On the Gulf Coast, Tigermania rolls on after LSU’s football National championship, so I’ve had to do several tiger head sculptures lately. This is a difficult sculpture which is obviously top-heavy as well as off balance towards the tiger’s nose, so it needs an adequate base and I would recommend attaching a separate piece of ice. The leftover ice at the top of the template is probably not an adequate base, so you need an additional slab of ice, about 20”x13”x4”, to use as a base. The other major issue is welding a half block of ice onto the front of the head so that you have enough ice depth to carve the sculpture. It needs to be a very clean aluminum weld. I’ve included front and side templates for the sculpture. If you’re not comfortable with aluminum welding techniques or using multiple templates, then you should probably wait until you are before attempting this sort of sculpture.

    The design also shows elaborate striping. You can snowfill the stripes or leave them unfilled as in the photo above. While carving, try to leave the canine teeth as large as practical. It’s easy to accidentally cut them too small, which necessitates cutting them off and adding new ice (as in the photo at top).

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A wide base should be used to give the sculpture solid stability, even though the nose and jaw of the tiger are relatively light.

Note that the base extends towards the front of the carving, and is nearly flush at the back.

The narrow edge of the full block is shown, and you can see how a half block is added to enable carving the tiger’s face at the proper depth.