Part Two of Tom Crowl‘s interview with wood carver, ventriloquist Conrad Hartz. Conrad hand carves his basswood figures which are highly collectible and used by some of the top pro ventriloquists in the business.
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Click here for part three of the Conrad Hartz interview!
Video Transcript:
You’re using a German chisel then
Yeah
Okay I uh I did a little bit of wood
carving, I picked it up as a hobby and
for a while I was carving wine barrel
heads and I’m I’m I use the Swiss
Feld chisels,
Yeah but uh when I
started a wood carver told me he said
you don’t need a lot of chisels you’ll
find you you know pick out about six or
so of them that you really like and
they’ll be the ones you use that’s it
mine’s double-sided not single sided and
um this one chisel I bought I bought a
extra handle at the time and have never
used that
handle in 34 years
of carving
That is amazing, so how
many (ventriloquist figures) would you say you’ve carved over
the years?
Roughly around 300
Wow! that is an impressive body of work!
Yeah and all different shapes and sizes and people and you name it well um how
About how long, out of curiosity, does it take
you to do a figure Start to Finish
Well a good figure uh really around 100
hours I have done them in 70 hours 80
hours but uh around 100 hours to get
them get them right okay so anybody who
complains about figure prices keep that
in mind yeah keep that in
mind but um and and when you carve by
hand you you um you know you you can’t
do uh two exact figures the same way MH
you try and all this stuff
but uh uh every figure is actually
original some way shape or
form certainly so
Now you’re using Basswood for these
Correct Basswood only
Okay that, Basswood carves really nice.
When it’s a a good piece of Basswood um
yeah you have to watch your you know
make sure you don’t get the heart of the
tree and that would be a pink Basswood
board but uh most of the time you pick
out a creamy white one m and uh that’s
the best uh you know Basswood is wholly
wood to me it’s it’s expensive now yeah
but uh anyway it’s the best carve in Wood
Okay, so what thicknesses of
wood are you working with when you’re
putting these heads together
I’m only working with 3/4
inch boards
Okay so I’m sorry go ahead.
I think Frank Frank Marshall used uh
probably two inch thick or an inch and a
half thick boards or
whatever um are you I guess planing it
and do you epoxy them together or how do
you glue those together?
You glue it with a good wood glue.
When you’re working with
wood figures I know I’ve talked to
some people who had some wood figures
and they said that they’ll swell with
moisture, which is one of the things.
I don’t use a a wood figure in my
show and it’s strictly because I’ve
always been afraid I work you know humid
environments, how do you protect the
wood to keep it from swelling
You don’t you just uh when you use a Basswood
figure or whatever as long as you don’t
have it in the blazing sun all day long
you’re okay, you know if you put
something in there that something in
there may start to change itself you know like
some kind of covering on the inside or
something like that I tried that once
and uh it did not work so um no I put in
put on four to five coats of
paint and um the the best the main thing
is uh uh when you make make a
mouth uh you can make it exactly where
you can hardly see the mouth
opening uh on either side of the chin or
you can make it a little bit wider and
that’s what you do so that it won’t
stick.
