delight
He carves lifelike animals with a chainsaw for a chisel
His mother asked for a wooden mushroom. Thirty years later, he's still carving.
Simon Bogg carves lifelike wooden animals using a chainsaw as his chisel, freestyling each piece with no plan beyond a source image for the trickier ones. The 53-year-old from Lincolnshire, England, sells commissions across the U.K. full time, and can spend three days working eight-hour shifts on his most intricate work. His most popular creation is the carved owl, small and priced around $200 and up. His largest stood 22 feet tall. It started with a mushroom. Bogg was in the building trade when his mother asked him to make one from wood, so he borrowed her chainsaw and spent a Sunday afternoon on it. "A week later she rang and said, 'I've got five orders for you, they love it,'" he told SWNS. Her friends, presumably. He is entirely self-taught. The biggest risk of the work, he says, is not the blade. "Deafness, vibrations, and chopping bits off is a big risk. But the biggest one is fatigue."