You know how once buy a certain piece of equipment and start using it, you say to yourself: “Dang, I wish I’d bought this years ago!”? (Okay, maybe you don’t say “Dang.”) Well, I said something similar to myself when I got an electric blower. Like the nailboard, the electric blower can be one of those really useful ice sculpting tools that you’ll use over and over again. (I use mine almost every time that I carve, at least in the freezer.) Unfortunately, it’s also one of those tools that you might feel like you can get by without until you’ve got some extra money (which never really happens).

Here’s what I frequently use my blower for in the freezer (or when it’s cold outside):

    sculpture cleanup: it’s very good for quickly blowing snow and small ice shards off of a sculpture, especially when used in combination with a brush to break up stubborn clumps of snow. This tool is particularly useful for clearing off large, oversized pieces. In Alaska, at the Ice Art Championships, for example, it’s invaluable.

    general cleanup: I use it to knock snow out of hard-to-get-to spots and like a leaf blower to push snow into manageable piles. This is a little bit like herding cats, so it’s not a solution by itself, but it can make cleanup much quicker, especially when you go with the option of just blowing all the snow under something so that you can’t see it any more.

    engraving cleanout: If you’re adding color to a piece by backside engraving, then it’s really important to get all the snow out of the engraving so that it doesn’t get in the way of the color. One way to get the snow out (as long as it’s cold and the snow is dry) is to blow it out with this tool, using an ice pick or small chisel to help dislodge snow stuck in corners. Now the moving air will warm up the ice a little, so it needs to be pretty cold, but it works well.

    One alternative to this his tool is to use a hose attached to an air compressor. The compressed air option works well when it’s only needed in one place, like in a studio freezer. However, if you need portability, the Makita blower is better, as long as you have access to an electrical outlet. This tool is small, lightweight, and pretty powerful. It’s not quite as powerful as the blower that knocked over Junichi’s sculpture this year, but it’s probably not far off.

The Makita electric blower is available from Ice Crafters here, cost $188.