Atlatls and Party Animals

Some of you will remember when I posted about making an Atlatl.

Like many of my "projects", I dove into it initially, then parked it. The delay was caused by a little inertia combined with lots of other things to do.
A really big part, way bigger than mere inertia, was the cluttered condition of my small barn shed that functions as USTORE-IT warehouse, garage, occasional chick nursery, and workshop.

For my birthday, Junior gave me a whole list worth of completed chores that had piled up and gotten the back burner treatment.

He repaired the canoe rack that a Tropical Storm flung branch had crushed.
He repaired the stand holding up a chicken pen that Bear had crushed.

He cleaned out and reorganized my barn and even added a new shop light. In doing so, the atlatl blank that had sat covered in debris came to the surface.

I had forgotten about it.

So, Sunday, I laid out my carving gear and picked up the neglected atlatl to be. Surprisingly, no little carving gnomes had worked on it during my absence and it appeared just as I had left it ... a slightly curved shaft with one large blocky end and one slightly flaired end.

It was the blocky end that I focused on. I took the shaft in my hand as if I were spear chunking. It felt pretty good, but needed to fit the hand better, so I grabbed a pencil and traced around my fingers.

I carved out my finger grooves, stopping to test the fit from time to time. When the grooves and my fingers agreed, I turned to the end of the shaft handle.

I wanted to carve some critter at the very end of the handle and a gator head seemed to be present in the rough block, so I started removing waste wood until I had it to the point you see in the picture above.

It's a long way from done, but now that I have light and some space to work, I think I will be returning to it more often.

When it is complete, I will share it with you.

(ABOVE: Bear and Jr... Jr is the one in shorts)

Since y'all left so many kind comments about our Bear's birthday, I thought it would be rude not to share some birthday party pictures from last night.

He was a wild and crazy guy.

Things calmed down a bit after the cat juggler left, but Bear was up late into the night munching on his rawhide birthday bone.