ARBL Wire Bonsai Trees

29/03/2024

Autum tree in wood base.

29/11/2022

Wire tree in a wood frame!

24/11/2022

My first Cruz, hope it look elegant! Wood and aluminum.

23/11/2022

21/11/2022

Cherry blossom inside Crystal box with a music box inside the wood base.

19/03/2022

I will be participating in this expo with one of my trees and a sales table!

19/01/2022

This is a blue-on-blue tree I recently made. Wanted to do a realistic looking tree in form and foliage but different in color.

15/10/2021

Autumn is here and food is always around the corner in Puerto Rico.
This a a Pilón for those that have not seen one.
The Pilon has a rich and long history and has been a very important kitchen tool throughout it’s history.
The pilón was first used by the Taíno Indians. Early visitors such as Fray Iñigo Abbad and Fernández de Oviedo mention having seen the Indians use giant size vases to mash different things. The ancient pilones were much like the pilones of today – the same shape but quite rustic and waist high. Taínos would place one foot on the base to prevent it from tipping over when hit with the giant macetas. Taínos used large hollowed out tree trunks to form waist-tall pilones. The hole for the pilón was burned out and carved using simple rustic tools. Giant macetas were carved out of trees also. The final product depended on the talents of the carver. Some were very rustic, but most were just plain and practical. Some were well-finished, smooth, and shiny on the outside; some were pieces of art with elaborate carvings. Taínos used the pilón and maceta to mash corn, spices, medicinal herbs and other things. Ingredients to make body paint were also processed in a pilón.
The Pilón is still useful today in the modern Puerto Rican kitchen.  It is important to use the pestle (or maceta) in a crushing motion, not grinding.
The Puerto Rican Pilón is most often made of wood from the Caoba or Guayacán trees, native hardwoods to the island.  These woods offer a fine finish and are very durable, full of veins and fibers.  They are not likely to crack over time.  A good Pilón should have a polished wood and be sealed almost to a lacquer finish.

27/08/2021

I got a request to made a base for this antique statue. The challenge was that it is not balance and it is inclined forward. I decided to use granite to complement the weight balance and use a big pieces, compare to the bas of the statue, as I believe the entire statue should be inside the base and centralized when see from the top.

10/04/2021

Here is a picture of the first bonsai I ever bought. This a a Rosa del Desierto or Desert Rose (Adenium Obesum). It is a dark picture as I just took it at night.

Adenium obesum is a poisonous species of flowering plant belonging to tribe Nerieae of subfamily Apocynoideae.
It is an evergreen or drought-deciduous succulent shrubs. It can grow to 1–3 m (3.3–9.8 ft) in height. The leaves are spirally arranged, clustered toward the tips of the shoots, simple entire, leathery in texture, 5–15 cm (2.0–5.9 in) long and 1–8 cm (0.39–3.15 in) broad. The flowers are tubular, 2–5 cm (0.79–1.97 in) long, with the outer portion 4–6 cm (1.6–2.4 in) diameter with five petals. The flowers tend to red and pink, often with a whitish blush outward of the throat.

29/03/2021

I was ask to make a bullet shell casing coaster, well actually several in different calibers. Here are some pictures of the cleaning process and a final product in .40 caliber. The idea was to make one coaster in a different caliber.

A bullet is a projectile. A shell is a casing. The two together, combined with propellant and a primer make a cartridge, which is one complete round of ammunition.

The history of ammunition can be traced back to the invention of fireworks around 900 AD. The Chinese developed a black gunpowder that was composed of Charcoal, Saltpeter, and Sulfur.
This gunpowder was initially used to light up the sky, but was soon adopted as a weapon.
It was not until Europeans used gunpowder that we began to see ammo develop into the cartridges we know today. With the invention of muzzleloaders the Europeans continued to shrink ammunition down to a size suitable for hand cannons or the first rifles.
The process of using muzzleloaders to load in gunpowder took an extremely long time, even for a single bullet. However, it remained the most common method for loading ammunition over the next few centuries until the invention of the cartridge.

05/03/2021

A friend acquire an antique from India table (the second foto) and the seller gave him pieces of another table with the same design as the one he got (as he was going to throw it away.
He came to me asking if I could do something with the pieces.
I cut and joint some pieces, restore the wood and made a small folding screen (biombo in Spanish) that he is going to use as decoration in his house.

Folding screens are a type of freestanding furniture and consist of several panels or frames connected to each other. They have many practical and decorative uses and can be made from different materials and come in a variety of styles.
Folding screens originated in ancient China. Written references date from around the 4th century BC, during the Han dynasty, but they were probably used earlier. They were initially used as room separators and weren’t meant to be moved around frequently.