Speaker A
I'm going to turn this block of wood into this iconic car. And you're probably thinking, he's just using a CNC machine or a 3D printer.
Watch a detailed hand-carved Ford GT40 sculpture made from Honduran mahogany and curly maple, showcasing over 120 hours of craftsmanship.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
Generated from the transcript and can be wrong — check the timestamp.
Key Takeaways
- Hand carving a complex sculpture requires patience, precision, and adaptability.
- Using high-quality materials like Honduran mahogany and curly maple enhances the final piece.
- Traditional hand tools can achieve intricate details without modern CNC or 3D printing.
- Creative problem-solving is essential when lacking specialized equipment like a lathe.
- The process of carving is both challenging and rewarding, with a focus on craftsmanship.
What the video covers
- The creator hand-carves a Ford GT40 sculpture from a single block of expensive Honduran mahogany.
- The project took over 120 hours and is the most detailed sculpture the artist has attempted.
- Pinstripes are added using curly maple wood for contrast against the dark mahogany.
- The carving process involves precise glue-ups, hand tools, and chisels without CNC or 3D printing.
- Challenges include shaping tires from hard walnut wood and making rims without a lathe.
- The artist experiments with a makeshift lathe using a drill but ultimately carves details by hand.
- The video includes a sponsorship segment promoting Chime banking with cash back and high-yield savings.
- The artist shares insights on tool sharpening, carving techniques, and problem-solving on the fly.
- The finished sculpture is a highly detailed, hand-carved wooden model of the iconic Ford GT40.
- The video also touches on personal reflections about finances and the artist’s workshop setup.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and project overview
- 00:29Material selection: Honduran mahogany
- 01:12Preparing the wood and glue-up
- 01:51Choosing wood for pinstripes
- 03:29Initial carving and shaping the body
- 05:06Hand tool carving and challenges
- 05:52Sponsor message: Chime banking
- 06:38Sharpening tools and carving techniques
- 08:10Carving windows and rear details
- 10:18Cutting tires from walnut wood
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
Wrong. Every detail on this car was carved completely by hand. Well, almost every detail.
Speaker A
But how did I do it? I've never done a carving like this before, so I'm just going to wing it.
Speaker A
This project took over 120 hours, became the hardest, most detailed sculpture I've ever attempted.
Speaker A
And it all started with one of the most expensive pieces of hardwood I've ever purchased.
Speaker A
This is a piece of Honduran mahogany. And this single board cost me a whopping $608.
Speaker A
I know that sounds completely ridiculous, and honestly it probably is. But if I'm going to spend over 100 hours carving one of the most iconic cars ever built, I want to start with a piece that justifies that time and effort put into it.
Speaker A
I'm carving the Ford GT40, the car that became famous after defeating Ferrari four years in a row at the 24-hour Le Mans.
Speaker A
Its incredible story was even turned into the movie "Ford vs Ferrari." And if you haven't seen it yet, I recommend you go watch that.
Speaker A
Everything starts with a perfect glue-up. And in order to make that happen, each piece of wood has to be milled with absolute precision.
Speaker A
I need flat, square sides, so I have a perfect glue-up, because there's going to be more details than I've ever put into a sculpture on this.
Speaker A
And any imperfection now will be shown in the final piece. As you can see here, I'm planning on doing pinstripes.
Speaker A
And I'm going to use a different species of wood to highlight these pinstripes. I just don't know what piece of wood that is yet.
Speaker A
I've been wanting to carve this car for a very long time, but I've always been scared to attempt it because it has so many details.
Speaker A
And I'm kind of hoping I don't bite off more than I can chew here, and I'm able to actually pull this thing off.
Speaker A
While this first glue-up is drying, let's find out what that pinstripe is going to be.
Speaker A
I want a lighter piece of wood that really complements that darker mahogany. And I think this is the perfect piece.
Speaker A
This is a piece of curly maple, and I think the curliness of it is just going to look awesome as a pinstripe in this car.
Speaker A
[Music] And just like that, I have a really clean looking glue-up, and this block is ready to start carving.
Speaker A
[Music] [Music] I don't know the proper way of making a tire, or if there even is a proper way of making one, but by having this block of wood still square, I can assure that this hole saw cuts perfectly straight into the side of this piece.
Speaker A
And my plan as of right now is to just keep these cuts in the sides and really shape the body of the car.
Speaker A
Then I could always cut and chisel into these tires after the fact. Later on, further down the road in this car.
Speaker A
[Music] [Music] [Music] This car has such a cool looking front hood scoop, and I'm going to start this carving off by trying to chisel this thing out.
Speaker A
This sculpture is very different than my usual carvings. There are so many sharp angles and details that I'm going to have to use hand tools and chisels for the majority of this carving, and honestly, I'm kind of excited about it.
Speaker A
Not only do I not have the annoying rotary tool noises, but there's something just really soothing about using hand tools.
Speaker A
So I'm excited about this, but it is going to be very, very difficult. [Music] If I just left this block of wood sitting on the bench, it would never amount to anything.
Speaker A
And it recently hit me that I was doing the exact same thing with my finances.
Speaker A
For a long time, I just let my money sit in a traditional bank account doing absolutely nothing.
Speaker A
It's time to make your money work harder for you, which is why I switched to Chime, which is America's number one choice for banking and the sponsor of this video.
Speaker A
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
Join the millions who are already banking fee-free today. Thanks, Chime. Like I said earlier, I rarely use hand tools and nothing beats a sharp chisel.
Speaker A
I'm still kind of learning the sharpening process, but even with my limited experience, a sharp chisel is an absolute game changer.
Speaker A
And I don't know about you guys, but I also love the sound of a sharp chisel cutting wood.
Speaker A
[scraping] [scraping] [scraping] Now that was satisfying. And if you're curious, yes, it is also just as satisfying being the one holding the chisel, doing that work.
Speaker A
[scraping] I like moving around a lot on the sculptures. I don't like to spend too much time in one area because you'll kind of get too overly involved in that one area.
Speaker A
And that's when things can start to really take a turn for the worse. If you get carried away and start taking off too much material, well, you can't put material back on this.
Speaker A
There's no fixing your mistakes. Moving on to the back here, doing some of these air intakes, which are super unique looking and just such a cool car.
Speaker A
[music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] I have no idea how I'm going to do these windows.
Speaker A
Right now, I'm just going to do a little relief carving, kind of showing the outline of them, and then hopefully later on I could figure out how to actually finish them.
Speaker A
[music] [music] This is already looking really cool, but now I want to switch gears and start working on the wheels.
Speaker A
So I'm going to start by chiseling out these wheel sections. [music] [music] Well, that went surprisingly easy, and now it's time to start working on the backside of this car.
Speaker A
There's a lot of details on the backside as well as every other side of this car.
Speaker A
This car is insane. It has so many details, but I'm excited to start working on the back here, and let's get this thing looking like it should.
Speaker A
[music] [music] I thought you might like some more of that chiseling noise, so who knows?
Speaker A
If I keep this up, maybe I'll just stop doing sculptures and become one of those ASMR people or...
Speaker A
AMRS? No. ASMR channels. Anyways, it's time to switch gears and start working on the tires.
Speaker A
I'm going to be using some walnut here, and this should give the tires a nice dark look.
Speaker A
There's only one problem. This is a best-owned walnut, which is extremely hard, and my whole saw is very, very dull, so this is going to be a lot more difficult than I thought to cut out these tires.
Speaker A
[music] [music] [music] [music] [music] After a couple hours cutting out only four holes, I finally have the tires done, and now it's time to start on the rims.
Speaker A
I'm going to cut them out using mahogany, and I think, again, this will give a good contrast with the dark tires.
Speaker A
[music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] Alright, I have a bit of a problem with these.
Speaker A
Not really a problem, just something that would make my life way easier. I do not have a lathe.
Speaker A
These really need a lathe to make all these perfect little cuts. So I'm going to do my best at trying to make a makeshift lathe using a drill, and hopefully this works out.
Speaker A
Let's do it. [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] I literally have no idea what I'm doing, but I quickly just searched and saw a video of a guy doing this, and now I'm kind of an expert at this.
Speaker A
[music] [music] [music] I mean, look at this thing go. This is, who needs a lathe?
Speaker A
This thing is perfect. [music] Okay, maybe it's not as good as a real lathe, but it still kind of worked for a little bit.
Speaker A
Well, maybe not. Alright, I'm scrapping that idea. I am going the old-fashioned way with this little chisel, and I'm just going to carve all these lines by hand.
Speaker A
[music] Okay, I am not doing this. These two lines
Speaker A
and then just rotate the tire on that, and luckily I think this works a lot better.
Speaker A
And then once I'm done with those lines, I could go back with a hand chisel and finish up this tire tread.
Speaker A
[music] I am honestly super happy with how these things turned out. I had no idea how these were going to look going into this, kind of just winging things and learning on the fly, and I am so happy with how these things look.
Speaker A
They look like real tires. Here I'm just going to kind of add some little rim accents, kind of just adding things that I think look good, and we'll go from there.
Speaker A
[music] I didn't know it then, but there's something with these tires that I am really going to regret later on in this video.
Speaker A
But for now, I want to lightly sand this thing down and then start refining the details of this car.
Speaker A
[music] [music] [music] [music] [music] This thing is looking really cool already, but there's still a lot of work to do and probably the most intimidating part still left to do.
Speaker A
I've been dreading this moment since before I even started this sculpture. The windows. I have no clue what to do.
Speaker A
The best thing to do would be hollowing it out. I don't see how it's possible for me to hollow out these windows without destroying the whole top.
Speaker A
So my next thought was, okay, let me use like a black epoxy or a smoked epoxy, and I could actually pour it in these voids.
Speaker A
But here's the thing, the windows are all curved. I can't put this like this and pour epoxy here.
Speaker A
It's just going to run off the side. So epoxy is out of the question.
Speaker A
So what I'm going to try and do, I just ordered some black acrylic. I'm going to try and cut it out perfectly and place it in the windows.
Speaker A
[music] I immediately ran into problems. Cutting this acrylic with scissors was just shattering it and it's just not working at all.
Speaker A
But that's okay. I'm just trying to see how this will potentially look if it's on there.
Speaker A
If I cut it the correct way, I could always, you know, use my bands on and cut it just fine.
Speaker A
But for now, I just want to see what it looks like. [music] Yeah, I hate it.
Speaker A
It's time for Plan B. [music] This was so hard to do. The sides of the windows are only about a quarter inch thick and any slip of my tool could just ruin this entire piece.
Speaker A
And on top of that, I still don't even know how I'm going to hollow out the underside.
Speaker A
This entire carving is just kind of thinking on the fly and trying to figure out things when problems arise.
Speaker A
And although it's tough, it kind of keeps things interesting and keeps me on my toes.
Speaker A
[music] [music] [music] This was not easy, but somehow it actually worked out and I couldn't be happier that I didn't break anything along the way.
Speaker A
And now that it's hollowed out, I could start refining the window shapes. [music] I now need to recess the bottom section here because now that I don't have windows, you could actually see inside the car.
Speaker A
I need to add seats, a steering wheel, the dashboard. Yeah, I just kind of made a lot more work for myself but I still think I made the right decision because that acrylic just looked cheap but just didn't look right.
Speaker A
[music] Yeah, the wheels are way too small. I don't know why I didn't put these on earlier and see how they looked.
Speaker A
I guess I kind of assumed I would be carving more of this car down and that they would actually fit.
Speaker A
It's so small. I need to go a full size up on my hole saw and then after really studying more pictures of the GT40 I realized that the back tire is actually slightly bigger than the front tire.
Speaker A
So now I'm going to have to order another hole saw kind of in between sizes so I make the front bigger than it currently is but slightly smaller than the back tire.
Speaker A
Right here is actually one of the scariest parts. I have to recut the wheel wells and there's a really high chance that I could chip off some wood in the process.
Speaker A
Alright, some of you may be wondering, "What am I going to do with these four tires that I spent a lot of time on?" Well, my loss is your guys' game.
Speaker A
So, I'm going to give all four of these away. All you have to do is one, be subscribed to my channel.
Speaker A
Two, leave a comment on what car you think I should carve next. The four comments that get the most likes, I will send them a tire.
Speaker A
And I should mention, the winners must have a shipping address in the United States.
Speaker A
I'm sorry Zimbabwe, but I'm just not paying $400 to ship these across the country even five months, however long that takes on a ship.
Speaker A
Alright, I had a little bit of tear out here, but it's not too catastrophic.
Speaker A
I think I kind of cleaned that up and it should be fine. Here's the new back tire in place and you can see how much better this looks with a slightly larger tire.
Speaker A
The front one is the original tire. You can see how small that thing looks.
Speaker A
I'm just waiting on the new sized hole saws to get delivered and then I can start on that.
Speaker A
Oh, look, here they are. Alright, let's do it. [Music] I really didn't like the way I did the rims last go around, so this time I'm actually going to make them much more accurate by using my laser to get some added details that I can't do by hand.
Speaker A
[Music] I think these are going to look so good. [Music] Check these bad boys out.
Speaker A
I think they turned out so good and not only is the size better, but the details are also ten times better than those first ones.
Speaker A
I can't wait to see what these look like on the car. [Music] Okay, this is something way outside my comfort zone.
Speaker A
I needed to find a way to lock on a bearing to this rod, so I went with putting a pin in it which will allow the tire to still spin freely on that rod and not allow the bearing to basically fall off.
Speaker A
I'm sure there's a much better and easier way of doing this, but I just can't think of one, so if you have an idea, let me know down in the comments.
Speaker A
[Music] [Music] We're currently in the middle of moving into a new house, and I'm super excited about it because it actually has a separate workshop for me to work in.
Speaker A
But anyways, what this means is I'm going to have to create every sculpture I have to move to the new house.
Speaker A
And because everything is created and ready to ship, I'll be offering a discount and free shipping for the first time ever.
Speaker A
I currently have six sculptures for sale, and by the way, there's videos of each one of these sculptures on my channel.
Speaker A
And you can purchase them directly from my website at BMSculptures.com. Once we get fully settled into the new house, the sale will be over.
Speaker A
So if you've ever been interested in purchasing one of my sculptures, now is the best time they'll ever be, basically.
Speaker A
So if you're interested, I will put a link in the description. Thanks guys. Alright, the interior of the car is pretty much done, and now I need to address this little roof bulge that is called the gurney bubble.
Speaker A
This is Dan Gurney, and he is 6'4" much taller than Ken Miles, so Ford added this little bubble in the roof to account for his head clearance with his helmet.
Speaker A
The problem is, I want to make the Ford GT40 the Ken Miles Trofe, not Dan Gurney.
Speaker A
So after a little rasping and reshaping, this is now a car built for Ken Miles.
Speaker A
[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Now we're really getting into the nitty gritty of details.
Speaker A
I'm constantly checking my reference pictures and trying to make this car as accurate as possible.
Speaker A
[Music] This little piece right here is going to be part of the engine that sticks out of that back window cavity.
Speaker A
I don't know what part of the engine this is. I'm not an engine guy, but I'm going to add it anyway.
Speaker A
[Music] Next up, I'm going to add these two mufflers in the back, and then we're pretty much done on the major details of this thing, and then it's time to kind of sand and really finish this thing out.
Speaker A
[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Check out this grain color when I do a water pop.
Speaker A
This is going to look so good when finish is on. What water popping does, it actually raises the wood grains, raises those little fibers, and then you sand them down, and it becomes just buttery smooth after that.
Speaker A
Once everything is sanded, I'm on to my final step. I'm going to be using this small hand chisel to make all the lines on the car, and there are a ton of lines.
Speaker A
The doors, vents, hood scoop, there are a ton of lines that I need to accurately cut, which is pretty hard to do by hand, and honestly pretty nerve-wracking, because any mistake could end up showing on the final piece.
Speaker A
[Music] [Music] I'm going to do something I've never done before. I have this little wood burning tool, and I'm going to use it to darken every line on this car.
Speaker A
[Music] I put in my little signature logo, and now we are on to the final finishing.
Speaker A
[Music] I want to thank you guys for watching this video, and I hope you enjoy watching all the effort that went into this piece.
Speaker A
This sculpture took me over 120 hours to complete, and I had an absolute blast getting outside my comfort zone and attempting something of this detail.
Speaker A
If you're interested in purchasing this piece, I will have it listed for sale, as well as all my other discounted sculptures at my website, BMSculptures.com, or the link in the description.
Speaker A
Lastly, I have a goal of reaching 1 million subscribers. I'm pretty close there right now, so if you haven't already, please consider subscribing.
Speaker A
Alright, without further ado, here's the finished iconic Ford GT40. [Music] [Music]
Topics:wood carvingFord GT40hand carvingwood sculptureHonduran mahoganycurly maplewoodworkingsculpture processcraftsmanshipBM Sculptures
