Making a hedgehog sculpture from wood and nails.

After doing some work last summer outside I forgot a box of nails that stayed in the rain and snow all winter long. When I found them again, they had an interesting, rusted color and texture that I wanted to use for something, and… a small hedgehog was the idea I settled on.

The body would be planks of wood laminated, cut and sanded to shape, and the nails would be the quills. The idea was for an easy, small project that could be done within an hour or two of active work, for which I wanted a stylized look, for a small, cute sculpture.

The first step was to do a quick sketch of the shape. I wasn’t so much aiming for realism, but I did want the shape to be recognizable, and I needed to figure out the size of the body relative to the nails.

Once I had the shape and size roughed out, I knew I needed three layers of wood, which I cut to shape from a board I had lying around, then glued with wood glue and held together with a clamp for 24 hours while the glue dried.

I then penciled on the block the rough 3D shape to plan for more cuts to refine the body, which were done with a small hand saw. Still very rough at this stage.

Finalizing the shape was done by sanding with a belt sander with #60 grain sandpaper. I had planned to finish by hand with gradually finer sandpaper to get rid of the strokes and slashes made by the rough sandpaper, so as to end up with a very smooth finish on the body, but in the end I actually liked the rough lines, which looked like fine fur. So I stopped there and saved some time, only giving a few more sandpaper strokes on the nose to refine that fur look.

After oiling the wood (with Saman Classic Oil and Conditioner for butcher block), it was time to add the nails. Since the body would be covered in nails, and I didn’t want to split the wood, I pre-drilled a hole for each nail. I then hammered each nail in place about 1/3 of the way down.

I covered the whole body this way, starting with nails on the top, sticking out straight, and going all the way down the body and stopping at about ¼ of the bottom with nails parallel to the floor.

And there is the little hedgehog. An easy and quick project that I think ended up looking pretty good.