- First time using a chainsaw.
(heavy music)
- We are in Astoria, Queens at
Okamoto Studios and I'm about to
go meet my friend Shintaro who's gonna
show me how to make an ice bowl.
Founded in 2003, Okamoto's Studio and its artists
not only make beautiful sculptures, but they
provide some of the finest cocktail ice for
the best bars in the city.
From Fashion Week to bar mitzvahs, Okamoto sculptures
are both beautiful and functional.
- I hear there's a lot power tools in there.
I'm a little nervous.
Let's go see what this is about.
(heavy guitar music)
How does one become an ice carver?
What does it take?
- What does it take?
- To be an ice carver?
- Oh man.
- I know nothing.
- The act of carving is almost identical to
carving wood or stone, where we have
y'know, tools that we have, to carve down to make
the final form.
- I've always felt like I don't have an
artistic bone in my body.
So this is going to be really interesting.
- Well, you work in the kitchen.
- Yes
- And that's - I work with my hands
- It's working with your hands,
it's about relationship with tools--
- Yeah.
- That's in front of you.
- And a really steep learning curve.
- Very steep.
- So this is the Clinebell ice machine.
- [Kate] This looks like all water to me.
- Actually if you put your hand in here,
it literally stops right there.
- Oh my gosh.
- That's where the ice is.
So ice is pretty much grown.
We want our blocks to be at least
nine to 10 inches.
That's kind of the maturity of the thickness of ice.
First thing we do is we stop the pump.
(motor whirring) (heavy guitar music)
Now it's out.
- Has anyone ever dropped this block?
- It's dangerous stuff, you know.
Ice is wet, heavy, slippery.
It's not easy.
- So at this point, we can go straight to carving?
- We would not carve this right away,
because the machine is very, very cold.
- Right, so this is too cold to carve.
- This is too cold to carve.
- Cold to carve
- For us, yeah - Okay
- So let's put this on a bandsaw and clean
up the top.
- Okay, the bandsaw though, I'm scared.
- It's an intimidating machine.
- It's so intimidating (laughs)
- It's a beast.
And tilt.
- Oh my gosh.
(gears cranking)
- You're gonna put your whole body into it.
There you go.
Okay, that is probably just right, good enough.
- Okay. - There you go.
And let's turn the switch on.
- This is terrifying.
(exciting music)
- Go, go, go, go, go, go.
- Oh my gosh.
- Nice, then we just push this back in
nice and square
for people to use.
- Now you do this 100 times, you'll be a pro.
(laughs)
- I would also be ripped.
- So today the first thing we gonna do is,
we gonna make an ice bowl, okay.
This is something that we do here when we're actually
looking for a new sculptors to join our team.
It's kind of our test piece.
I don't expect anybody to really make a beautiful
bowl, but it's a really great way for you to
touch all range of tools-- - Right.
- and see if you can follow directions.
And just kind of see your relationship with
equipment and tools in general.
- I can hardly cut in a straight line and
all these curved, smooth round, a bowl!
They start with a bowl?!
(laughing)
- So first, I'm gonna draw the circle.
(scrapping)
I'm gonna give you a V chisel right here for you.
- Thank you.
- So what I want you to do is for the outside circle,
I want you to take out the right side of the lines, alright.
- Got it.
- Not the inside, but the outside.
You know, go a little bit and then kind of brush it
off so you can see your lines.
And basically just go all the way around.
- Alright.
- So once you get that going we're going to head
right into the chainsaw.
- Then it's chainsaw time?
- Let's do it.
(scraping ice)
- So, Shintaro, how many sculptures are
being produced daily here?
- In general, I say we go through about 50 blocks a week.
- Five zero?
- Yeah, and then right here, these two equals one
full block.
During the holiday seasons, we'll probably go through
about 150, 200 blocks a week.
So it keeps us busy.
So here, like we talked about earlier, first we
want to do is knock out all excess ice.
- And we're going straight down.
- We're going straight down.
We gonna make a cylinder now.
(chainsaw whirring)
- So I got that little piece off and now
you just go for the little minor pieces.
Again, following the lines, just following the lines.
(saw whirring)
That's pretty much it.
- Cool.
- So let's go all the way around.
- Alright.
(heavy guitar music) (chainsaw whirring)
- That looks great!
- Alright.
- So you go a great, good-looking cylinder.
- Did you hear that?
(laughing)
- So now we gonna take out the center cavity.
- Uh-oh - Okay
- How do we do that?
- And this one's probably the trickiest cut that we're
gonna do, because what we wanna do is basically
go in diagonally, okay.
Without hitting this line.
Being inside, but as close as possible.
- So we're coming in right on it?
- Yep.
- But at an angle.
- Yeah, right in an angle.
So I'm gonna go in more or less at 45 degrees.
(saw whirring)
Pretty much like that.
(heavy guitar music)
- It's already done.
- Will that go in?
There you go.
- Ah yeah.
- Voila.
- It's like a diamond.
- There you go.
But you really preserved the lines which is great.
- Okay.
- They all stayed inside.
The next step-- - Smooth it out.
Is to use a smaller flat chisel.
I'm going to take the excess ice away,
right up to the line.
Next step, once you go all around, is
to make this point meet to the very, very bottom.
- Okay. - Right.
You're going to have some challenge
because you went pretty deep.
Very, very deep.
And the deeper you go, more you have to travel down.
(laughing)
Right?
And then you have to imagine this being a bowl.
You don't want to go straight down.
- Right.
- You kinda want to bowl it out ideally, okay.
- This bowl can hold one small bottle of water.
- Second cut you go straight down.
- Okay. - Okay?
- I noticed how you held this right away.
Like if someone picks up a chef's knife by
the handle, you know what's up.
- Yeah.
- You gotta choke up on it have more control.
That makes total sense to me.
- I mean, there's a lot of common ground ...
- It's really important. - To it
- Alright, we'll see how far that gets me.
- Let's get to it.
(guitar music)
- This is really satisfying.
(guitar music)
- How's it going.
- I'm realizing just how steep this is.
(laughing)
I wasn't lying about one single bottle of water.
There's no turning back from here though.
His looks a lot smoother than mine.
- I'm in a pretty good place.
How about you?
- I don't know, you can be the judge of that.
- You got some gouges here.
- It's really deep!
- I'm not getting hired.
- You know it's a little bit skewed.
I can see that there's more meat here.
- So those first cuts are really determining.
- Yeah - The outcome.
- There's no wrong moves.
Everything is so important to move on to the next thing.
You can't get a job here carving bowls like this.
- And now what we want to do is just finetune the shape.
We're gonna finish this inside now.
And we're gonna that with the handsaw here.
You're gonna grab it and pull it toward you.
- Wow, this little saw has its work cut out for it.
(scraping)
- And then make your way around.
- Cool. - Alright?
(heavy guitar music)
- So this bottom is kinda like, I'm afraid to
take more out of it.
- Well you know, well here's the thing, it's a bowl.
So serious someone fills it up, no one's gonna see this.
And then this thing melts away, no one sees your mistake.
It's gone.
(laughing)
Far as we know, you made a perfect bowl.
- Yeah, I did.
- So now what I'm gonna do, is I'm gonna flip this.
Slide this end.
And this is going to be our foot of this bowl.
(chainsaw whirring)
Now I have this first cut here.
You can use this as a guide.
- Right.
- To just cut around.
Adjust your body as you go.
- Well judging by my first side, I'm not too hopeful.
(chainsaw whirring)
- I think this is most fun step.
'Cause then-- - Kind of shaping it
- Now you're finally shaping it.
- It's really amazing to me to watch you,
and quickly make just such clean, smooth,
amazing things.
- It's amazing how much finesse you can get out
a chainsaw.
Let's see if you can finish this guy now.
- Yeah. (laughs)
(heavy guitar music)
- That looks good.
- It's a bowl.
- Now we just gonna take out small bumps
and small imperfections.
- Smooth it out.
- Smooth it out and pull it towards you.
Gonna feel that shape.
Give that nice curvature from here to here.
(ice scraping)
- Alright, I'm afraid to take any more off.
- Cool, you've got a great shape going on there.
- It's a little gougey.
- All that smooth.
What I would like to do is just to give just a
little bit of decorative element.
- Wow.
- Again, that gives a nice little--
- Yeah.
- here.
Right.
- So you do on the other side, other side and
then kinda go around.
- Two in between.
Okay.
(ice chipping)
- This one, not for sale.
- So I have an aluminum plate that's been
warming up.
And I wanna kind of give a nice little shine.
A perfect surface.
It's just warm so you can kinda grab it.
And then let's just kind of iron the top surface.
You can kinda feel it melting.
- Ooh, I like doing this.
So it's not a very long, it's just a little
smoothing action.
- As soon as you really feel like just gotta
get a surface going.
- Oh my gosh, look how clear that is.
- I hope you had a good time.
- It was awesome.
Like when would I ever get to do something like this.
Thank you so much.
- You're always welcome to come here.
- Really, really cool.
- Yeah.
(laughs)
- I hope you liked this episode.
If you want to see something from our
sister brand, The Verge, click here.
- Whenever I travel now, I only take one of these
computers with me at a time.
And each has it's strengths and each
has its pitfalls.
Depending on your needs, you could be happy with
any one of them as your only computer.
But they all have trade-offs and none of them
do exactly everything that I want.
(music chord)