Carving ice not easiest job on the block

Ice by the numbers

Source: Staff report

HAMILTON — Ice Carvers work with chainsaws, but to hear one tell it, the carving isn’t the most dangerous part of the job.

It’s lifting the ice. Each block made by the Forest Park ice carving company Artic Diamond weighs 350 pounds.

For instance, the ice statue of Darth Vader that will appear at IceFest, carved by Jonathon Michaels, is made from four of those blocks.

“The beginning is the hardest because it’s stacked up, putting all those ice blocks together,” he said.

If anyone is injured in the business, it tends to involve simply trying to move the ice.

“It’s a lot of physical work. And it’s slippery, too. It’s not like you’re picking up a 350-pound block of steel,” said Brady Lantz, the president of Artic Diamond.

Ice carver Jeff Helms had a challenge of his own, working on a sculpture based on the classic children’s book by Hamilton native Robert McCloskey, “Make Way for Ducklings.” Helms was making a mother duck and eight ducklings that would be placed on an ice pond. Last Wednesday, he had just started to carve the profiles of the ducks out of the ice blocks and starting to add their faces.

“Carving smaller is much harder because the features are smaller,” Helms said.

A sculpture starts with at least one block of ice. If it has more than one, the blocks are frozen together. Then, the carvers will overlay the blocks with the design of the sculpture on paper, Lantz said.

From there, the carvers will first form the basic profile of the figure, using tools like a chainsaw. Then, with smaller tools like ice picks and grinders, they add the detail to the figure. It takes about an hour or more to sculpt each block, depending on the complexity of the figure.

“It’s long, but it’s a fun process,” said Helms.

Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2836 or erobinette@coxohio.com.