Hippo Distraction - Day 1

I was the recipient of a recent curve ball from my brother. He and his wife have accepted new jobs in southern California. They sold their house but don't have a place to actually move to yet. In the long run it means that he can't take the Patriot carousel horse with him (they are decidedly difficult to move in perfect conditions and this one was damaged the last time it was moved. There is enough damage that I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to fix it). He is insisting that he "needs" to have one of my dad's carvings and it "needs" to be the hippo and he is going to be quite upset if he doesn't get to take it, right now. Nothing like a little family drama. It had occurred to me that I could ship him to California but he weighs about 70# and probably needs a crate to insure a safe delivery and as I said all carousel animals still are bit fragile (typically legs that are extended, in this case its the extended nose). I fairly certain that I could pack him well enough to survive but in the end its probably easier to make my brother pack him up with everything else.

Much to my wife's dismay I have elected to get moving on the hippo and let him take it. I needed to paint it anyway so I figured this at the very least gets me moving on it and it gets it out of the workshop. Its a nice piece and has the added bonus that its relatively small and not as detailed as the rooster (which is still staring at me, belligerently, demanding to be finished as well). Its to cold in the workshop to paint it there so he has been brought indoors and is sitting in the dining room to be painted. And it has to be done by next Tuesday. That's kind of a longshot from a dry paint standpoint but we will see.

The hippo is quite nose heavy and someone but a 5 year old on its back who promptly rocked on it which caused it to fall forward and take quite the hit on its nose. Only the hippo was damaged in the accident, fortunately. This is after the repairs were finished. Anything in white was fixed. What you can't see is all the repair work in the mouth. The mouth is actually hinged and moves and that entire assembly took the brunt of the tip. The problem with that is the lower jaw moves on a metal rod that is embedded inside and can't be removed. Fixing it was not fun. I didn't do that work. When I started looking at it over the weekend though I saw that the back of the mouth was not glued properly and was loose so I figured out how to get some clamps in there and re-glued it. Still it was a pretty darn good repair job in the end.

One of the issues with the hippo was that I had a bad tube (well old and expired) of titanium white which I went ahead and used anyway (another story there). The skin ended up with a pebbly texture when it was done. Since he was going to be repainted and needed sanding anyway I went ahead and sanded away that texture.

Then it was on to the priming. I didn't need to prime the while thing since I was going over old paint but I seemed to have gotten carried away with it and did more than I really needed to.

Here is the Patriot horse which my brother currently has. Any horse with a flag is called a patriot and white is the traditional color. This particular pose is a "stander" she has three legs on the ground (some will have all four legs down. And yes, this is a she. Most carousel horses are and there is a way to tell, its not what you think).