When you say, “carve a turkey,” most people (in the U.S., anyway) think of Thanksgiving dinner, just after grace and just before everyone starts to stuff themselves. Ice carvers, on the other hand, think of all the turkeys they have to make for Thanksgiving brunch. Like rabbits before Easter, ice turkeys can take up a lot of freezer space.

    Unlike rabbits, however, turkeys don’t emerge easily from a block of ice. In fact, it was several years after I started carving ice that I even tried to figure out how to “carve a turkey.” The main problem, of course, is the tail fan. It just won’t fit in a block with the rest of the turkey. The obvious solution is to weld another piece of ice on, but until aluminum welding came along, that was a risky and difficult ordeal, given the size of the welded piece.

    Now that we do have aluminum welding, it’s relatively easy to securely attach the large tail fan to the body of the turkey. In fact, if the weld is done properly, you can actually use the bottom of the tail as one of the lifting points for the sculpture. (Don’t do this unless you’re absolutely sure of the weld’s quality, however!)

    The design has some similarities to the peacock design, and the turkey’s head is slightly oversized so that it will last. The way the design is currently presented, it requires about a block and a quarter of ice. A sizable chunk of ice is left over from the full block, however. This ice could easily be used as a base for the sculpture to stabilize it (the base shown in the design is quite small) or to raise it up a bit. Alternatively, if the block is thinner than the normal 10 inches, wings could be cut from the extra ice and welded to the body on either side to widen the ice block. The piece of ice required for the tail is about 20”x20”x5”.

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