Jenna, carving baby Poppy. Chainsaw Jenna, carving baby Poppy. With every cut, the form appears. A baby hippo carved with cheers. Poppy's ears to a happy pose. Even her tail, yeah, Jenna knows. The snub-nosed shape, the waddle-walk. A tip of tribute that makes folks told. She's more than a carving, she's wild and free. A symbol of care and family. From jungle roots to zoo we see. Now lives in wood for eternity. It's raining! We have to do some milling, so we're gonna get wet. I have to set the mill to six and a half, so let's go set the mill to six and a half. That's the log that we're cutting, it's over there. We're using the 881 to cut this log, and it's not even a big log, but we're using what we got. Wait, that's seven, this is six. We're trying to get to six and a half! We need to get to six and a half. That's definitely moving up. This is moving up. If you want to purchase a Granberg mill, you can use the promo code Chainsaw Jenna and get 10% off your whole order. For anybody who wants to buy some cool Granberg mill product. Okay, here we go. Boy, you're getting wet. Milling in the rain! Okay, I'm swapping out my bars from this 20 inch toonie carving bar to the 28 steel light stock bar to cut the log that we just milled in half. So I'm going to cut those in half, and then the mill sections that we cut, I'm going to piece together. I got in that state of mind that I was like, I don't care anymore, and then I grounded it. You know why you don't care? You just had me sharpen the saws. You did a good job sharpening that. That was nice. It's quite good. You're gonna have to redo it. Yeah, I have to redo it. So we milled the log. That's where this flat part came. That's where this flat part came. And then we cut the log in half. So now we have two little little stumps. I'm cleaning off the sides that are milled because we're gonna push them together like this. And then after that, we're gonna put Poppy's body that's over there sitting on top. Now it's time to join the logs. I'm wetting both sides of the surfaces here, and this helps activate the Gorilla Glue so it bubbles up. And I used the entire bottle basically. Might have put it on a little too thick. Next, we ratchet strap the logs together, and I screw 10 inch laggers to really make the bond tight. Now that we got it together, we're gonna let this sit for 24 hours, and I will see you later. Okay, now that these are dry, these two logs that we milled and glued and screwed together, we're gonna take it outside. I'm going to clean it up all around, and this is what Poppy is going to be sitting on top. So let's bring these logs out. Oh my gosh. Got it? Heavier than it looks. I know. I'm gonna light it up. We also got this vertical mill that you can screw on a board and tilt your saw up and cut it, but Ben and I tried this, and it almost took two hours, and we failed pretty miserably. Okay, it's because it's a four-stroke. I am now pouring on water because the type of Gorilla Glue that I am using, it activates from water. So I'm just getting this log kind of wet. Am I getting you wet? I'm getting him wet. Okay, that's it for Poppy until 24 hours. Then I can touch her again. But right now, we have her glued, screwed, strapped down, and we have to wait. Look at this glue. I need something to stop that. Gosh, I did it. Oh my gosh. She's back on, and that was really scary. I was worried about her cute little face, but everything is okay because the body took a lot of that. If I would have cut this extra off, her face would have been bad, but she's okay. The blocking is messy. It's messy, but I think it's coming. It's coming along. We got some more blocking to do and shaping up, but here's the back of her. So I'm going to have one foot in and one foot out, and here you can see I have it drilled. I know it looks crazy right now, but this leg will be in and this leg will be in. So these two legs will be more in, and on the other side, these two legs will be more out. So this leg will be out more. This leg will be out more towards the back, but I think it's going to be so cute. I can see it, and I'm getting excited, but it is hot. It is a hot one for sure. I am sweating like really bad. So burning it will help get all these fuzzies out of here as well. And once I flap sand her, she'll she'll smooth down even more. I definitely want to be wearing a mask, where her pink is, because she has a lot of pink like underneath her chin and stuff. I'm just going to finish working on the rocks. So Poppy's name is actually going to be on these rocks, and I think I want to put her name right in here. So I'm going to leave this big rock alone and just continue cleaning up all this in here and continue shaping out getting these rocks really looking more like rocks. Now for the stain. I'm starting underneath Poppy's neck using a 50 50 ratio of pink spray paint and xylol. This makes the paint turn into a stain like, which is perfect because it still shows the grades of the wood. Now switching to a gray stain. Same deal, but I'm using Mineral Spirits instead to thin down the gray stain to keep it light and blendable. I use the airbrush to softly fade the pink and the gray together so it looks more like real Poppy. Once it's dried, I'll seal it up so all the colors come to life. Sealer is in Wagner spray gun with banjo hair. Banjo hair and sawdust is everywhere. You can't escape the banjo hair or the sawdust, but we're ready to seal up Poppy. I did my mixture and this is like, this is the tote that Banjo's food comes in, so I've been saving them. And I mixed some Mineral Spirits and this satin Indoor Outdoor Spire thing. And first coat, I have it thinned down because I really want this stuff to seep into the wood. So the first coat, I thin it down quite a bit with Mineral Spirits so it seeps in there. And then we're gonna do a couple more coats, but this is the first coat. So I'm using this spray gun because of how humid it has been. And since I use stain, it's still a little tacky. Not too, too bad, but I feel like this is gonna apply the stain on better than a brush because a brush would just kind of smear everything and make it super runny. This, I feel like I have more control. Do you waste more sealer this way? Yes. But that's okay because this is the only option. Where did I put her? I put her over here. So real quick, I'm gonna grab my brush. I've got my brush here and you can kind of already see that like the stain was a little bit runny. So we are just gonna get rid of that. Kind of have to work fast when it comes to spar. Make sure there's no drips or like puddles on her. I'm not going to use the brush on the pink because you can see there's already stain on the brush. So I'm just gonna go in with my glove here to get rid of those drips. You gotta do what you gotta do. She's so cute. And I think the sealer, since I'm gonna put like a couple coats on both of them, they're gonna look wet and shiny. And I think that's just gonna like make the piece even cooler because hippos love water. So they're gonna look like they've been in water, flying in water all day. And here is Poppy the baby pygmy hippo completely done. I'm so excited with how she turned out. And you can actually visit Poppy herself, not only the real Poppy, but this Poppy, a statue of her at the Metro Richmond Zoo at Virginia. And if you do, send me DM or something so I know that you got to see not only Poppy herself, but the Poppy that I carved. So thank you guys for watching. I hope you enjoyed today's video and we will see you in the next one. Bye guys. Love ya. This carving of the month was sponsored by Pennsylvania Great Outdoors Visitors Bureau, home of the Chainsaw Carvers Rendezvous.