# I am in awe



## Gaffboat (Mar 11, 2012)

Every now and again, we need a humbling experience to remind us we aren't as handsome, talented, and experienced as we like to think. I have a Facebook friend in Uganda who hand-carves wood. He is teaching his son the craft, and to say he is succeeding would be an understatement. Take a look at this work by 10-year-old Issac Dumba. All done with hand tools only, and I believe it is Issac's design. Remember, he's only *10-years-old*. If the overused word awesome means to be in awe, this is definitely Awesome.


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## difalkner (Jan 3, 2012)

Wow! Very impressive, Oliver, very impressive!

David


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## Semipro (Mar 22, 2013)

What a great job he is very talented ( *awesome*)


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## DesertRatTom (Jul 3, 2012)

Really great carving, and that a 10-year old did it, is terrific. 

Amazing isn't it, facebook for all it's flaws, has connected us to people all around the world.


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## old55 (Aug 11, 2013)

WOW.


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## sreilly (May 22, 2018)

That young man has a gift that his father has nurtured. I can honestly say that I could not compete with his talent or patience. Bravo to both Dumba and his father!


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## Tagwatts (Apr 11, 2012)

Gaffboat said:


> Every now and again, we need a humbling experience to remind us we aren't as handsome, talented, and experienced as we like to think. I have a Facebook friend in Uganda who hand-carves wood. He is teaching his son the craft, and to say he is succeeding would be an understatement. Take a look at this work by 10-year-old Issac Dumba. All done with hand tools only, and I believe it is Issac's design. Remember, he's only *10-years-old*. If the overused word awesome means to be in awe, this is definitely Awesome.
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TO SAY AWESOME, OR ANY OTHER DESCRIPTIVE WORD TO APPLY TO HIS WORK MAY NOT BE POSSIBLE. SO, I WOULD SAY THIS WORK IS OUTSTANDING, BEAUTIFUL. AND 
UTTERLY FANTASTIC. He may be a master carver at age ten.


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## marecat3 (Nov 30, 2010)

WOW!!!!!!! OMG that is wonderful


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## Biagio (Mar 2, 2013)

Humbling indeed. Every time I just have to have some new tool (e.g. a LV beading tool, which I may or may not ever use, or the biggest and best Makita router) I try to remind myself of all the indigenous artists and craftsmen who use only rudimentary hand tools.
Around the corner from me is a suburban service station, with some old trees on the property. Years back, one of the trees died. A passing undocumented immigrant from Zimbabwe offered to carve the tree, which he proceeded to do with a couple of axes. He produced a spectacular sculpture of two leopards chasing each other up a tree (the trunk was at just the right slope), and then burnt the well-known leopard spots on the wood. Took a couple of days. The sculpture was a landmark for more than a decade, but the new owners of the service station did not maintain it, and it eventually decayed. I could not find a photo, but attach a photo of a cheetah carved out of a tree-trunk by a local artist. It sits in my examination room. It has lost a couple of teeth through age - who hasn't?
The closest I ever came, was to carve a wooden chain and a block with three balls in it, while I was in the army, posted to Namibia (then South West Africa), in the late 70s. It helped to have a lot of time on hand, healthy troops who did not need doctoring, and some suitable local wood. I still have somewhere a walking stick I carved at the time. I used a Swiss Army knife and a hunting knife, but I was in nowhere the same league as this kid.
Incidentally, he has taken his inspiration from various sources: Uganda is landlocked, but has large fresh-water lakes. The principal fish in the carving is a saltwater shark, the fish in the right upper corner is a coelacanth - a very deep-water fish unchanged since prehistoric times, occasionally caught off our Indian Ocean coast, or off the Seychelles archipelago. Extra pair of fins, predecessor of creatures that first left the oceans to walk on the emerging land mass. The remaining three may be fresh-water fish found in Uganda.
I recently repaired a hand-carved ivory statuette of a fisherman belonging to my sister, from when she lived in Malawi 50 yrs ago. Malawians are great at carving ivory as well as ebony, which is abundant there. I mounted it on a slice of ebony branch, which I had lying around from that time. I also have some ivory carvings, now no longer obtainable due to CITES regulations, which I support, but do not intend to destroy the artwork.


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## Biagio (Mar 2, 2013)

Sorry, having trouble loading images. Will retry.
Theo would love our African indigenous artists - never heard of CNC, LV, Woodpeckers, Lie-Nielsen, even HF. Like Theo, hand power, mostly self-made tools from scraps of steel - no powder metallurgy, no cryogenic hardening, no Japanese waterstones, no 12000 grit diamond hones, no beechwood handles (although torefaction is common, used here for thousands of years). It will be interesting to see how Internet access changes things - there has been huge uptake of cellular technology in Africa. This kid may have seen the shark on the Internet, for example.


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## Biagio (Mar 2, 2013)

The ivory head is from a solid part of a tusk, some 6" in diameter. The scimitar is about 41/2 feet, would have been from a much larger tusk. Interestingly, the cloth on which the scimitar is lying, is made in Uganda from tree bark (a wild tropical fig). The craft is listed as a Unesco heritage craft.


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## MEBCWD (Jan 14, 2012)

Oliver thanks for sharing this. He is very talented, I would love to be around 20 years from now and see how much he has learned by that time. If they post some more of his work I would like to see how he progresses in his talent.


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## ScottyDBQ (Jul 5, 2008)

Awesome, stunning, spectacular -- all the super-positive words apply to this young man. Agree with Mike that it would be great to see his development over the years.


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## MYB506 (Dec 5, 2012)

Amazing work, even more so given his age. I hope he never gets tempted to get a CNC


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## papasombre (Sep 22, 2011)

Simply great.
It is rare that this little boy is using hand tools at his age. Nowadays his mates are using tables, mobiles or any other gadget.
A big hand for his father.


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## Biagio (Mar 2, 2013)

The really humbling part is that, with several thousand dollars worth of tools and machines, I cannot hold a candle to this kid. Similarly, no matter what expensive track shoes I might have bought, I was never going to be an athlete. The Lord giveth. It is for the rest of us to appreciate and cherish.


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## Rev. A (Jan 29, 2021)

Gaffboat said:


> Every now and again, we need a humbling experience to remind us we aren't as handsome, talented, and experienced as we like to think. I have a Facebook friend in Uganda who hand-carves wood. He is teaching his son the craft, and to say he is succeeding would be an understatement. Take a look at this work by 10-year-old Issac Dumba. All done with hand tools only, and I believe it is Issac's design. Remember, he's only *10-years-old*. If the overused word awesome means to be in awe, this is definitely Awesome.
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AWESOM is an understatement. Hope he keeps it "fun"


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## RainMan 2.0 (May 6, 2014)

At first glance you’d swear it was done on a cnc router . This young mans gotta be a savant or close to it .
Can hardly imagine what he’s going to build in the future


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## Biagio (Mar 2, 2013)

Rick, I look at what that kid can do, and I think of Junior Soprano's saying, as applicable to myself: I just don't have the making of a varsity athlete.


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