Progress report and note to self, use smaller gauge wire when doing the wiring. I used thick gauge wire thinking that it’ll mean the lion head will last the distance with time. The trade off is that it is darn hard to work with. My fingers are so sore trying to manipulate them into the right shapes but alas, it’s done and dusted. Time to paper soon. 

It is a really good feeling when you complete something you start. Today is one of those days. I’ve finally completed the main body of this lion frame. It’s almost poetic that the “crowning moment” is crowning the lion head with its horn. 

To be fair, I haven’t finished the lion 100%. I still have all the wiring that I need to do including the ears and eyelids. But that’s child’s play in effort when it comes to the the whole frame making process so I’m quite pleased with getting to this stage. 

I think out of all the lion heads I’ve made, this is one of the best ones. The biggest difference with this head is that I was particularly picky with choosing the right bamboo strip for the right location. This has resulted in a lot of natural curves. Each bamboo strip has multiple nodes (the nobbly bits between the smooth bits) and these areas of the strip don’t bend as smoothly. If you have a node over where the frame requires a smooth arc, such as over the forehead of the lion, you’ll get a weird shape. This is what happened to me during my last lion head project and I ended up needing fire to make the bends happen resulting in a lot of unnatural bends. I got away with it during my second and third project by incorporating a lot more rattan strips. These don’t have the problem of nodes. 

Here’s a couple of images. 

I’m getting there!! I’ve had a couple of really productive days. I think the clincher is setting myself a time goal of trying to get this lion frame done by the middle of August. This means that I know I need to work on the head consistently rather than sporadically if I really want to get it done. It also helps that I’ve got a bit of spare time after work to work on it. I’ve focused on adding 1-2 strips at time and this has helped tremendously with progress. 

It’s been a while since my last post but that doesn’t mean I’ve been idle at home. I’ve been working on making another lion head frame. If I complete this frame, that’ll be three Luen Fat Cheung replica heads that I would’ve worked on. Hopefully I can see it through and hopefully, I can they’ll look as good as the originals. 

Can I say, I hate turning bamboo strips into rings!! They’re so fiddly and keep breaking on me!!