I'm making this page to promote my woodworking hobby. On and off for the last 20 years I have made a form of the ever popular Grateful Dead Dancing Bear bumper sticker. Having seen a good number of shows, I wanted to develop a way to be a part of "Shakedown Street." What I thought would be fun and easy turned instead into fun and very difficult. Oh well, what "a long strange trip it's been'.
My first attempts were crude to say the least. I quickly found out that I had to redesign the shape of the Bears if I was going to be able to cut them out of wood, yet I needed to keep the basic shape so that people could identify what they actually were. After many attempts, I decided on my designs. Now it was time to learn how to cut the Bears out.
Well the learning curve for this part only took about 5 years, yet still they were only a small degree better than my first crude attempts. Stll, I kept on truckin' and passed out quite a few along the way.
Not being an artist, I knew that I would never be able to paint the 'faces' on the Bears, so I developed a way to tye-dye them. This worked out pretty good, but the time to make just one Bear became a problem. I counted and creating a Bear took up to 25 different steps in the entire process. Oh well, I was still having fun, making progress, and handed out a good number to friends along the way. In fact, the best were a group of XXXI Green and Gold to celebrate the Green Bay Packers Super Bowl win in 1997. Wish I knew who had those now, one has been dancin' round my rearview mirror for a decade now.
From here I moved on to trading Bears for bootleg tapes around X-Mas of '97. I ended up with around 50 trades, thanks to all who did this for me, I still use the tapes too. Hoping to find a way to get back in touch with those who did this for me. REWARDS!
Happily, my second son was born and I found little or no time to continue my craft for the next 10 years. I only broke down once, 'Terrapin Station' was held here in WI and I attended both days, passing out any Bears I had left over from past years. Did I meet you there? What a great time that was.
Well, fast forward to 2008 and here I am, new saw an all. The beauty of that is now I have the ability to cut hardwood, where in the past that was always a mess.
SO...
are you interested? I been working over the summer and have a few hundred made, some hardwood, some softwood. I have only one shape that I'm cutting right now but I hope to be making all five soon (redesigning again, "just exactly perfect" as Bobby would say).
For the first few hundred I'm only going to charge $5 per Bear, plus shipping costs ($3-$4 in bubblewrap). CHEAP! It takes up to 4-5 hours to completely make one from start to finish.
I have two basic designs right now, Large or Small. Large is about 3 1/2 X 3 1/2 inches, small 2 3/4 X 2 3/4 inches. These are both thin (3/8 to 1/2). I can put an eyehook in the top to use for hanging or a magnet on the back, your choice. All are finished with Formby's Tung Oil.
Contact me here and let's work out a deal. Eventually there will be a new web page to keep track of who owns a Bear, and then I'll develop a whole mess of other types.
Remember though, first one's on the 'Bus' get the best 'Seats'.
