For Carrie, who brought me SunDog

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many people have contributed directly and indirectly to this book and I owe a great deal of general and specific thanks:

     I have learned so much from the hundreds of students who have honored me with their time over the years. This book is all yours; I have you in mind when I write.

     Specifically, I’d like to thank the 2009 Intermediate and Advanced Class at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship, Rockport, Maine, USA, where I have the privilege of teaching every year: Wesley Albright, Peg Van Brunt, Gene Ostreicher, Lorie Schweer, Brian Scott, and Roger Smith; giving a particular mention to David Paul Lange. We sat around the lunch table and discussed the first drafts of my between-chapter inserts. I was reassured to find they were as useful and intelligible as I had hoped.

     Thank you also to Peter Korn, executive director at the Center, for enabling me to carve the baseball cap in Chapter 12 in the workshop there.

     Heartfelt thanks go to my very good friend Mark Kimble, who did me a great service by re-carving superfluous material here and there, visualising in words what I might do in wood.

     Lastly, many thanks indeed to Shannon Flowers, who commissioned the original articles for Woodcarving and Peg Couch, who commissioned this book, for their support and enthusiasm; and to Kerri Landis for her sensitive and thorough overseeing of the publication of this book.

ABOUT THE

Chris Pye has some thirty years of experience as a carver, and is the author of three woodcarving DVDs and six books: Woodcarving Tools, Materials, and Equipment (1995, 2002), Carving on Turning (1995), Lettercarving in Wood (1997), Relief Carving in Wood (1998), Elements of Woodcarving (2000), and Woodcarving Projects and Techniques (2007). In 2011, Chris launched an instructional, video-rich carving website.

     From his studio in Herefordshire, England, Chris works on a broad spectrum of commissions, including lettering, heraldry, furniture ornamentation, architectural carving, and sculpture. He is a member of the Master Carvers Association, with clients including His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.

CONTENTS

Introduction

SECTION I: AND

Technical Mastery

Chapter 1: Tools of the Trade

Your Tools are Your Carving

Chapter 2: Commissioning Your Carving Tools

Understanding Wood

Chapter 3: Supporting Cast

SECTION II:

Getting to Grips

Chapter 4: Handling Your Carving Tools

Thin Edge of the Wedge

Chapter 5: The Outcome of the Tool

SECTION III:

Good Habits

Chapter 6: Simple Moldings

Surfaces, Lines & Junctions

Chapter 7: Veiner and V-tool:

SECTION IV:

Form Into Space

Chapter 8: An Exercise in Setting-in

Over the Horizon

Chapter 9: Low Relief

A Touch of Drama

Chapter 10: High Relief

Feel the Form

Chapter 11: Pierced Relief

SECTION V: IN THE

Entering Chaos

Chapter 12: In the Round: Baseball Cap

Making It Up as You Go Along

Chapter 13: In the Round: Wren

Index

INTRODUCTION

I carve in what might be called the traditional manner, sometimes referred to as European. I rely primarily on shaped gouges, chisels, and related tools. I don’t often use the knives that are so commonly favored in what might be called traditional American carving. And I don’t use power tools for anything other than roughing out or texturing. It’s not that I have anything against knives or power equipment. Skilled carvers do lots of lovely work with both, and sometimes they are exactly the tools I need in my own carving. But I admit to being in love with my chisels and gouges and with the advantages they seem to provide me in terms of design or final results.

     It’s been my experience that a lot of knife users are put off by carving tools. Perhaps it’s the many different shapes or the pressure of having to choose the best tool for a particular job. And then there’s that dreaded sharpening! This is a pity. I’ve absolutely no doubt that chisels and gouges can take the carver to places where knives simply cannot go. Indeed, gouges superseded knives and axes in the history of carving precisely because of these advantages.

     Unlike my other books, which cover specific topics such as letter carving, I’ve written this book as a general introduction to traditional woodcarving. Although the bulk of this material originally appeared as a series of articles in Woodcarving what you hold here is not simply a reprint. I have revised and added substantially to these essays, which the publishers in turn have reformatted.

     In this book, I begin with basics, aiming to undo some of the mystery surrounding the selection and sharpening of traditional carving tools. From these fundamentals, we pass on to simple exercises that demonstrate what these tools can do when we hold and apply them properly. Finally, we’ll tackle a series of projects that encourage us to bring principle and practice together in the actual process of carving.

     I see the book as a progressive course and I am assuming newcomers will start at the beginning and follow through the book with me. However, the projects are self-contained and it’s quite possible for more experienced carvers to dip into them as they will.

     One important addition is the inclusion of the short inserts between chapters. Here I’m combining aspects of technique that I think are especially critical with more general thoughts on the carving process. In every case, these are points I find myself emphasizing time and again, year after year, with all of my students. Each insert relates in some specific way to its following chapter, but, taken together, they sketch out a much broader woodcarving landscape.

     I don’t pretend that this present study is in any way complete. Indeed, I strongly recommend you fill out these basics with the specifics I focus on in my other publications and

     Think of learning to carve in the same way as studying the guitar: no one would expect you to play a Rodrigo guitar concerto straight off! A guitar teacher would first show you how a guitar works mechanically, and then show you how to tune it. Next would be simple finger exercises, the earliest phases of feeling your way around, strengthening your fingers, developing your ear, and training your muscle memory. As the exercises become more challenging and you practice more diligently, your fumblings begin to resolve themselves into proper tunes. This is true of any skill and certainly true of carving.

     The guitar teacher would encourage you to own your own instrument, and, above all else, would expect you to practice! With regard to woodcarving, let me say this as straight out as possible: you cannot learn the skills without putting in the practice time. This is an absolute. If you wish to learn how to carve, get some tools, sharpen them correctly, and carve. If you want to progress, pick up your tools, check they are sharpened correctly, and carve. If you wish eventually to carve with pride, pick up your correctly sharpened tools and carve.

     “The lyf so short, the craft so long to learne,” Chaucer tells us. Indeed, woodcarving can be seen as a pilgrimage, full of the same opportunities that all journeys bring: exploring new skills, meeting interesting people, facing new challenges, and importantly, having fun. All journeys start as the first step in a proper direction. This book is intended to help you take that first (or thousandth) step—and to point it where your hands and heart might follow.

SECTION I:

CARVING AND

If you are new to carving, start here. You’ll get an explanation of the carving tools used in this book, as well as how to sharpen and commission them. Supporting items, such as vises and clamps, are also covered here.

SECTION II:

USING

The specifics about holding tools, using them, and the different cuts you can make are all described in this section.

SECTION III:

EXERCISES

Put your skills to practice by creating some basic moldings. This section also contains three projects to demonstrate techniques used with a veiner and V-tool. Create three versions of the Burghead Bull project and four types of molding.

SECTION IV:

RELIEF

When you’ve completed these four Asian-themed projects, you’ll have a solid grasp on the concepts and techniques required for successful relief carving—including low, high, and pierced relief. You’ll also have four beautiful carvings to display. Learn how to take one pattern and transform it into three distinct carving styles.

SECTION V:

CARVING IN THE

Master these two projects, and you’ll be able to create a three-dimensional carving from scratch. You’ll learn how to copy an object and how to carve from a clay model. You’ll create a realistic wooden baseball cap and a charming wren while learning the techniques for carving in the round.

TECHNICAL

I’m at a student’s bench helping with her carving, and I need a different gouge. I reach to choose from a row of tools neatly laid to one side, only to find my hand hovering like a bird of prey.

     The student wants to help, offering this or that chisel. She begins to open yet another roll. “I’ve no idea what I want,” I say, and it’s completely true. My mind has delegated the task. Suddenly the hand drops, chooses, and lifts just the tool I need. I’m back to carving.

     This rather strange, self-conscious experience doesn’t happen often. I rarely notice that I’m handling any particular tool. Instead, I’m just carving.

     But just carving is a good state to be in. I do my best, most satisfying work when I step back and let some quieter part of me get on with it. In this state, I do my most committed, fluid, and best work.

     There’s nothing mystical about this. When applying a physical skill in which you are deeply experienced, the self-aware part of you relaxes and you become one with the tool. This is part of what we think of as mastery, the silent running-on-faith that occurs when we drive our car, touch-type, or play a musical instrument.

     It comes through practice, and only through practice. Repetition builds muscle memory and, in fact, re-wires the brain.

     The old adage, “practice makes perfect,” overstates the case. For example, no amount of repetition will guarantee you have a good design. But, over time, practice does make better and will create a base from which you can lose yourself in the process and let your artistic talent shine through.

SECTION I: CARVING TOOLS AND SETTING UP

Chapter 1

TOOLS OF THE

You cannot separate your tools from your carving, so the best place to begin is with a quick overview of all those carving tools: what they are, why there are so many, and briefly, what they can do for you.

     If you’ve no experience of carving tools, try to visit a carver who will allow you to pick up and try them. There is nothing like holding a gouge, feeling the wood of the handle and the steel of the blade, and perhaps taking a cut or two, to get a sense of it.

     Many beginners find the variety of carving tools and the many manufacturers intimidating. They are also understandably wary of buying poor quality tools, and they are afraid that they will damage their tools when they are only trying to sharpen them. The answers to these issues are:

with a small useful number (which I’ll suggest) and build from there on the basis of need

only the well-established, reputable makes, recommended by carvers you trust

your tools at the end of the day as just a piece of steel: refined, certainly, but not of cosmic importance.

     Remember too, that a regular gouge will be tempered more-or-less down to where the blade meets the shank. The presence of old carving tools, shortened through years of use and sharpening, is testimony to this. If you sacrifice a fraction of the length at the altar of learning to sharpen, it’s an inexpensive cost for gaining vital skills.

Have a variety of chisels, gouges, and V-tools on hand for optimal carving.

SWEEPS

The catalog of every woodcarving tool distributor, and most carving books, will have a chart of available tools. It can appear to beginners as a huge and intimidating array of curved lines. In these charts you are looking at the ends of the carving tools: their cutting edges. Woodcarvers call the line of the cutting edge, which can be flat or a variety of curves, the sweep.

Sweeps are the end profiles of carving

“TRUE” GOUGES

In a “true” gouge, the sweep is actually an arc of a circle, a fact that can be readily demonstrated. Carvers use the fact that gouges are circle driven to great advantage when they produce perfect flowing lines by rotating the cutting edge along the sweep—cuts that can be unfailingly repeated elsewhere. This is very important in, say, moldings, or matching two sides of a face. Gouges are the very bedrock of carving, from roughing out to the tooled finish of a surface.

     The bigger the circle from which the arc is taken, the flatter the gouge. Thus we have a range of flatter or deeper (quicker) gouges for any given width—which is measured from corner to corner. The deepest true gouge will be a semicircle.

Place your gouge vertically into the wood and stab in. Then lift the leading corner and start moving the gouge along in its cut. Keep moving and lifting and you will feel the gouge following its own track. Eventually you will come all the way around to the

These regular gouges are roughly the same width of carving tool but of differing depths.

U-shaped gouges: the walls extend and may splay a little or be

Parting or V-tools: there are 3 angles to be had. From right to left the photo illustrates a 45˚, 60˚, and 90˚

U - GOUGES

What I call U-gouges are similar to true gouges, but work in a fundamentally different manner. The base of the U is either a semi-circle or deep curve, but the walls extend upward, either parallel or splaying slightly. This means you cannot rotate the cutting edge through a smooth arc as you can with a true gouge.

     When large, these tools are used for creating channels or flutes (and are thus called fluters), and when small, they will run the sort of detail lines you find in hair, fur, or leaves (in which case they are called veiners). Broader U-gouges are also great for roughing out and general shaping of wood as you can alternate between the quickness of a deep gouge and the smoother possibilities of the flatter sides.

V - TOOLS

In the charts you will also see sweeps that are a V rather than an arc of a circle. The V-tool consists of two chisels joined at one of three angles: 45˚, 60˚, and 90˚, with 60˚ being the most useful. You would use the V for separating one element in a carving from another, or for drawing lines, somewhat like a veiner.

CHISELS

Lastly in the charts you will see chisels, which are dead flat like a carpenter’s chisel but with a bevel on both sides, and skew chisels, which are angled at the end to produce a knifepoint, also with a bevel on both sides.

     The traditional manner of carving letters with straight elements uses chisels. Skew chisels are one of those tools you don’t use often but when you need it, nothing else will do. Use them for getting into tight corners or cleaning junctions and lines, for example. The double bevel is an important feature of most carving tools, but we will leave off discussing this until we look at sharpening.

Chisels can be flat or

LONGITUDINAL

Besides differing when looked at end on, carving tools also differ in their lengthways appearance: their longitudinal shape. The most common and useful carving tools are the ones with parallel sides, what we might call regular gouges: tough tools, hardened along their whole length and wearing out only over generations. You can use these gouges for pretty much everything: roughing out, modeling, or detailing.

BENT GOUGES

Students mostly start with regular gouges and, as they progress, usually find bent gouges next in usefulness. There comes a time when a regular gouge cannot get deep enough into a hollow; the blade fouls the edges of the wood around the hole. At this point, a carver turns to a gouge that looks more like a spoon to get into the recess and scoop the wood away below, or to flatten the hollow’s floor. These tools are called shortbent or spoon gouges. There is no standard longitudinal bend as such and you need to see if a particular manufacturer makes the shape you want.

A common, parallel-sided gouge is shown on the left. The right is known as an allongee

FISHTAIL GOUGE

The next most useful tool is the fishtail. The blades of fishtails splay out from the end of a long shank. Again, manufacturers differ in the actual shape or amount of the splayed blade.

     Unlike regular gouges, you can imagine that fishtails will eventually narrow as you sharpen them, giving them a shorter lifespan. Being more delicate and short-lived, carvers normally save fishtails for lighter work: finishing off and detailing, or running the protruding fishtail corners into recesses that would be inaccessible to the square corner of a regular gouge.

Short or spoonbent gouges: notice the different bends. You need to find one that will suit what you want to do, and how deep a recess you need to get

SPECIALTY TOOLS

There are other shapes: what are called longbents (swan or sowback) and the really odd-looking backbents. The longbents are of little use to most woodcarvers—I haven’t used one for years. Backbents are very specialized tools, although in the right place, very useful. We need not concern ourselves with either here.

     The important thing to grasp here is that any sweep you have as a regular gouge, you can also get as a shortbent or a fishtail. So, when you find the width and sweep of a regular gouge won’t get into a corner, or into a recess, you can switch to a similar tool of different longitudinal shape that does the job better or more efficiently.

Fishtails: beautiful tools with extended corners that come into play for finishing and lighter, more delicate

TOOLS FOR THE

So, why are there so many carving tools? And which ones are needed to begin carving? You can see that by the time you have multiplied the widths, the sweeps, and the shapes of carving tools you have a lot of possible tools—enough to make any beginner panic!

     The number of tools reflects the enormous variety and complexity that is possible in carved work. You might, for example, carve letters 10" (25cm) high or the tiny eye of a netsuke fish; vigorous and deep acanthus leaves, or simple pea molding. And as your work will be different from the next carver’s, so will your tools be different. Here’s the good news: you only need a few to start with, and these should be regular gouges. And here’s the golden rule: as you progress, buy your next carving tools on the basis of need.

     There is a bit of a conundrum: you don’t want to start carving until you know what tools you need, but you won’t know what tools you need until you start carving…

     The answer is to start with a few of those carving tools that are most likely to be useful in the widest variety of situations. I’ll give you a short list of such carving tools later. I’ll include those we will be using in the later exercises and projects, which are designed to demonstrate further where and why these tools are used, and how to make the most of them.

NUMBERING SYSTEMS

All the tools we’ve mentioned will have a number, given to them and usually stamped into the shank by the maker. Unfortunately, there is no consensus; manufacturers differ somewhat in what number they give a particular sweep or shape. The most common and oldest numbering system is called the Sheffield list, and most other makers follow a similar numbering pattern, in which all you really need is to be able to count to 11.

     In the Sheffield list, for any width:

■   #1 is a chisel

■   #2 is the skew chisel

■   #3 is the flattest possible gouge

■   #4 through #8 are sweeps

■   #9 is usually the semicircle

■   #10s and #11s are U-gouges

     So, at any given width, the smaller the number, the flatter the carving tool.

     The V-tool might be any number; luckily it is readily recognizable.

     However, as an example of the historical individuality of makers, the common Pfeil (Swiss made) tools start with chisels at #1 (as does the Sheffield list) but calls their skew chisels #1S. Thus, Pfeil start their gouges out of sync with the Sheffield list, with their flattest gouge being #2. They also seem to drop some numbers entirely. Nevertheless, the tools you need will be there, even if the numbering seems unusual.

     You might be carving with a ½" (13mm) gouge and think: “I like this width of gouge, but I’d really like it to be flatter. “ You would then go to the tool chart of any (or your favorite) maker and place the cutting edge on its sweep in the picture. You might find, say, it was a #6 ½" (13mm), which, with luck, it says on the shank. You would then buy a ½" (13mm) #5, #4, or #3 gouge off the chart, depending on how much flatter you wanted it. Similarly, you can use the chart to find your tool in shortbent or fishtail shape.

The numbers stamped into the hilt of the tool will tell you what its sweep

WHAT ARE THE BEST MAKES AND WHERE DO I BUY THEM?

There are many good carving tools on the market, made from decent steel and tempered to hold their cutting edges well. A short list would include: Auriou, Pfeil, Henry Taylor, Ashley Iles, Stubai, and Kirschen. There are plenty from which to choose.

     You will, however, find variations in the thickness of the blade and the quality of the forging (the actual shaping of the tool). Variations occur even from tool to tool within the same maker and undesirable ones come about through the balance between the elements of hand forging and those of quality control. It is easy to become brand loyal and I always suggest students try tools from different manufacturers and make up their own minds.

     Because of this variation in shape or quality, it’s always best to pick up and handle a carving tool before you buy it. If that isn’t possible, there are plenty of suppliers advertising in magazines, and on the web. Whoever you go to, you must be able to return a tool if you are not happy with it.

AREN’T TRADITIONAL CARVING TOOLS EXPENSIVE COMPARED, SAY, WITH KNIVES?

They can certainly seem so compared with most knives, but not if you compare with other wood crafts. You will need to spend some money to start, but carving tools are a great investment: with just a few sharp gouges and a mallet you are up and away carving. You can build up your kit so slowly you hardly notice the cost and you can carve scrap lumber. You would be hard pressed to wear out a regular carving tool in a lifetime of creative carving—I have some over a hundred years old, with several names besides mine on the handles.

     Once you have some carving tools, the next thing to do is sharpen them properly. We need to go through a straightforward process of commissioning your carving tools in order to get the best out of them—and thus out of you, the carver.

Recommendations for a beginner’s tool set: from left to right, #3 gouges, #6 gouges, #9 gouges, 60° V-tool, and skew

BEGIN WITH A FEW TOOLS:

Here are a few useful tools with which you can accomplish a lot of carving. Notice that they are all regular gouges.

■   #3 gouges: ¼", ½", and ¾" (6mm, 13mm, 19mm) (flattest gouges in the maker’s range)

■   #6 gouges: ¼", ½", and ¾" (6mm, 13mm, 19mm) (middle gouges)

■   #9 gouges: ¼" and ½" (6mm, 13mm) (deepest, semicircular gouges)

■   ⅜" (10mm) skew chisel

■   ⅜" (10mm) 60˚ V-tool

     I’ll be using a few other tools in forthcoming exercises, but I’ll mention these in the appropriate places.

YOUR

Where a woodcarving is left straight from the chisel, there is a direct and inseparable relationship between carving tools and result: the very tools and the way the carver handled them created the surfaces, forms, and outlines of whatever they carved, as they carved it.

     Beginners often fuss about picking the right tool for the job. The truth is that there often isn’t such thing. There may be, as when cutting exact moldings (see Chapter and certainly there might be better choices to be made: you’ll get better results if you use this, rather than persist with that. But, mostly, exact fitting like this is not how carvings are made: a carver will produce a whole dance of different cuts in a fluid manner from a single tool (see Chapter before exchanging it. This is a competence and confidence that comes from great familiarity (see page

     I use my tools unconsciously in a variety of ways and it’s often impossible to say, even remember, exactly what tools I used for a certain part of the carving. In this book, sometimes I do know exactly what tools I used but, often, all I can say is that I selected from the overall list of those that ended up on my bench.

     The whole problem of what tools to use will go away when you achieve that familiarity, which of course only comes from carving enough. Then you’ll find you simply focus on your carving, not the tools themselves. Carving sort of just happens. The tools will sort themselves out and you only notice them when there is a problem, such as a sense of dullness. When it comes to saying what the right tool is in a particular circumstance, the truth is that most experienced carvers are not paying much attention to their tools at all!

SECTION I: CARVING TOOLS AND SETTING UP

Chapter 2

COMMISSIONING

Most carving tools that you buy today come ready-sharpened. So it comes as a surprise to students on my courses that the first thing we do is re-sharpen them!

     But surely, they ask, the manufacturers know what they are doing? Well, no. Manufacturers are not woodcarvers, but sellers of carving tools. And that sharp edge was probably honed by a young man with neither interest in, nor experience of, carving at all. By popular demand, manufacturers will give you something to get you going but not necessarily what you need to be a proficient as a carver. The crux: A tool can be sharp but cut the wood inefficiently. Sharp is not the whole story. You cannot assume that the shiny carving tool you just bought is exactly as you need it for carving.

     Back to my favorite analogy: you buy a guitar. It comes with strings. But nobody except perhaps a visionary teenager in their bedroom would believe they could simply start playing that guitar well without tuning it, never mind carrying on for months without tweaking the tuning pegs! In similar fashion, the tool shop sells you a gouge as it were “with strings” and you need to check that the tool is “in tune.” That’s you. If it isn’t “tuned,” you need to tune it, and keep it tuned. It’s as essential that you can sharpen your carving tools correctly as it is to tune your guitar. Sharpening carving tools so that they work at their most efficient is not difficult; far less skill is needed than for carving itself. But you do need to know clearly what you are aiming at.

Carving tools in action: to be extensions of your hand you must not even notice them—and that is what commissioning is all about.

UNDERSTANDING

A tool can be sharp, which you can prove easily enough just before you reach for the Band-Aids, but can be physically harder work to push through the wood than is necessary; hindering rather than helping you control your cut; and in general only achieving a fraction of what it could do for you as a carver. To me, sharpening doesn’t just mean honing a sharp edge, but something else: realizing other qualities that give me the best from my tools.

     Here’s the key: it’s all to do with the shape of the which is nothing more than a glorified wedge. Even long-time carvers, when they pay attention to getting this right, are amazed at how the performance of their tools increases.

     When I buy a new carving tool, I think of commissioning it: bringing it into service, rather than just sharpening. Commissioning would also include sanding the handle smooth and checking the blade alignment. I have written extensively about commissioning carving tools in my book Woodcarving Tools, Materials and Use that book to back up, extend, and understand the rationale behind these notes; I only have space here to deal with basics.

A

Let’s start with a gouge Carefully try out everything I say and prove the advantages to yourself. As best you can, and unless you have a better reason or need, there are eight things to aim for:

CUTTING EDGE

Keep these. See and use one or the other of the corners like a knifepoint for setting-in and accurately making junctions.

line from corner to corner: The edge shouldn’t be wavy, stick out in the middle (nose), or protrude at the corners (winged).

The working end of a carver’s

at right angles to blade: The exception is the skew chisel.

The tool should leave a polished facet without scratches—a cut you can leave as a finished surface.

OUTSIDE BEVEL

cutting angle of 15-20˚: This low cutting angle—literally, that at which the tool cuts the wood—is extremely important. I’ll explain its significance and how to find it later.

From the heel to the edge, the bevel should not be rounded or hollow, and should be without any secondary or micro bevel. A slight rounding of the outside bevel helps in lifting the tool out of the cut but this rounding should not be at the expense of the low cutting angle.

heel: The cutting edge scoops through the wood by rocking on the heel. Slightly rounding the heel eases the edge through the cut and the blade pressure burnishes the remaining facet.

INSIDE BEVEL

about 5-10˚: The inside bevel can be slightly rounded and merge with the blade. I’ll explain the significance of the inner bevel later.

CUTTING

The cutting angle of the gouge as it rubs on the wood is decided by the condition of the bevel and the way it presents the cutting edge to the fibers. As the cutting angle gets higher, so the handle rises. As the handle rises, the control you have over your carving tool lessens: your efforts are less directed along the blade and more into pivoting the handle forward.

     Additionally, a bigger angle means a bigger wedge of metal to push into the wood. An angle of around 15-20˚ with an inner bevel balances the trade off in the wedge between strength and ease of penetration for the majority of carving woods. I’ve seen students battling with the 45˚ bevel that a manufacturer put on their tool— don’t fall into this trap.

Place your gouge hollow upwards on a clean flat piece of wood. Slowly move the gouge forward while raising the handle. When the cutting edge catches the wood, this is the cutting angle, or the angle at which it

In the back, there is a new tool with an excessively high cutting angle. A lot of your effort in pushing this gouge along will be tilting the handle forward. Your energy in pushing the front gouge goes more directly through the blade with greater efficiency and more tool

Remember the Eight Things

Keep these eight things in mind—aim for them— when you are commissioning your carving tool.

     You could learn the list by heart:

■   “A keenly sharp,

■   straight edge,

■   at right angles to the blade,

■   with the corners present;

■   a flat, outside bevel

■   at a cutting angle of 15-20˚

■   and with a softened heel;

■   and a shallower inside bevel of 5-10˚"

INSIDE

The inside bevel alters the feel and performance of a carving tool to great advantage. While it’s true that some carvers don’t put a bevel on the inside of their gouges and produce excellent carvings, the best way to convince yourself is to carve with two similar gouges (one with and one without), compare, and make your own mind up.

     Let me give you this demonstration first:

     With an inside bevel, you can far more easily cut with the gouge upside down. Without the bevel, the cutting edge tends to jig and bury itself into the wood, rather than rising out by pivoting on the heel of the inner bevel.

     The inside bevel strengthens the edge by increasing the overall bevel angle. This, in turn, allows for a lower cutting angle since the outer bevel can now be less. In deeper (or quicker) gouges, an inner bevel eases the shaving up and out of the trench-like channel between the metal walls.

     Thus, there is a very special configuration in a carving gouge, shown in this cross section (below). Do bear in mind that none of what I say here is written in stone. However, unless you find a better reason or purpose, this configuration is the one you want to aim for.

Cross section of a carver’s gouge

GUIDELINES:

■   Make the angle for the inner bevel quite low—5-10˚.

■   Add the inner bevel early on in the commissioning of a carving tool, before dealing with the outer bevel.

■   The flatter the gouge (ie. the lower the number) and the more it will be used upside down, the longer the inner bevel.

■   Consequently, V-tools, bent, and U-shaped gouges need very little inner bevel, if any.

■   Be brave. I’ve seen the length of inner bevels up to one-fourth of the outer. Any inside bevel will help you use the tool upside down—experiment and try increasing it!

BENEFITS OF A

1Take a standard bench chisel, flat face to a corner of wood, and cut a facet. It will be smooth and dead flat. This is what you’d expect, and want! The tool is used to cut flat faces in mortise joints, for example.

2Now try to scoop the edge out of the facet. The tool shudders and jerks out in steps.

3Turn the chisel upside-down and try to come out of a facet. You should readily see (and this will depend a bit on whether the bevel is hollow ground) that, because the blade can rock or pivot on the heel of the bevel, the cutting edge can rise out of the wood, leaving a smoothly scooped facet. This orientation of the bevel is much more like how a carving tool works: bevel down.

SHARPENING

Now that I’ve explained how your carving tools work at their best, let’s move on to the details of the sharpening process itself. There is no moral high ground in sharpening by hand with bench and slipstones, rather than using powered honing wheels. However, I do think the slower and surer method is the best for beginners to start with. Power wheels are fast and can lose you the corners or otherwise give you an unwanted shape before you know it. Unless vented, they throw particles into the air. Fast dry wheels easily overheat a thin blade. So, I feel powered honing devices are best introduced to speed up the commissioning process once you really know exactly what you are doing and what you are aiming for. But here’s my base line: I don’t actually care how you get those eight qualities into your carving tools, as long as you do!

Reflecting light off of the embryonic cutting edge will tell you how and where it is thinning—when sharp, this line is invisible. Different types and positions of scratches on the bevel will tell you exactly how you are presenting the bevel to the

GUIDES TO SHARPENING

When you sharpen, you are removing metal—and that’s all you are doing. The trick is to remove it just As you proceed, there are two guides that will tell you exactly how things are going, where you need to leave metal for the moment and where more needs to be taken off: light reflecting off the embryonic cutting edge, which will tell you how and where it is thinning—when sharp, this white line is invisible; and different types and positions of scratches on the bevel, which will tell you exactly how you are presenting the bevel to the stone.

line: You’ll see this by looking at the very end of the gouge for reflected light, as if you are checking the sweep. As the tool gets sharper, so this line thins. The knack is to reduce the white line gradually and evenly while keeping the bevel flat and at the correct cutting angle.

scratches: Different types of stones or wheels have individual cutting properties and abrade or scratch the bevel metal in different ways. You can look at these scratches and see how you have been presenting the gouge to the stone. Concentrate on setting the outside (and inside) bevels correctly and, as you finish, you will find the sharpness of the cutting edge will take care of itself.

Check the Angles

Periodically check the cutting angles of all your carving tools. Honing wheels and regular stropping can round the bevel without you noticing and increase the angle. You will then need to flatten the outer bevel to recover the correct cutting angle.

Hand sharpening uses coarse and fine benchstones, and slipstones such as these. Use a strop to keep the edge keen. I use the little wheel in the center of the picture for forming the inside bevel of larger tools.

STAGES OF SHARPENING

Think of the sharpening process as having two stages: shaping and finishing.

Shaping:

■   Use your grinder or coarse bench and slipstones for rapid metal removal. Stop when the white line is an even hair’s breadth.

■   Square and straighten the cutting edge (you can polish it on a fine stone to see it better) corner to corner.

■   Set the inside bevel first.

■   Then set the outside bevel.

■   The best advice I can give you here is to present the blade to the stone at the cutting angle—pretending you were cutting a piece of wood.

Finishing:

■   Use fine bench or slipstones to reduce the white line evenly until it disappears.

■   Check the cutting angle and keenness of the edge in a piece of scrap wood—ideally an offcut of the timber you will be carving.

EQUIPMENT

For shaping my carving tool, I use a simple grinder and a coarse Norton India benchstone for the outside, and coarse slipstones for the inside. To finish to a final sharp edge, I switch to a translucent Arkansas benchstone and slipstone to sharpen to a finish, going back and forth between the two as the white line attenuates and disappears.

     Benchstones are presented side-on for gouges. The tool moves from one end to the other with the bevel offered at the cutting angle, and rotated so that the whole width of the bevel is covered (see step-by-step, page

     If you are using power honing wheels, keep checking the cutting angles in a piece of waste wood, as they do tend to round the bevel and thus raise it. For the outer bevel, you should use as hard a wheel as possible.

     For maintaining the edge—if you are not using a honing wheel, you will need a flat, hard leather strop with a proprietary abrasive dressing for the outside and folded, thick, dressed leather for the inside.

BENEFITS OF A

1Present the gouge to the benchstone at the cutting angle and toward one end, turned to face inward.

2As you move along the stone, rotate the blade…

3…coming to a stop at the opposite end, having rubbed the whole bevel corner to corner. Return by reversing the rotation.

4Slipstones—and you want to pick a shape that matches the heel—are rubbed back and forth around the whole of the inner bevel at a tight 5-10˚ angle.

Sharpen chisels along the length of the

CHISELS AND V - TOOLS

Carving chisels have a bevel on both sides with identical 15-20˚cutting angles. They are sharpened in similar manner to a carpentry chisel, with the benchstone orientated in line with the user.

     Skew chisels are sharpened with the cutting end angled around 45˚ to the blade and also have a bevel on both sides. The benchstone is orientated lengthwise and the handle of the skew is angled out to one side or the other so the cutting edge moves along at right angles, as the carpentry chisel does.

     V-tools can cause particular problems. Besides the information in my book, Woodcarving Tools, Materials and Equipment Volume I have made a step-by-step guide available on my website. Called “Selecting and Sharpening your V-tool,” you may download it freely for a contribution to charity.

SUMMARY

Once you have experienced the joy and efficiency of carving with a correctly sharpened gouge, you will settle for nothing less.

     In this chapter, I have only given you a rundown of vital points in sharpening your carving tools, insisting that merely sharp for a carver is actually not good enough, and emphasizing the correct cutting angle of the outside bevels and the advantages of an inside bevel.

     This is how I was taught and I have not improved on it over the years. If you find something else that works better for you, then use it. After all, while the tools are the carving, it is the mind behind them and the way you control and bring your carving to life that matters in the end.

UNDERSTANDING

Woodcarvers understand grain—the way the wood fibers are arranged and how to work with them—more than any other wood crafters. This is because of the huge diversity of possible woodcarvings, from precise lettering to abstract sculpture, from tiny netsuke to huge chainsawn trees. Carvers are, quite simply, all over the wood; they demand different responses from it as they come at it from every angle, sinking hollows, piercing through holes, and often carving successfully against the grain.

     Newcomers to carving are often attracted by the delights of wood as a material but find working with the grain itself something of a mystery. Actually there is nothing mysterious about it and every carver starts the same way: by carving lots of the stuff, seeing what happens, and learning from experience.

     However, you can help your understanding of grain by deliberately setting up some experiments with a sharp gouge and a piece of wood. Just have fun and explore! Explore the difference between slicing and running cuts in a range of circumstances: along the grain; with and against the fibers; across the grain at different angles; into end-grain; and so on. Use different tools. How do different woods behave, and why? Make some notes. What happens around a knot? Try to work things out. How does the piece of wood in front of you relate to the original tree itself?

     As a general carving principle, as you carve your wood you need to respond quickly and intelligently to what is happening. For example, if you find yourself going against the grain and the fibers are tearing… Stop! Don’t persist. Try something different. You might find, say, that you will sever the fibers more successfully by switching to a slicing cut rather than just pushing. Then again, you may simply have to reverse the direction of the cut: against the grain in one direction will always be with it in the opposite direction.

     And, don’t forget the jewel of techniques for dealing with problem fibers: cutting across the grain with a slice (see “Level the Background,” Chapter page

SECTION I: CARVING TOOLS AND SETTING UP

Chapter 3

SUPPORTING

Carving, just like everything else, happens in a context. In other words, there are prior and surrounding circumstances that directly affect what you are doing; indeed, what you can do. These would include the room where you carve, its lighting, and its ambience; the bench at which you stand, its height, and the ease with which you can move around it; the wood you’ve chosen and how you hold it; what carving tools you have to hand and what other tools you have available to help prepare or finish; and so on.

     It’s a mistake not to consider this aspect of your world as a carver. My attitude is that carving is difficult enough as it is, so you want everything possible going for you, supporting, and encouraging you to create your best possible work. And this includes the total environment in which you work, with all its bits and pieces. It’s really about getting your mindset right, even before you put chisel to wood.

     In my book, Woodcarving Tools, Materials & Equipment Volume you’ll find a lot more information. Here I’d just like to highlight some important points regarding the supporting elements in a carver’s world.

A useful, dedicated bench by Sjöberg—a worthy attempt at meeting the needs of woodcarvers. Beginners often find the cost of a specialized bench out of reach. In this chapter we think more in terms of a basic workstation that fits your needs and can be adapted as you develop as a woodcarver.

WORKSHOP

I’m continuously amazed how some students never stop to wonder whether their disinclination to spend time in a damp, cold garden shed with no electricity has anything to do with their not carving often. Or whether working in a dark corner of a garage with only a fluorescent ceiling light at their backs might have anything to do with why they can’t see torn grain…

     As I said, we need all the help we can get! Of course, you may not have the luxury of a dedicated space but, wherever you carve, you want to look forward to being in it and find that it enhances, rather than hinders, what you are doing.

ENVIRONMENT

Wherever you carve, think about orchestrating your environment. You need to feel relaxed and comfortable; not too warm or too cold; and enjoying a space in which you look forward to spending time. If you are standing, think about rubber matting to ease your feet.

TOOL STORAGE

Keep the tools you use a great deal closest to your work area. Store those you seldom use farthest away. Drawers keep the tools safe, clearly distinguished, and readily available as you need them. This sort of long-term storage is far better in the workshop than tool rolls. If you do only have a tool roll, take all your carving tools out in one go and lay them on your work surface. Use them for your carving session. Put the tools away all in one go.

LIGHTING

Woodcarving is all about light and shadow. If you are not painting your work, what else is there? The only thing carvers have to play with is depth. Not only do you need suitable lighting to see what you are doing, but also you need to understand that the manner in which light plays on your three-dimensional work is the very essence of woodcarving. Natural light is always the most pleasant to carve in. I have a number of adjustable lights—most of which are cheap and readily available.

A simple, shallow feather carving: no paint, no pyrography, just cross light from the side creating the shadows and highlights that tell you what you are looking

The same feather with the shadows destroyed by the camera flash: dull and hard to

WORKSTATION

Despite what guidelines you have read elsewhere—even written by me!—there is no standard size and height, or even shape, to a woodcarver’s bench. Carvings vary so much in size and shape that unless you are sticking to the same type of work, you’ll continually have to adjust and re-think your means of holding your carvings.

     Rather than thinking that you must have a bench first and fit your carvings to it, think more of your carvings first and what you might need. I prefer to think of carving at a workstation rather than a bench because although I do indeed have a carving bench, it is almost always holding something else—a post, a tilting surface, an adjustable vise, etc.

     Really, you need an idea of the sort of work you have in mind; then, build a workstation to suit. It is, of course, hard to know what you will be doing when you are starting. So, by all means, build something the equivalent of a strong table to get you going, but I strongly suggest you don’t get preoccupied with “bench” as an idea.

     Whatever work station you have for carving, three things are important:

■   construction,

■   height, and

■   adaptability.

CONSTRUCTION

Although proper joints are no doubt best, carving benches can be successfully cobbled together by simply bolting and screwing pieces of wood. This is great for those without wood working abilities, means, or interest. Ask a joinery firm to supply you with the wood ready cut to size and assemble the bench yourself. Whatever your workstation looks like, make it sturdy. You will likely have to weight its base or bolt it to the floor to keep it stable.

HEIGHT

The height at which you carve is the biggest problem. If you are not to suffer discomfort while you work, you need to carve with as straight a back as possible. This usually means your bench or workstation will be a lot higher than a conventional woodworking bench. Think where in space you would like to place your workpiece if you had a magic wand, and then find a means of fixing it there, at that height, rather than having the work too low because that happened to be the height of your bench top. Carving can be quite tiring. Frequent breaks, stretching, moving about, and a bit of fresh air will help you work longer and with more vigor.

ADAPTABILITY

Over the years I have ended up with a variety of adjustable options that add to my basic bench, and long since given up the search for the magic bench to end all benches. At the end of the day, you must be prepared and able to change what you have to suit a particular project.

HOLDING

Traditional woodcarving involves carvers holding the tools in both hands, often ambidextrously. There are certain exceptions, but in the main, both hands of the carver hold the carving tools. Thus, we need a holding device for the wood.

     Again, the range of carving types and sizes means there will be many ways of holding work, some suitable to one project, others suitable to another. Holding devices run the gamut of cheap, simple bits of waste wood to expensive adjustable clamps—the more adaptable, the better. Many beginners think they cannot achieve good work without a special and expensive way of holding their work. Some modern devices do have many advantages, but remember just how ancient this craft is and how carvers must have worked in the past. You really don’t need much! Whatever you use, some principles are invariable in the way you hold your wood to carve it.

SECURE HOLD

Only the tools move, not the carving, while you are working on it. A sudden tilt or shift of the work at a delicate stage can be nothing short of disaster.

ACCESSIBILITY

The holding device should allow you to get at the area you wish to carve. This usually means some way of adjusting what’s going on, reasonably quickly. The need for strange backbreaking yoga-like postures, while interesting to spectators, doesn’t contribute to successful carving and is a sign you should re-think the way you are holding your work.

SAFETY

It is very important that the device does not potentially injure you or your work.

A block of wood held by fences (surrounding strips, screwed or nailed to the bench top or a scrap board) and wedges (5-10˚). Knock the wedges out and you can turn the work

SELECT HOLDING DEVICES

Bearing in mind that if you are only carving one sort of thing in the future, you will only need one (successful) way of holding it, let me just mention my A team of holding devices.

     Bits of wood: Yes!—it’s amazing what you can achieve with fences and wedges, posts clamped in carpenters’ vises, boards onto which you can stick work with double-sided tape or glue and paper and so on. And all for nothing but a little effort.

     C-clamps: Depending where you are from, you may know these clamps as either C- or G-clamps Clamps are useful in so many ways. The larger quick-action type, with a bottom jaw that slides along the bar and a toggled tightening level, is much more serviceable than the cast type with a simple screw thread.

     Carver’s screws: Two of the best woodcarver’s screws are Stubai’s, designed to hold three-dimensional work along the grain, and Veritas’s, which holds smaller work across the grain. You will see these being used later in this book. With woodcarver’s screws, you can hold both relief and in-the-round work. Carver’s screws are a simple, elegant, often underrated solution to many holding problems.

     Adjustable clamps and vises: You can adapt these devices to a particular purpose, and for next to nothing. This adaptability is a key element in successfully holding and working with your woodcarvings. Start with just one and see it as a starting point for constructing platforms, etc., using wood (see photo below).

An adjustable holding device (by Stretton): the ball pivots and locks by means of the integral

This system can be bolted to a worktop (by Woodcarvers Supply Inc). It’s best to see the metal plate as a starting point and fix appropriate pieces of wood to it, as shown. The carving would sit on the end of the board and be fixed with a carver’s

OTHER AND

Besides traditional tools, woodcarvers will usually have various other tools in the workshop to assist their work, either in the early or late stages.

BIG EQUIPMENT

As a carver I find a bandsaw and a drill press (UK “pillar drill”) indispensable for preparing wood in the early stages. You don’t actually need to own them—just know someone who does!

HAND WOODWORKING TOOLS

Two old favorites: a spokeshave and a small cabinet rasp. Besides using these in their own right for shaping wood, I will sometimes consolidate a confusing carved surface in a sculpture before re-commencing with my carving tools. Use saws, spokeshaves, and rasps in tandem with carving tools to remove wood more quickly or consolidate forms and surfaces.

POWER TOOLS

For carvers, plunging routers and jigsaws can be particularly useful for setting-in depths or removing waste wood. But isn’t using power tools some kind of cheating? My answer is that I will be finishing my type of carving with my traditional carving tools but anything that helps me get to this point quicker without imposing itself undesirably on my work is fair game.

Basic woodworking tools to always have on hand: a rasp and a

WOOD

Traditional carving woods are actually quite dull and uninspiring. Why? Because carving is all about light and shadow. And carvers have never wanted the wood figure to confuse or dominate their three-dimensional forms. What would a face, a classic acanthus leaf, or Gothic tracery lose if their beautiful lines and forms were camouflaged with conspicuous figuring? You cannot really carve in a representational or traditional manner where light and shadow is everything on anything other than plain wood, mildly figured at best. In traditional carving, the wood is a vehicle for the skill of the carver and does not in itself play a role. The biggest mistake is to carve a portrait head in a heavily figured wood, only to find you have bestowed what looks like some hideous skin disease on your subject. By all means use interesting timbers where you plan to show off the grain—abstract sculpture or those wide simple surfaces you see in woodturning—but remember that strong grain can really detract from the impact of a carving in the manner of a camouflage net.

Here we have a starting block in basswood. The grain is fairly bland and the pieces carefully matched and meticulously glued together so the joints are unobtrusive when carved

Wood Cost

Proportional to the time, the cost of wood in a carving might be less than 1%. Think of all the hours and effort you’ll be investing in that piece of wood and decide there’s no point not getting the best wood you can for the job. “Don’t spoil the ship for a pennyworth of tar.”.

IDEAL CARVING WOODS

What would make an ideal piece of carving wood for traditional types of work? It would be seasoned (air-dried to ambient humidity rather than kiln-dried); of tight, straight, predictable grain—knot and split free; of uniform color with minimal figuring; and of medium density (halfway between, say, boxwood and pine). Another virtue of bland or negligibly patterned wood is the ability to discretely join together boards of it to make a bigger starting block.

     Most carving in Europe has historically used European limewood, oak, and South American mahogany (of which pattern-grade Brazilian is the nearest equivalent today). In the USA, basswood, butternut, jelutong, and walnut are the most likely candidates. These woods have a degree of openness in the grain that allows the wood to fall away from the gouge.

SOURCES

Where do you get good wood for carving? Ask your local carvers and clubs. Check out suppliers in carving magazines. Remember that most carving is done in relatively small pieces of wood, so don’t forget to ask local high-end cabinetmakers or woodworkers for offcuts.

STORAGE

Keep your wood dry, out of direct sunlight, and spaced so that air can circulate between boards. Ideally, when you know you’ll need a piece in the future, prepare it and bring it into your workshop to acclimatize for as long as possible.

BACKGROUND AND

There are three elements to a woodcarving: the wood in which it is made, the tools (and technique of using them) with which you make it, and the design. I’ve mentioned wood previously and the tools aspect will be a recurring theme, but design… what can I say about design, or the conception and meaning of what you are making?

     Only that it is, by far, the most important element. No matter how lovely your piece of wood, or the execution of your work, if your design is dull, unbalanced or—dare I say it?—poor, then the carving will fail. Conversely, a first-rate design will always carry imperfect technique or flawed wood.

     Thus, if you are going to be creative and not just a copier, you must:

■   Give full attention to the design side of your woodcarving and how it works or communicates with the viewer

■   Design with wood in mind

■   Design within your abilities.

     Along with sharpening and handling wood grain, this aspect of carving is yet another that daunts many students. (“I’m not artistic!” “I can’t draw!”) The good news is that although artistry seems to have an element of inborn talent—we are all wired differently—all of us have some seeds of artistry that we absolutely can nurture and develop.

     We all have self-doubt, just as we are all afraid we might not be good enough to succeed, but—believe me—over many years of teaching woodcarving, I have not met a student who didn’t noticeably develop their design sense, their visual literacy, when they worked at it.

     The best ways I can suggest to work at it, are to draw and model (see my Woodcarving Tools, Materials & Equipment Vol. as much as you can, and to cultivate three books:

SCRAPBOOK

A catch-all for anything you see in the areas in which you are interested, either the subject itself or someone’s representation. Get into a habit of ripping out magazine photos, sticking in photocopies of pages from books, or printed pictures from the web.

NOTEBOOK

In your notebook—a journal that you carry everywhere—you catch ideas and thoughts; comments on carvings you’ve seen, why they work, why they don’t, techniques you’d like to try, and so on. Don’t discriminate or edit; just write it in.

SKETCHBOOK

A sketch is a quick, informal draft; descriptive notes in lines with, perhaps, a few shadows thrown in. My sketches often include written jottings or impressions too. We are not talking a gallery level of drawing, just private reminders of, say, the detail you saw, or the idea you had.

PREPARATION

I’ve seen many a carving in which it is obvious that the carver has only a minimal idea of what they are doing; carvings that have been started without adequate research and preparation. Remember, no matter what you carve: you cannot have too much preparation, but you can have too which case your carving will suffer Carvings don’t begin when you put a chisel to wood, but long before, in your mind, with the conception and subsequent design.

GETTING TO

The cutting edge slices into the timber, incising through and prising apart the wood fibers. Behind the cutting edge is the blade and following that, the handle. And then your hands, powering and controlling the path of the tool.

     That’s how carving happens: your hands energize and direct the whole cutting process—what the blade actually does. The manner in which you hold and manipulate the tool is crucial to getting the result you want. Ask any good player of cricket, baseball, tennis, or golf and they’ll tell you about the vital importance of correct grip. It’s no different with woodcarving.

     Beginners need to embed efficient grips, ones that are also adaptable, safe and comfortable. How do you do this?

     Students who have been with me know that I insist to the point of nagging that they hold their carving tools in either of two fundamental grips, which I describe in the next chapter. These quite particular grips are so readily adaptable to different circumstances that I find myself using them, or variations on them, for 99% of my carving.

     If you are a beginner, I’d strongly urge you to stick with these grips and explore their possibilities thoroughly until they become second nature. It’s not that this is the complete story when it comes to handling your tools, but this should be where you start.

     It’s difficult to give up poor ways of holding carving tools once they have become ingrained. If you are carving already, I’m asking you to put aside your habitual patterns and really give the grips I recommend a thorough trial.

SECTION II: USING CARVING TOOLS

Chapter 4

HANDLING

We’ve looked at how important it is to have a keen and properly configured cutting edge, set at the correct cutting angle. But woodcarving is all about making these wonderful tools work for you, though this might be better expressed as working with the tools.

     I’m going to describe two grips that I use practically all the time that I’m carving without a mallet. Good carving techniques are characterized by two qualities: safety and control, both of which are exemplified by these two grips. I use one or other of these two grips according to what I’m doing in a particular carving situation and, as I carve, I swap between these two hand positions continuously and without thinking.

     For the most part, I use the first grip when I’m carving with the tool at a low angle to the wood surface, say below 45°. I’ll call this the low-angle grip.

     I use the second grip when I’m carving with the tool at a high angle to the wood surface, say above 45°, although you’ll find you can adapt your hands to carve with this grip at a low angle when the tool is pointing away from you. I’ll call this the high-angle grip. Elsewhere I have called it pen & dagger, but have found this less useful since people hold their pens in some quite surprising— and from a carving point of view, unhelpful—ways.

Proper tool control is vital in producing cuts that come out the way you want them.

TWO

I’ll describe the basics of the low-angle and high-angle grips here, but because all our hands and muscle controls are unique, you will need to play around with what you’ve got and, of course, practice until this way of handling the tools becomes second nature.

     Use a clean, flat board of carveable wood for practicing. To begin with, work across the grain: you’ll find the wood shavings simply fall away and you needn’t worry whether you are going with or against the wood fibers.

Golden Rules for Both Grips

Both hands are on the carving tool: One will grip the handle (the handle hand); the other will be gripping the blade in some fashion (the blade hand).

     Both hands work together: If you find yourself using and focusing on one hand, you are only partly in control.

     Some part of the blade hand rests on your wood (or perhaps the bench), greatly increasing your ability to control what you are doing.

You can put a lot of power behind the low-angle grip, especially if you keep your elbows in and bring your body weight to bear. You’ll see this grip demonstrated in the projects for running cuts lowering or otherwise wasting away wood and smoothing off surfaces There are two habits I strongly advise you to work on with this grip: slicing the edge on short cuts and developing some ambidexterity.

THE GRIP

■   With one hand, take a firm hold of the tool where the blade joins the handle. In most carving tools, this will be across the ferrule and shoulder. The little finger end of your hand will thus grip some of the blade, while the thumb end of your hand closes around a portion of the handle.

■   Increase the control the blade hand has over the tool by extending your thumb along the handle.

■   The heel of the blade hand now rests on the wood. Sometimes I find myself resting the whole of my forearm on the wood as well.

■   With the other hand, grip the handle in whatever way feels comfortable. This hand will do the pushing.

■   Here’s the secret of control: while you are pushing the tool with the handle hand, you must resist the forward movement with the other, the blade hand. Thus there is a tension between your hands while you are moving the tool forward; a balance between the two forces of pushing and resisting. Both hands work together to control the forward movement and shape of the cut. The difference allows the tool to advance and cut in a controlled manner, starting and stopping at will.

■   Keep your elbows in and use your body to follow through the cut. Think that you are actually working from the floor.

The low-angle

SAFETY

Only the cutting edge is sharp. It follows that everything else isn’t. Therefore keep your hands, fingers, and parts of your body away from that edge—behind it when you are working—and definitely don’t put any part of your body in the way when it is moving.

     Get into the habit of placing your tools in a row on your bench with their edges toward you. You can choose to have the handles toward you but if your handles are all the same, you’ll find it less confusing to select the different tools when the line of tools is reversed and the blades are nearest. This bench discipline makes picking up your tools safer and quicker and protects the edges from damage. You would normally be working some way above and in front of the sharp edges and thus there is no danger of making contact with them. Nevertheless, make sure the tools are always free to move backward, just in case your hand does knock into them.

     Even so, with the best will in the world nicks will happen—usually through inattention or in some non-carving way. So do have a good, portable first aid kit close by. Although you shouldn’t need to bulk buy, you’ll no doubt use Band-Aids more than any other item. Tools that are razor sharp for hard woods will hardly notice skin. And bear in mind that you may have to dress your wound with one hand…

This is what I call the Hara-kiri School of Carving. It’s much safer to turn the work around or approach the work from the

Placing your tools on the bench with their edges facing you is a safe habit to get

A well-stocked first aid kit—complete with plenty of Band-Aids—is a must for any carving

PRACTICE

up the grip with a V-tool (or narrow deep gouge) with your left as the blade hand.

a simple, shallow, straight groove away from you. When you get to the far end, lower the handle and exit the groove. Control the start and stop point while maintaining a constant depth along the line. You are making what are called running cuts, the sort of thing you’ll use for veins or lines; you will always want these to be smooth and flowing.

another groove a little to one side, trying to copy the first exactly. Being able to copy the line is a demonstration of tool control, which is your aim.

this a few times. Remember to push and resist at the same time—but do relax your shoulders and only use the minimum effort you need to make the cut.

Practice so you can use the low-angle grip with either

Ambidexterity

Because you will carve from left to right and right to left, it is extremely helpful to be able to swap the tool between hands and freely approach the work from either direction; in other words, develop a degree of ambidexterity. And since the grip probably feels awkward to begin with anyway, start practicing in both directions right from the start.

Create delta grooves with a deepening

reverse hands! If your left hand was gripping the blade as I suggested, you will now grip it with your right. Repeat steps 1-4.

   Swapping the tool over like this lets you carve easily and efficiently in the opposite direction. You may find it feels awkward at first, but do persevere because there are real advantages to be gained from reversing the grip like this.

your right hand on the blade, run a line from left to right. Copy a few times.

changing hands, run a line from right to left. You’ll see this is very awkward without yoga-like contortions, turning the wood around, or moving your body right around to the other end of the wood.

swap hands (left hand on the blade) and run that line from right to left again.

   I hope you can now feel and see clearly the advantages of being able to swap hands when you are using your carving tool at a low angle like this, even if the grip still feels strange right now. You get the same advantage whatever tool you are using, be it a V-tool, flat or deep gouge.

Use a skew chisel to slice off the ends of the delta

create short delta-like grooves by starting your V-cut lightly but then raising the handle to send the cutting edge deeper into the wood. To stop tidily, you must practice resisting with the blade hand.

up a series of identical delta cuts and use the corner of a skew chisel or knife to nip off the ends. Angle out the nipping off cut at 60˚, the same as the angles of the walls cut by your 60˚ V-tool. Light will now reflect nicely off the end wall; one of those extra little details that makes for excellent rather than just good carving. This is very good practice in starting and stopping and again is demonstrating that all-important tool control.

with the blade in your right hand, run a curving line clockwise. You’ll see that you can do this readily because you can pivot on a little bone (pisiform) in the heel of your blade hand. Copy the line a few times.

Curving running cuts are simple to make using the low-angle

without changing the grip, run a cut counterclockwise. You’ll find it less easy to do, less smooth, because you are going against the natural pivoting action of the blade hand.

hands and try that counter (anti) clockwise cut again. Now you’ll find you can use the smooth natural pivot of the blade hand to advantage—again supporting the case for ambidexterity when carving at low angles.

   Essentially you are making best, most efficient use of the natural way your hands work. Being able to swap hands like this will make carving so much easier and benefit the quality of the result significantly. You don’t have to be truly ambidextrous—I’ll always be right dominant, for example—but you should work toward feeling competent carving in your weaker direction.

HIGH-ANGLE GRIP

In a low-angle grip, to bring the carving tool more down into the wood, rather than along it, you need to lift the elbow of the handle hand quite high. Try this and you’ll find that the low-level grip now feels awkward, loses power (because you can no longer put your weight behind it), and puts a lot of unnecessary strain on the elbow joint. You can add power to the high-angle grip, which is generally lighter than the low angle, by putting your shoulder to the handle and adding body weight. This grip is superb and I use it widely for setting-in outlines page detailing, and any time the tool is presented more vertically to the wood. This grip tends to come more into its own in the later stages of a carving.

     At this point, without thinking, I swap to a second high-angle grip. This way of holding can feel a little awkward to begin with; and although I’ll describe it as best I can, you will need to play around and sort your fingers out. You’ll be glad to hear that there is no need to swap hands with this grip!

THEGRIP

■   Start by placing a gouge (say a ½" [13mm] #6) perpendicular to the wood and holding the handle somewhat like a dagger in your non-dominant hand. Thus your non-dominant is the handle hand.

■   Your dominant now becomes the blade hand: Place the tip of the middle finger of your dominant hand onto the wood and tucked tight up behind the bevel of the tool, thus bridging tool and wood. Support this middle finger position by bringing up the ring and little finger behind it. Drop the heel of your hand down to rest on the wood surface.

■   You should have a finger and thumb of your dominant hand remaining. Use these to grip the blade in a pinch between them.

Here is the starting position for the basic high-angle

■   The middle finger tip, by resting between wood and bevel, acts in the same way that the heel of your hand did in the low-angle grip: maximizing control.

■   This is the basic hold; you’ll have to adapt as we start using the tool. Sometimes you will pinch the blade with index finger and thumb between its side edges; sometimes your thumb or index finger will be in cannel (inside or in the hollow of the gouge), depending on the orientation of the tool and cut you are making.

Lift the leading corner of the tool to shunt it around the shape it is

If you were to use this technique with a small (⅛" [3mm]) deep (#9) gouge, the wedge effect of the bevel would pop off the little bit of wood in the middle. The resulting hole is called an eye. This carving technique is seen frequently in carved moldings and acanthus

PRACTICE

down with the handle hand, putting your shoulder behind it for weight (rather like paring down a mortise joint), and force the cutting edge into the wood. The impression you leave will be the sweep of the gouge and this simple cut into the wood is called a stab cut page

back on one (which will be the leading) corner of the blade and advance the cutting edge a little along the cut you just made. Stab in vertically again. You must lift the leading corner of the cutting edge clear of the groove in order not to plow up the wood.

this sequence of movements, rotating at the handle as you lift the leading corner and adjust your fingers on the blade, and incrementally ease the edge along the groove it is cutting. Keep shunting the cutting edge of the blade like this until you have moved around in a complete circle. At an obvious point in the circling, you will need to flip the blade hand smoothly around so that instead of the blade being supported by the tip of the middle finger, it now nestles on the back of the finger in the groove between the nail and first joint.

   Both hands work together with the handle, helping to rotate the tool. Keep gripping and controlling the blade by pinching it between your finger and thumb.

around the circle clockwise and counter-clockwise until you feel the finger movement starting to sort out and controlling the tool becomes easier.

cutting vertically, you can use this grip at any angle down to, say, 60˚ from the wood. So, now run the tool around in the same fashion but at an angle; the gouge will describe a cone as it passes through the air. Use your thumb to push the blade forward in sync with the hand rotating the handle.

   This is an extremely important grip to master, combining control with finesse and, when you can involve your shoulder, a fair degree of power.

using this high-angle grip to take out small crescents and lozenges, approaching from either side, at an angle to the wood surface. Aim for a single cut from either side with the leading corner of your gouge scooping down; an action that takes the corner to the bottom of the trench and cuts a clean junction. A fishtail gouge with prominent corners is ideal here, but a regular gouge will do the job.

Notice here how the hands seem to be crossed when the gouge comes in from one side, and apart when it comes in from the

See how the handle hand changes from a dagger-like grip to one in which it

To get the most from this way of carving takes time, as you will need to develop the gripping muscle between your index finger and thumb. You can always tell the hands of a traditional carver because they have a well-developed gripping muscle right

Use the high-angle grip to make lozenge- and crescent-shaped

PUTTING THE

A good way to consolidate and practice both these grips is with some light ornamental surface carving, using what you have done already to create some light leaves, flowers, or wheat.

     Start by drawing in the main stems with your V-tool, then add deepening V trenches, eyes, crescents, and lozenges to assemble the other details. Work hard to get your lines flowing and smooth and all the details cut cleanly—it is this that makes a carving look good.

     If it doesn’t work out, plane the surface off and have another go! Remember, it’s only a piece of wood and you may need to get through several before you become familiar with making cuts with these grips.

     Above all have fun. Play and experiment!

Practice using your newfound knowledge of grips to create some flowers, vines, and wheat

THIN OF THE

It is not uncommon to see metal wedges used to split logs. The thin end of the wedge pushes into the log and the widening metal that follows exerts sideways pressure on the wood fibers, prising them apart.

     It’s important to realize that the working end of a woodcarving tool, from thin cutting edge to thick heel, is nothing more than a glorified wedge. All carving tools must act as wedges do: push the thin cutting edge of a gouge into the wood and the widening bevel that follows exerts sideways pressure.

     Wood is naturally weaker between long fibers, which are sort of glued together by nature. The straighter the grain and less interlocked, the more vulnerable the fibers are to separating. Pushing a cutting edge straight in while lined up along the grain is always potentially hazardous. The wedge-effect of the bevel must happen every time you push the carving tool into the wood, whatever the cut, and is the main source of the student cri de coeur: “It fell off.”

     In the last chapter, we created an eye using this very wedge effect and in Chapter 6 we see this technique being put to good use in the carving of moldings However, in all carving, you need to bear the wedge effect of the bevel in mind: it is all too easy to fracture wood fibers by pushing in the cutting edge too deeply and having wood fracture invisibly, only to part later. Bits falling off are invariably due to earlier trauma.

     If you know you have vulnerable areas, try a practice piece first so you can get an idea of the depth to which you can safely stab in.

SECTION II: USING CARVING TOOLS

Chapter 5

THE OF THE

In your hand is a sharp and well-shaped carving tool. You hold it in a safe grip that will let you carve with confidence and facility. Now you want to make things happen—but how exactly? What can you make these tools do? Well, a lot more than most newcomers think!

     Returning once more to our learning-the-guitar analogy: after you have understood tuning (sharpening) and how to hold the guitar (grips), I imagine our guitar teacher would probably have you plucking strings. You would just play around lightly in a relaxed way, getting a sense of how the guitar works and the notes and chords you could make. So, before turning to woodcarving projects—our tunes proper, so to speak—I want to look at what we can call the outcome of the tool, the sort of notes you can play with a gouge.

YOU’LL NEED:

■   Your gouges and V-tools. Do try what I suggest with different tools.

■   A board of clean carveable wood held safely to the bench. I always like to start with a planed surface.

A full cut, shown here, is just one of the basic carving techniques you can do.

CUTS OF THE

As a sample of the versatility of traditional carving tools, I’m going start by separating out a few of the cuts carvers make. Of course, you won’t be thinking in separate cuts like this when you are deep into your carving; you’ll just be working with the tool and eventually forgetting about it.

RUNNING CUT

How to do it: We saw this cut in the last chapter when we learned and practiced the low-angle grip. One hand at the rear propels the tool and the other, wrapped around the blade, resists. The blade hand rests on the wood for control as you start, stop, and direct the cut at will, swapping hands to reverse direction. The nature of a running cut is that it keeps going; it’s a long stroke.

     Try running parallel and equal lines of varying depths with your V-tool; then cut curves to the right and left, swapping hands, and so on. Tilt the V to the left and right and observe. Try with a narrow, deep gouge or U tool.

     With a deep gouge (#8 or #9) run a long channel across the grain. A single deep channel like this is called a flute.

     Place a second channel as similar as possible to the side, then a third, and so on. The surface will look a bit like it’s been plowed.

     Application: Running cuts with V- and U-tools have obvious drawing-like applications for veins and hair etc. In Chapter 8 and the subsequent pair of chapters on relief carving, you can see how we remove waste from the background with long even running cuts. Lowering the background in this way is a much more efficient approach than simply carving away wood here and there at random.

Running cuts are a great technique to clear out the background in a relief

STABBING CUT

How to do it: Using the high-level grip put the weight of your shoulder behind the handle. Push the cutting edge of the carving tool straight into the wood and pull it out again.

     Try the cut with a medium gouge: straight in and out. If you wobble the handle from side to side you are likely to break off a corner. To release a stuck blade from the wood, ease it out by tilting the handle in a direction along the

     Make some surface patterns with a gouge.

     Try emphasizing just one corner as you push in. You’ll make a stab cut that starts deep at one end and fades around the curve (sweep) into nothing. You thus have two cuts: to the left and right.

     Application: Stab cuts are used decoratively, say in the details of hair and fur, and to give emphasis by adding a harder shadow, such as between lips or at the end of a running line. Use your mallet to stab into particularly hard wood.

     With a change in function, the stab cut can become the very important stop cut.

Stab cuts can create

A scoop meeting a stop cut creates a

STOP CUT

How to do it: When you place a stab cut so as to control the wood grain—to stop them from breaking out—you have a stop cut. You would make a simple stop cut in exactly the same way as the stabbing described at left.

     You can see the stop cut in action clearly in a medieval decorative element called a thumbnail (or fingernail): Make a strong vertical stab cut with a deep gouge and mallet at one end of the fingernail—this is the stop cut. Scoop up to this with the same gouge. It’s easiest to work across the grain and you may have to cut the thumbnail itself with a few passes. Try making the scoop cut first. You’ll see the bevel of the tool wedges the wood fibers up and forward and finding a precise place to end the cut is difficult. Thus we place the stop cut first to control this wedging effect.

     Repeating these thumbnails side by side will create a simple molding. A challenge would be to make a dozen even and equal ones, side by side.

     Application: By its very nature, the stop cut has a job to do, and, having done it, the stop cut disappears; it is subsumed by the cuts that follow. This is what separates the stop cut from the stab cut; the stab cut remains on the surface to make its own effect.

     You can also see stop cuts in traditional incised lettering: a heavy stop cut goes in first in the center of part of a letter, controlling the grain; subsequent angle cuts come in from either side to leave the V trench.

     We also made stop-type cuts in the last chapter when we finished off the delta-shaped V cuts with a skew chisel. We could have put in the stop cuts first. And a running cut or groove can act as a sort of fire break—functionally a stop cut—to prevent grain splintering.

     Woodcarvers will use stop cuts when necessary and without thinking. Don’t hesitate to apply one to your carving when you need to control the grain.

SWEEP OR ROCKING CUT

(Note: Remember that the sweep of a gouge is its profile seen end on. In a true gouge, the sweep is a part, an arc, of a circle—unlike U-shaped gouges.)

     How to do it: The sweep of a gouge is an arc of a circle. Rotate the handle as you push your gouge forward in a short, scooping, running cut. You will be able to feel the edge slicing across the wood as it follows its arc.

     You can make a sweep cut with either low or high-angle grip, rotating to the left or the right.

     Make some sweep cuts like this with a medium gouge (about #6).

     Start and end the sweep cut with the corners clear to avoid tearing the grain. The scooping action of the cut has three parts: the tool enters the wood; you then drop the handle a little and move the edge along as you rotate; you then drop the handle further as you make the exit.

     More than anything, this is a feely cut and is done with both hands working together: feel the sweep as you scoop.

     Try it with deep gouges too, and rotate the handle both clockwise and counterclockwise.

     Rotate the tool along the arc of the sweep but do not wiggle or rock the handle from side to side: this will tear the grain, tend to blunt the cutting edge, and may even result in chipping the metal or losing a corner.

     Application: The slicing action eases the tool through the wood and produces a much cleaner cut. The movement is also called a rocking cut, sometimes called “rocking the tool through its cut.”

     You also made sweep cuts at the end of the last chapter when you made crescents and lozenges.

     Slicing the tool like this along the edge—in this case making full use of the sweep—is, more than any other, the cut of the carver. Indeed I’d say that if you take out running and stop cuts, all my cuts are sliced in some way.

     One form of the sweep cut is the all-important slicing cut that you make with the flattest gouges.

To begin a sweep cut, keep the corners of the tool clear of the

Drop the handle a little and move the edge along as you

Drop the handle to quickly make your

Begin a slicing cut with the corners clear of the wood.

Drift the edge over the wood to complete the slicing cut—do not rotate the

SLICING CUT

How to do it: The arc of the circle that forms the sweep of a very flat (#3) gouge is so big that it’s impossible to rotate the gouge meaningfully at the handle: the corners dig in immediately.

     So, you have to emphasize the sideways movement as the tool moves forward. Think of paring the surface, drifting the edge across, rather than actually rotating the tool; in fact you are hardly rotating at all.

     With a #3 gouge in the low-level grip, make very shallow slicing cuts, keeping the corners clear at all times. Work at right angles to the grain—in other words across it—and you’ll find the slice itself will be more or less along the grain.

     Slice from left to right and from right to left. Keep the area clean as you go along. It’s tricky at first not to dig the corners in. If you do, immediately go over the torn grain and repair the surface.

     Application: This is the cut for flattening and finishing off a surface, from backgrounds to bodies, wherever you choose to finish from the tools rather than sanding. The proviso here is that the closer you can match the sweep to the form, the smoother a surface you will leave; and sometimes, of course, the sweep you need to match the form will not be the flattest.

     We will see this priceless slicing technique in action in Chapter 8 firstly cleaning and finishing the background of a relief carving; and secondly in the high-level grip where we push the corner of the tool along like a knife for accurately shaping an outline (setting-in). The same slicing action is also used in cutting the curves of incised letters.

     So there, in brief, are some basic cuts. You’ll need them again and again in the projects.

NINE

However, before we leave the subject, did you know there are at least nine different ways you can cut wood with a single carving tool? Some we’ve seen already, but grab your carving tool and see what you can do with that cutting edge:

VERTICAL ENTRY

This cut is done by stabbing with the full edge. This we saw on page You could also stab with just one corner.

SLICE - ALONG SWEEP

From the stab, shunt the tool along the sweep. We also did this last chapter when we made circles

TIGHTER SLICE - ALONG SWEEP

Make the circle with the sweep. Then, as you go to pass around a second time, lift the leading corner, rotate the handle a little more firmly and spiral the cut into a tighter radius. The tighter the circle, the more you have to lift that leading corner. Here’s the rule: you can make any sweep cut a tighter circle, but not a bigger one. Try it!

Vertical

ANGLE STABBING

If instead of stabbing vertically to the surface you stab at an angle, the cut you make will have a tighter sweep. Can you see why? The sweep of the gouge is an arc of a circle. Thus, effectively, the profile of the gouge is a part of a cylinder. The edge enters the wood at an angled plane to the end of the cylinder thus creating an ellipse, a tighter sweep.

Slice-along

Tighter slice-along

Angle

FULLCUT

This can be a full-on, bold, scooping movement— the sweep cut we made earlier—or a running cut. Use the full edge; keep the corners clear.

Full cut.

ONLY PART OF THE CUTTING EDGE

Take the same tool as you just did to make the full scoop cut but use only a fraction of the cutting edge. Cut very shallowly along the wood surface. You’ll find you cut as if the section of the gouge you are using has a flatter sweep.

     It’s one of those strange things about carving tool sweep charts that, for example, all of the #6 tools are not actually arcs of a same circle. Try fitting the sweep of any of your gouges on some of the others around the chart and you’ll see what I mean. The upshot is that you can use a bigger, deeper tool to dress a flatter surface by cutting lightly.

Only part of the cutting edge.

UPSIDE DOWN

With an inside bevel you can readily use your gouge upside down on flat, rounded, or moderately concave surfaces.

Upside down.

LEFT AND RIGHT CORNERS

The extremely important corners are where gouge meets knife and are used extensively in traditional carving. Being curved, each corner of a gouge is different of course, so I’m calling that two cuts.

     When you multiply different shaped gouges by different ways of holding and manipulating them, and different ways of actually cutting, you have many more things you can do than might at first appear. I’d really encourage you to waste a lot of wood trying different cuts and grips, experimenting, having fun, and just getting to know your tools.

Left and right

GOOD

If you watch a genuine master carver at work you’ll see that, from the way they lay their tools on the bench to the very process of carving, they act or work in a controlled or systematic way.

     What you are seeing are nothing less than good habits that started as conscious self-control: directing or changing behavior and aimed at acquiring advantageous methods, or learning particular skills. It might have cost a lot of effort and self-training to get these habits to take root, but the harvest of efficiency and quality of carving in the end is of priceless benefit.

     An example of such a beneficial habit would be that of clean cutting: finishing each cut of your carving tool as you make it. You don’t go back to repair or repeat. So, backgrounds never have torn facets that need smoothing, and outlines are set in cleanly and fluidly before moving on. Because you have learned to habitually police the area as you work, the result is a clean fresh carving that you can simply step away from as done, without the nagging thought that you just need to go over it once more to touch it up.

     It’s really a matter of engaging a degree of mental self-control when you begin your woodcarving career, ingraining helpful and valuable habits, and then relaxing into your carving as they carry you along.

SECTION III: EXERCISES

Chapter 6

SIMPLE

You are probably familiar with plain, uncarved moldings. The molding itself adds a decorative touch by reflecting light in long, often lovely strips. We can take these blank moldings and carve repetitively into them, creating simple ornamental moldings, or build layers of carved moldings into elaborate rhythms of light and shadow.

     I think the simpler carved moldings have a lot to offer as a way of practicing tool handling skills. I’m going to show you how to carve four basic moldings. Starting with the simplest, their traditional names are: Thumbnail, Pea (or Bead); Rope (or Cable); and Ribbon & Stick.

     Carved moldings: require clean cuts made with consistent tool control; are readily learned; are a good example of the carving process—the way one cut prepares the way for another; and have immediate applications, around the edges of breadboards or simple picture frames for example.

     A blank molding is a simple but specially profiled length of wood that you can buy or make. Cutting a repeating pattern (a unit) into such a blank molding turns it into a carved one.

     The method is quite straight forward: you make a single, precise cut at one end of a specific blank molding and, at defined intervals, repeat it exactly until you reach the other end. You then incise a second run of precise cuts along the length. Then a third, and so on. Each run adds to, overlays, or otherwise alters what has gone before and builds toward the final molding, which is completed with the final run.

     Every carved molding is matched to a specific blank profile. Our simple moldings are all based on one profile.

In order from right: Pea, Thumbnail, Ribbon & Stick, and finally, Rope

SETTING

There are a few tools you should gather before beginning to carve moldings. I’ll also review the process for creating blank moldings and how to hold them for carving.

BLANK MOLDING

The profile common to our molding, and into which we will be carving, is called an astragal—a fancy name for a semi-circular bead flanked by two little flat ledges, or fillets. Router cutter catalogs may simply call this profile half-round. The width or diameter of the bead in our case is 5/16" (8mm). You will need to make up lots of blank strips of this molding on which to practice, or have a woodworker do it for you. Here I’m using Brazilian mahogany.

     Routing is the easiest way to create molding blanks—you simply run the lengths of molding with the cutter. Before routers, you would have shaped the profile by hand with a molding plane, or scratch stock, a piece of hardened steel in the shape of the desired profile.

A half-round router bit will produce the astragal or bead molding blank that is needed.

Fillet

The little flat ledge you see on either side of the bead is called the fillet. It’s a very important reference plane, or surface, for the subsequent carving.

A holding jig is just the right clamp to use while carving moldings.

HOLDING JIG

Hold the length of blank molding tightly by pinching it between fences (strips of wood), screwed or glued to a board. Make sure the fences are lower than the fillet or they will interfere with the carving.

     Clamp or otherwise fix this board to your bench. When you have finished with one piece of molding, simply lift it out from between the fences, brush away the shavings, and insert a new blank piece.

Some pointers to carved molding technique:

■   Practice first! Never start straight into your frame or board without the confidence that you understand what you are doing and have enough skill under your belt to make it happen.

■   All cuts, unless indicated otherwise, will be in high-angle grip

■   All cuts, unless indicated otherwise, will either be stabbed or sliced 58 and

■   Make your cut precisely, and then repeat it at the next mark in exactly the same manner, working your way from one end of the blank molding as consistently as you can.

■   Finish each cut cleanly before moving on to the next; as best you can, aim to make each cut in one movement or stroke.

■   Never undercut any molding element.

■   Never lever your carving tool while it is stabbed into the wood—you’ll only prise bits off the molding.

■   Before putting gouge to wood, I suggest you carefully read through the steps I describe for each molding first to see how the cuts fit together.

MATERIALS & TOOLS

Materials:

■   Wood of choice (I used Brazilian mahogany)

■   5/16" (8mm) half-round router bit and router

Tools:

cut 7mm #8 (Sheffield List 5/16" [8mm] #8 gouge): The sweep of this gouge is a little narrower and flatter than the arc of the astragal.

cut 14mm #1F (Sheffield List ½" [13mm] #1 fishtail chisel): If you read through the projects first, you’ll see it’s possible to substitute a knife or non-fishtail chisel.

cut 7mm #3F (Sheffield List 5/16" [8mm] #5 fishtail gouge): Fishtails are light and delicate, the tools of choice for decorative work like moldings.

cut 2mm #11 (Sheffield List [2mm] #11 gouge): Any narrow deep gouge will do.

dividers: To step out the repeat units of carving.

THUMBNAIL

Thumbnail

In this molding, the circular cuts at the end of each thumbnail leave the impression of a ball. Making the thumbnails longer or shorter will give you a different overall effect. Look closely at the finished molding first to orientate yourself to the repeating pattern.

     Tool numbers as in list at left.

Layout

1Using Tool 5, J. step out points along the molding at a width equal to the diameter of the astragal bead. For long lengths of molding, there are quicker ways of marking out— pinwheels, for example. More complicated moldings will involve templates.

Form the balls

2Using Tool 1, stab the gouge straight down onto a point. Go down to about half the bead depth. Miss three points, then stab in again exactly the same way. Repeat along the length of bead. You are making the first half of a ball—an illusion from wood left untouched by the carving tools.

3Using Tool 1, reverse the gouge and stab in the matching half of the circles on the appropriate points, and along the length of the bead. In between each circle you should have left two points (from the dividers). From these you’ll make the thumbnail cuts proper. On hard wood you could use a mallet. Don’t undercut!

Form the thumbnails

4Using Tool 1, start the thumbnail on a point with the handle nearly vertical and drop the handle as you run the cut up to the stab defining the circle, which you’ll see is a little open on either side.

5This is a scooping cut that runs up to the circle and creates the thumbnail as the chip falls out. Ideally the chip comes out in one hit, but until you get a sense of the work you may have to go back and repeat the vertical stab cut, or make another scooping cut.

6Using Tool 1, mirror the thumbnail cut all along in the other direction. And the finished molding appears...

PEA

You’ll quite often find this lovely little molding accompanying more elaborately carved moldings, in picture frames etc. The pea is tricky to get right to begin with; you’ll tend to make the peas lozenge-shaped or too flat. You may have to do it hundreds of times to get it right, but it’s worth it. Luckily this molding is very quick to carve.

     Have a look at the finished molding to orientate yourself to the repeating pattern. Notice how you use the sweep of the tool to make the pea; it is never more true than here that your tools are your carving.

     If you miss out the cuts between the peas you’ll end up with sausages with the length of each sausage depending on how many divisions you miss out. A mixed molding like this is called Ball & Sausage.

     Tool numbers as in list

Pea

Layout

1Using Tool 5, step out points along the molding at a width equal to the diameter of the astragal bead. Using Tool 2, stab the chisel across the bead at each point, and straight down. Work from one end to the other uniformly. Go down about a third to halfway. This stop cut allows the chip from the next to fall away safely.

Form the peas

2Using Tool 1, start the gouge with the handle low at the center of the pea. As you push the tool forward, lift the handle and smoothly arc down into the stab cut. Dip the corners of the gouge down on each side at the fillet, but don’t sink the whole way to the fillet. Repeat on each point along the length.

3You are carving the first half of a pea, which must look like a little ball. Try and imagine the pea beneath the cutting edge. You’ll see that you must swing the handle right up while the tool advances only half the length of a pea.

4Using Tool 1, mirror the arcing cut for the other side of the pea, all along in the other direction. Ideally, you want to make each half of the pea with one smooth cut—this will take some practice. You will be shaping them more truly pea-like next.

Clean up the edges

5Using Tool 1, start at one end and repeat the arcing cut at right angles to the bead. Come right over and stab down lightly onto the fillet. This stab cut gives a uniform, neat, round edge to the pea and prepares for removing the little triangle of wood between each pea in the next stage.

6Using Tool 2, slide the chisel along the fillet and nick out the little triangular chip between peas. Work along one side from end to end, then the other. Try low-angle grip. The plane of the fillet should just lead in between each pea. You may need to repeat the previous stage if the chip sticks.

ROPE

There are many ways of carving rope or cable. The V-tool by itself is commonly used to create this effect. The sense of rope here comes from the overlapping of a crisp and interesting pattern of angled cuts. However you do it, the trick is to give the impression that the strands of the rope arch over and around the back by tapering and curving the cuts around the side of the bead. Note that you can have left or right-handed rope—the molding is “handed.”

     Have a look at the finished molding to orientate yourself to the repeating pattern.

     Tool numbers as in list

Rope

Layout

1Using Tool 5, step out points along the molding at a width equal to the diameter of the bead plus one third. Using Tool 3: With the hollow of the carving tool towards the bead, slice up from the fillet. At the top of the bead, end by stabbing the leading corner into the wood. Stab at the top to one third the bead depth. Repeat on each point along the length.

2You can also make this cut by starting with the stab cut at the top and slicing down and around to the fillet as if you were following the groove in the rope. Try both. Don’t undercut!

3Using Tool 3, reverse the tool and mirror on the other side, joining the stab cuts together in the center. You might find a top down cut easier on the far side. Feel free to turn the molding around. You should have a continuous, flowing incised line that disappears around the back of the rope.

4Using Tool 3: Use the same tool in a similar fashion starting beyond the center of the bead to make an angled cut (about 60°).

Remove chips

5The chip should fall out. If not you can repeat the vertical stab cut. Reach the cutting edge over the other side of the bead and start the cut about one quarter of the distance away from the top. Think rope and swing the cut right around to end on the fillet. Clean up as you go along.

6Using Tool 3, mirror the angled cut on the other side, reaching beyond the top of the bead as before. The second chip should fall away. If not, you’ll need to repeat the vertical stab cut. It takes a little practice to get the cuts to meet: you need to place them just so and at the right pressure but when you have it, this is a remarkably quick and effective molding.

RIBBON &

This is the trickiest of our moldings. Beginners are often a bit heavy-handed and break out parts. You are trying to give the effect, the illusion, of a ribbon winding around a little central stick with what is nothing less than a bit of relief carving. Note that, as with the Rope molding, the Ribbon & Stick is handed; in other words, it will wind to the right or left.

     Have a look at the finished molding to orientate yourself to the repeating pattern.

     Tool numbers as in list

Ribbon & Stick

Layout

1Using Tool 5, step out points along the molding at a width equal to the width of your fishtail chisel, plus one quarter. Using Tool 3, stab a winding cut around the bead exactly as you did in stages two and three for the rope molding ( page 73 ), and all along the length of the blank bead. Don’t undercut!

Create flats

2Use the chisel (Tool 1) to flatten the wood between these cuts in every other unit, down about one third of the bead height. Take care to cut the wood with the grain here. These flats form the top surface of the stick. Choose the chisel width to fit between the ribbons. Protect the edges of the ribbon and do not accidentally lever or chip them out.

Create sticks

3Mentally divide the width of your flat into thirds. The middle third is the stick. Place the edge of the chisel (Tool 1) along one of these imaginary lines so it touches the ribbon at each end. You are now about to cut down each side of the stick and this is the starting position.

4Draw the handle of the chisel toward you; scoop the corner in an arc down into the wood along the imaginary line. Keep the tool vertical. The deepest point is the middle of the length of the stick where you have plunged the corner of the blade down. Repeat. Work to get an even sense of the line of the stick passing from flat to flat.

5Make a cut with your gouge (Tool 3) that scoops in a similar manner to Step 4. The handle will come back toward you so that the lower corner can arc down to meet the cut you made. This cut releases a chip of wood shaped like an orange segment.

Create depth

6Using Tool 3, follow the line of the ribbon as it curves. Make two vertical cuts into the junction between ribbon and fillet. We are trying to give a little more illusion to the ribbon as it passes around the stick. Keep the line of the ribbon edge flowing.

7Using Tool 2: With the chisel blade sliding on the fillet, nick out the little triangle of wood. This move is just as you did for the pea molding. The result should be that you feel you are now looking at the underside of the ribbon as it goes round the back of the stick.

Develop ribbon

8Using Tool 4, run a little groove along the center line of each section of ribbon. It should be heavier in the middle, fading away as it winds round to the fillet. This line not only adds a little flair to the molding but also helps the viewer read the winding nature of the ribbon.

CORNERS AND LAYING OUT

Many carved moldings come to grief—they plainly don’t work— when the direction of the wood changes acutely.

     A lot of beginners think they must be doing something wrong, but not so; it’s the nature of the beast. Many molding designs work in a straight line but not when the molding negotiates a 90° corner, which is the most common. For example you could never place a rounded pea on the corner in a way that matches all the other peas, nor simply flow the Rope or Ribbon & Stick around 90°. Demonstrate this to yourself by drawing. Due to this difficulty, you’ll find the corners of molded frames, etc., carved with a different design, or simply left blank, with the molding stopping short. One awful thing you’ll see is where the carver has fudged the corner and simply bent or distorted the unit design inappropriately and hopes no one will notice.

     Work out the repeated length of unit in a molding and plan your layout from the center of a length outward. Stopping your carving just short of the corner is the simplest way to deal with it. With a little more experience, you can invent some other ornamental detail to fill in the blank. Look for moldings like those on furniture and in museums for ideas.

     I warn you, however, some people find moldings addictive, and once you get the hang of how they work—how they are built up sequentially with simple cuts—you’ll find the more elaborately carved molding an absorbing challenge.

&

It is no big surprise to say that all and any carving consists of matter, wood—mass. And mass occupies space, so all carvings occupy space. This very obvious fact leads to many important consequences and considerations for carvers.

     Where mass and space meet, you find a surface. And you must have a surface. It is only ever surfaces that we see and touch; you never see or touch the mass per se, only its surfaces.

     And now consider where the surfaces of different masses meet. They meet at the change of plane we call a junction. For example, quite obvious and hard junctions occur between the outline of a relief-carved subject and its background, or between one three-dimensional element within the carving and another.

     Hard junctions are also quite clearly a type of line. Subtler changes of plane produce softer junctions and thus, also, lines. You’ll also see understated lines arising between tool facets worked into a surface. Yet another sort of line to be found in carving is one actually drawn into the surface, as in hair or fur.

     Here’s the crux. Physically, that’s all any carving or sculpture consists of: surfaces (where mass meets space), junctions (where surfaces meet) and lines (stronger or subtler changes of plane, drawn lines, and including junctions themselves). Those three things are what you deal with, and each one must have its proper due.

     So many times carvings technically fail because their surfaces, junctions, and lines are poorly worked, untidy, unclear, or simply running untrue. Think of it like a checklist: as you go along, and before you can say you have finished, consider every surface, junction, and line. Look at them. Consider them. Judge them. And take the trouble to correct them if you need to.

SECTION III: EXERCISES

Chapter 7

VEINER AND

A veiner is a small deep gouge. Its principle function is to carve lines. The name usually refers to gouges less than ⅛" (3mm) wide and having a semicircular (#9) or deeper (#10 or 11, which are more U shaped) sweep.

     The V-tool is, in effect, two chisels joined together at an angle. It’s an essential part of a traditional carver’s kit, having a variety of uses and more-or-less living on the bench. The V-tool is commonly selected for cutting straightforward lines on the surface of a piece of work when actually the veiner would be the far better tool.

     The veiner is something of a neglected tool these days. Many carvers unthinkingly reach for the V-tool for carving lines instead, but this can be a mistake because the V-tool and veiner create different and distinct effects. In this chapter I’ll be giving the veiner pre-eminence: it’s a tool worth knowing about and having in your armory. At the same time we’ll get a chance for more practice with the low-level grip as we use the veiner to run those long sweeping lines that look so good in traditional carving.

Veiners can be used for thin running

THE

To see why the two tools are not interchangeable for carving simple lines we need to take a close-up of these tools in action and see two important differences in the way these tools work:

KEELS AND BEVELS

The two chisels that make the V-tool have a bevel each. When joined together at an angle, the sides of these chisels meet to create a third bevel: the keel. Turn your V-tool over to look at the line of the keel and you will see it as a smooth, slightly rounded over, but essentially straight line of metal.

     When you offer your V-tool to the wood in the normal fashion, it is this third bevel, the keel, which rests on the surface. And when you push the angled cutting edge of the V-tool into and along a groove, the keel obviously follows—and here lies the crunch, quite literally.

     Try this:

a shallow, curving cut with the V-tool. You’ll see the straight keel is lifted well out of the way, above the wood surface.

a deeper curved groove with the V. The keel now sits more and more within the groove you’ve just made.

a curve deeper still. There comes a point when the straight keel fights against the curve of the groove, bruising and tearing the walls, surface, and edges of the groove.

   The upshot is that the shallower and slower (longer) the curves, the better the line you can draw with the V-tool.

V-tool cut (left) versus veiner cut (right).

     The veiner, on the other hand, has a short bevel, which does not have anything like the same problem binding in its groove as does the keel of the V-tool. However, even the veiner is limited when it comes to tight curves and, as we shall see in the projects, you may have to switch to gouges for the tightest. So, you can draw light curving lines with the V-tool but there is still another reason why the veiner is preferable: it creates a tighter line with better shadow.

SIDE WALLS

The most commonly used V-tool cuts a groove with a 60° angle and, although you can buy 45° angles that will cut a sharper groove, by definition the walls always slope out. The veiner on the other hand has vertical walls, and the edges of its groove must therefore have a harder shadow.

     You might think this is a small point until you put the line of a V-tool and that of a veiner together. The difference is immediately obvious—and matters in the way the difference between two adjacent notes on a piano matter.

     Thus, the veiner in this context is the better tool for drawing simple lines on flat surfaces: not only will it negotiate tighter corners more easily, but it will create a sharper line.

     I shall be working with the veiner in the following projects, but why not convince yourself of the different value of these tools by repeating the projects with the V-tool?

The walls of the veiner meet the surface at a right angle. There will always be a harder shadow, and thus a stronger-looking line than that of the V-tool, which meets the surface at an

PRACTICE

In these projects we’ll mainly practice running cuts using the low-angle grip Whenever the curves become too tight for the veiner we’ll have to carve the line with crescent or slicing cuts, with our gouges held in the highangle grip

DESIGN

I have chosen a simple line design with a fascinating history to carve with our veiner. We’ll work the design in three different ways and see a small sample of the sort of effects you can get out of this tool, by itself and with a little help from its friends. You can treat many other subjects in the same way as we do here: flowers, wildlife, even lettering. Choose designs with clean, simple, flowing lines and lots of internal space for the most impact.

     The Picts were the indigenous tribes of what is now Scotland, surviving the Roman occupation of Britain on the other side of the famous Hadrian’s Wall. They were eventually absorbed by the adjacent Celts by the tenth century and disappeared from history. We have only anecdotal evidence for the Picts for they left no written word and only enigmatic stone carvings.

     One of these carvings is known as the Burghead Bull—a beautiful seventh century example of the early Pictish incised style in which the lines of the design are simply pecked into the stone surface.

     This fabulous carved slab is one of six similar stone slabs found together at Burghead on the shores of the Moray Firth in northeast Scotland, the site of a major Pict fortress. The use and meaning of these free-standing carvings is not fully understood: they may have been memorials or celebrating the royal herd, or even part of a warrior cult of strength and aggression.

     You are following a design, then, that is more than 1,300 years old. And across this age we can still see the Burghead Bull in a strong, natural pose, with fluid lines and its muscles and joints emphasized by scrolls. I have taken a few liberties with the design, mainly enlarging the spirals and simplifying the feet.

WOOD

Since the line is nothing less than a groove of shadow playing on the light of the surface, we will lose it on strongly figured wood. To avoid a camouflaging effect, a light, bland, pale wood, such as limewood, basswood, birch, jelutong, maple, or sycamore, will work best.

     Also bear in mind that we will be coloring the wood. And if you stain a brown wood blue, for example, that brown will turn the blue color muddy. (The best solution here is to bleach the wood before using the stain.)

     You’ll need three pieces of wood for the three projects in this chapter. I used a single, thick block of jelutong—10" x 6" x 4" (250mm x 150mm x 100mm)—and sliced off each project when I completed it.

Fluid Lines

The good looks of this carving depend on fluid lines. Practice on spare wood first!

TRANSFERRING YOUR DRAWING

I found the easiest way to get my drawing from paper to wood was simply to press firmly with a ballpoint pen. This leaves an indentation on the surface of the wood that is readily seen when you play a light across it. You don’t really need to go around and draw in the indentations but do so if it helps, so long as any uncarved marks can be removed when you are finished.

     I used the same drawing for each project, changing my ballpoint from blue to red to black on the paper so I could better see where I’d been pressing.

MATERIALS & TOOLS

■   10" x 6" x 4" (250mm x 150mm x 100mm) sliced into 3 blanks; or 3 each 10" x 6" x ½" (250mm x 150mm x 13mm) blond, pale wood of choice (basswood, birch, jelutong, or sycamore)

■   Dark varnish of choice (I use dark brown)

■   Red dye, or stain, or dye of choice

■   Gold gouache paint or gilding wax (available at art stores)

■   Ultraviolet resistant varnish

■   Rubber gloves (to protect your hands from the dye)

■   Veiner. I use a Pfiel, 2mm x cut #11, but any ½" (3mm) or smaller #9–#11 gouge (Sheffield list) will work

■   Skew chisel or knife (to cut the ends off the chips when carving grooves)

■   #3 gouges: and ¼" or ½" (8mm, and 6mm or 13mm)

■   5/16" (8mm) #6 gouge

■   ¼" (6mm) #7 gouge

■   ¼" (6mm) #8 gouge (These last three are used to create the spiral ends and tight curves. You can adjust the designs to suit the gouges you have)

■   Marking gauge or V-tool

■   Frosting tool (see below)

■   Brush of choice (to apply varnish)

■   Fine, flat brush (to apply dye)

■   Small, flat brush (to apply gold paint)

Transfer the pattern to the wood by tracing with a ballpoint pen.

Photocopy pattern at 180%

PROJECT

Here we have carving at its most drawing-like. I originally saw something like this in Bavaria where folk artists first heavily varnish the inside of wooden bowls and then chip or slice flowers or other patterns into the underlying wood with palm gouges and veiners.

METHOD:

Start by brushing a dark skin of varnish onto your wood. You don’t have to use brown like me! I needed several coats. The color must sit on the surface and not soak into the wood, as a stain does, for example. Rather like drawing in ink, you get one shot at carving the line. See the drawing as a guide. It’s better to concentrate on incising a fluid line than tensely and slavishly following what you have drawn.

Simple line bull carving.

Run the long curves

1Begin by running the long curves of the bull with the veiner: flowing, continuous, and even. Try to avoid flats (straight sections in what should be a curving line). You get an even width to the veiner cut by having an even depth. Although I don’t do it here, bear in mind that altering the width of the line by cutting shallower or deeper is an artistic option for other designs.

2Don’t pull or tear shavings away: wait until you cut the end of the groove with another line, or neatly nip off the ends with the tip of the skew chisel.

3Don’t forget to switch hands and keep the tool corners clear. As the curves get tighter, keep your elbows in and move your body around behind the tool.

Cut the tight curves

4As curves tighten and you’ve gone as far as you can with the veiner, swap to the gouges and the high-angle grip to take out crescent and slicing cuts to finish. The ends of the spirals, the eye, and the cloven hooves would be such places. And that’s it really: a simple and immediate effect. I’m sure you can see the similarity to drawing and the need for a steady hand and good, precise tool control to get the best effect.

PROJECT 2:

Cavo Relievo (pronounced “Kaa-vo Rih-lee-ay-vo,” and meaning hollow relief in late nineteenth century Italian) is a type of relief carving where the subject lies below the level of the original surface. Egyptian wall carvings frequently exhibit this technique: the surrounding surface is untouched even as the subject is cut into the stone.

     We are going to convert the work we did in the last project into a simple cavo relievo version of the Burghead Bull.

METHOD:

■   Take a new piece of plain, untreated, wood.

■   Transfer your drawing again by pressing through the paper into the surface.

■   Carve the whole Burghead Bull design again, exactly as in the previous project.

   This is a very shallow relief and your task is to give the subject a little form while showing what is overlapping what. So, before you start, look at your drawing and decide which are the high spots—in other words, which parts of the bull are level with the surface and which go behind.

Cavo relievo bull

Troublesome Shavings

If the shaving doesn’t come away because you have carved a little deeper than the initial groove, take either the same tool or a skew chisel in the high-angle grip and run its corner or edge lightly along the vertical wall of the veiner groove to release the shaving. The trick is to get the two cuts (vertical and more horizontal) to meet neatly.

Shave down the bull

1Take a flat gouge (¼"–½" [6mm–13mm] #3), turn it upside down, and shave off the edge of the bull down to the bottom of the groove you made with the veiner. Try to merge this cut into the body. Use the gouge upside down.

2Carry on in this way all over the design, sorting out the various levels by stopping the cuts at the higher elements. You are free to choose how to treat the spirals–which part high, which low. Give emphasis (give a stronger shadow) to the outline.

PROJECT 3:

This time we are going to texture the background around the bull. Immediately you will see how, with very little effort, we can make the design stand out and move from a simple line drawing to a sort of relief. Relief is a bit of a grandiose term for what we do here. After all, it’s still the same line drawing, and untouched; but there’s an impact there where it wasn’t before.

     A froster or frosting tool (also called a matting tool) is a metal punch, the end of which has lots of little square pyramidal teeth and looks like a little meat tenderizing mallet. You can buy such punches from woodcarving suppliers or make them yourself from a bolt and triangular file.

     The commonest froster has a square grid of 16 teeth (even numbers like this are easiest to make). You can buy or make frosters with a row or rows of complimentary size teeth, of any number: 2, 4, 6 etc. to fit into larger or smaller areas.

METHOD:

■   Yet again, take a new piece of plain, untreated, wood.

■   Transfer your drawing again by pressing through the paper into the surface.

■   Carve the whole Burghead Bull design again, exactly as in the first project.

A frosted version of the bull

Create frame

1Add in a line around the edge to represent a frame. I use a marking gauge to score in the line, but you could use your veiner or V-tool. I have allowed the bull to overlap the bottom edge of the frame so it looks as if it is standing on something.

Frost the background

2Work around the outside of the bull first. Tilt the froster so that one edge lies in and along the carved groove. Tap the froster into the wood with your hammer, firmly but not heavily. Move the froster along the line and repeat.

3Continue around the bull and also the frame, tilting the froster appropriately. Eventually all of the bull and frame will be outlined with an energetic line of frosted or matted wood.

4Now fill in the background by going back and forth parallel to the horizontal edge of the frame.

Dye the surface

5The frosting causes our Burghead Bull to stand out from the background. Next, I brushed a water-based red dye onto the whole surface. The crushed, frosted background absorbs more stain and thus reflects light differently from the smooth untouched surface.

Add paint

6Stroke gold gouache paint across the frosted area with a fine flat brush. Brush very lightly, picking up only the surface and leaving the indentations with a lacy effect. Use an anti UV varnish to protect against color fading.

FORM

When you carve, you take wood away. Thus your final carving is actually uncarved wood.

     Carvers create space, not wood. Carving is a glyptic (reductive) process: you reduce your material until you are left with what you want. Here is the crucial idea to keep in mind: You carve away wood, but what really matters is the wood you leave behind.

     Unfortunately, many students become fascinated with removing wood, and this gets them into trouble. They end up taking away too much, hollowing out leaves, say, when they would do better leaving the forms rounded. Or they start by piercing a hole only to find it gets bigger and bigger. They need to make a mental change and think about what they are leaving, rather than what they are taking away.

     Place your attention on what’s left when the gouge leaves the wood: its mass; how it articulates with the next mass; the flow of the surface; lines and edges, and so on. That’s your carving.

     So, with regard to piercing holes: any line that represents a space in the wood is really a horizon (see page a three-dimensional edge, and will erode the surrounding surface and get bigger as you play with it. Leave the hole alone and lead the form—the wood—into where the space will be. In other words: work toward the holes.

     Take care of the form and the space will take care of itself.

SECTION IV: RELIEF CARVING

Chapter 8

AN IN

This project, coupled with the V-tool and line work we have done will lay the foundation for your low relief carving. In low relief, the depth is quite shallow and the carving feels light and flat. Indeed, our depth here will only be about (3–5mm) around our subject.

     There are three stages in a simple relief carving. In this project we will be dealing only with stages 1 and 2.

leveling, and finishing off the background within and around a subject

the subject accurately—also called setting-in, as we end up with a raised subject that looks cut out

the subject itself

     Note: For a full course in relief carving, see my book Relief Carving: A Practical Course (GMC).

TERMS:

■   In traditional carving the background is often simply called the ground and establishing it is called grounding or grounding out.

■   Grounds can be open—approached easily from the side—or closed— surrounded by wood and thus trickier to get at. Carvers need to be able to deal with both instances competently.

This kanji project will exercise your low relief carving skills.

Photocopy pattern at desired size

MATERIALS & TOOLS

■   Un-figured, tight-grained wood ¾" to 1" (19 to 25mm) thick—such as oak, basswood, or mahogany

■   Temporary-bond spray adhesive

■   Tracing paper

■   Pebble or small stone of choice

■   Two-part epoxy

■   Matte acrylic varnish or beeswax polish

■   Ruler or marking gauge

■   ⅜" (10mm) 60° V-tool

■   ⅜" (10mm) skew chisel

■   #3 gouges: a variety from ¼" to ¾" (6mm to 19mm)

■   #6 or #7 gouges: a variety from ¼" to ¾" (6mm to 19mm)

■   #8 or #9 gouges: a variety from ¼" to ½" (6mm to 13mm)

■   Assorted short-bent gouges and skews (essentially, whatever you have)

DESIGN

Right at the start, I want to emphasize that what we will be doing here is entirely independent of the

     I have chosen this design to give us some excellent practice in important and fundamental carving techniques, but the design could be anything that works in relief as a silhouette. For example: any letter, of any style (from Hebrew to Arabic); single (monographs) or grouped (a house sign, blocks of text); even flowers, fish, or geometric patterns. So do feel free to design something for yourself; the method of carving will be the same in each case.

     Whatever you choose, you need a neat accurate outline of your subject. Make your lines—what will be the outline of the subject— clean, simple, and flowing, quite large, and without fiddly detail.

     Bear in mind, too, the strength of the wood fibers (also known as the grain). Short fibers are weak and liable to break off, so check your design and adjust for strength.

     My carving consists of an example of what is known as kanji: a form of Japanese writing or script, adapted here from its normal brush look. I imagined the piece hanging on the wall, a little like a scroll.

     I have two kanji characters that make one word: Mu-Shin. Because Japanese is read from the top down, I have to put them one above the other in my design. Mu-shin is a wonderful concept that arises out of Zen and for which there is no real equivalent in English. You see it translated as “empty-mind” or “no-mind “. It means a mind that is empty, in the sense of having infinite capacity and potential (as opposed to not being there!); a sort of complete innocence, rather than our ordinary, everyday mind. Once only noticed in martial arts. (“mind like water”), the concept has now been hijacked by modern business. To give the kanji a context—as well as giving us more valuable carving practice—I have added a pattern of water flowing around a stone below.

CRITIQUE

Before you copy the design, consider these arguable points:

     On reflection, when the carving was finished, I wasn’t sure whether a pebble lying on a vertical surface really works, as this defies both logic and gravity.

     The pebble also seemed to me a little dominant in the design. A smaller, flatter stone would feel lighter, less dominant, and more balanced, while painting the surfaces of the kanji would, in turn, strengthen these elements. And perhaps setting the whole piece in a deep, boxlike frame would take away some of the isolated dominance of the pebble.

WOOD

A tight-grained wood such as oak, lime, basswood, or mahogany is ideal but any unfigured, carveable wood will do. Because the kanji and design reads vertically, I have the grain orientated this way too. Western writing, which reads horizontally, looks better with the grain horizontal. Since our carving is quite shallow, and the water lines not very deep, you need only use a board ¾"–1" (19–25mm) thick.

TOOLS

I use regular carving tools for most of the work. Where our real challenge lies is in the closed grounds. There are some special bent carving tools for these and other awkward areas and corners in the background.

Drawing

1Before beginning carving proper, I set in a depth of background, about ⅛"– 3 / 16 " (3–5mm), around the design edge of the board with a marking gauge to help me keep the background level.

2Draw an outline of your design onto the wood or simply glue a photocopy of the pattern directly onto the wood as I did here. I used a temporary-bond spray adhesive that gives a light tack, so the paper will readily peel away when no longer needed.

Line in the

3Begin by giving the subject a rough outline. Run a trench around each element with the V tool, on the waste side of the line. This is called lining in, which, among other things, protects the subject from accidental damage when you remove the surrounding waste. Leave the pebble and stream alone for the moment.

4Continue outlining the elements. Take your V-tool in the low-angle grip and go around all the elements with smooth flowing lines. Do the best you can within closed grounds.

5Don’t go deeper than your proposed background—go to just above the final surface. Ignore little details; we will deal with these later when we set in.

Lower the background

6You could use a router, but consider that your carving surface may be round (convex) rather than flat; a router would then be useless. So it’s worth being competent in lowering and leveling. Use a medium gouge (#6 or 7) for light relief like this; use a quicker (deeper) gouge (#8 or 9) to speed things up where the depth is greater.

TIP: CUTTING DIAGONALLY

Remember that when cutting diagonally across the wood fibers, one side of the V-tool cuts with and the other against the grain. Aim to put the good or smooth side of the V groove next to the subject at all times and the rough side to the

7Continue to lower the background carefully. Use narrower gouges on the closed grounds. Just do the best you can here; it’s easier to deal with narrow closed grounds as separate units later. At the same time, use the gouge to line in above the stream.

Lowering the Background

■   Keep the corners of the gouge clear of the wood and work from the outsides of the board, in.

■   Work across the grain—this avoids having to figure out whether you are carving with or against the grain and the shavings just fall away.

■   Work methodically in long running cuts, using the low-angle grip, rather than haphazardly—it’s much quicker in the long run.

■   Control the tool! Don’t run it into your subject.

■   Take care too not to go below the final surface depth. You should be arriving at the depth of the V-tool cut.

■   Think about the bottom of the trenches and aim to lay these just above your final surface looking as though they pass behind the subject.

Leveling the Background

■   Use the low-angle grip and work at right angles to the grain and slice the cutting edge to the left or right. See page “Slicing Cut”. This slicing action effectively pares along the grain even as it passes across it. So, if you find you are going against the grain as you cut to the left, drift the cut to the right, and vice versa. In this way you can deal with the most awkward or recalcitrant lie of the fibers.

■   Smooth over all the ridges from the leveling stages. Work methodically so that you never pass from an area leaving torn grain or other defects.

■   Eye the background through, trying to keep the surface level. It doesn’t have to be mechanically flat—it just has to appear flat.

■   Come up to the walls around the subject left by the V-tool, but don’t bother cleaning the junctions—it’s more efficient to deal with these in the next stage of setting-in.

Level the

8Next we level and smooth the background surface. Leave closed grounds and awkward spaces for the moment; just deal with the big picture. Use flat gouges: Sheffield list #3 or Pfeil cut #2, and as wide as possible. As the levelled surface is also a finished one, make sure your cutting edges are immaculately sharp.

9Turn to narrower flat gouges to get into narrower recesses. Level the inner, closed grounds as best as possible.

Set In the

10 This is the stage of accurate outlining: we finish precisely to the drawing of our subject. Lean the subject’s walls about 10-15˚ (so the footprint on the ground is slightly wider than the surface). Deal with the big, simple areas first and then focus on the detail and more awkward parts. Begin setting in by matching (see sidebar).

11 Switch to setting in by slicing when you’ve gone as far as you can by matching. Use a high-angle grip and your flattest gouges to set in the long, slow curves.

Setting-In

There are two ways of setting-in: by matching and by slicing. Use a high-angle grip for both techniques. You are aiming to get a smooth, continuous line around the subject both at the surface and at the junction with the background, so you’ll need to merge separate cuts carefully. No question but you will have to go back and forth between these techniques.

Matching:

■   Matching works best for tighter, quicker curves, so you need your more curved sweeps.

■   Begin with matching: pick gouges that fit (match) the concave or convex curves of the edges you want to set in, following the lines of your drawing.

■   In a high-angle grip, push the cutting edge down towards the background but at a slight angle so the wall slopes out. Pay attention to the depth and try not to cut below the background. You can ease the tool out and extend the cut along the sweep if this is appropriate.

■   Use the same tool for as long as possible, looking around the design for where you can apply that particular sweep.

■   Set in enclosed grounds. You will need to place stop cuts with a skew chisel wherever walls meet (miter) at a corner to stop splintering and otherwise control the grain. When you’ve gone as far as you can, switch to slicing.

Slicing:

■   Slicing works best for longer, slower curves so you’ll find you need your flattest gouges (sweeps #3 and #4) at a variety of widths.

■   High-angle grip: push with your thumb, treating the cutting edge of the gouge like a knife, with its trailing corner like the point of a knife. Keep the leading corner of the gouge clear of the wood to stop digging in.

■   Feel your way through the curves, convex and concave, and join up with the matching cuts. Again work on the closed grounds.

■   Eventually, all the elements of the subject will be set in with a continual, flowing line.

Smooth the

12 Now return to your flat gouges and finish off the background up the subject. You may need to return to one or other methods of setting in to release the shaving.

Background

■   The task or exercise here is to take the background up to the walls and finish with a neat junction, while keeping it level.

■   It is inevitable you will leave the odd stab mark or imperfection in the ground but really try your best: creating clean junctions and surfaces is a fundamental and extremely important woodcarving skill to acquire.

■   Depending on your design, you’ll need a variety of widths to get between various elements and avoid damaging the walls of your subject: and the narrower the gap, the narrower the tool.

■   Deal with the larger, simpler, easier areas first; then sneak up on difficult areas.

■   Use a stiff carving brush to clean away chips or shavings. Never pull them off.

13 The subject should end up with a smooth wall, slightly sloping out and with a clean junction where it meets the background.

Clean

14 After completing the carving, peel off the drawing. Clean up the surface with a flat sanding block and fine sandpaper. Once back to the original wood, check the surface edges of your subject again for clean, neat lines.

SPECIAL TOOLS FOR AWKWARD PLACES

Smoothing off closed grounds and cleaning into tight corners can be a major challenge, but there are some tools that really help.

     Grounders or grounding tools are shortbent (spoon) flat gouges or sometimes shortbent chisels—though I find the latter less useful. Such tools will get into tight areas where straight gouges foul on the top edges of the recess. It’s a good idea to have a selection of widths.

     Skew chisels, both straight and shortbent (spoon), get into tight angles and corners where square-ended grounders won’t reach.

     Shortbent skews come in pairs, cutting to the left or right.

Grounding tool.

Skew

Shortbent skew

Create the stream

15 Start by letting in (or recessing) the pebble into the wood, but don’t secure it. The water is represented by running cuts from a deep gouge. Carefully work in both directions, forming the smooth watery lines of the ridges. Merge the half grooves that define the outside ridges of the stream with the background, rather than leaving a hard line.

16 Fix the pebble in position. I suggest either gluing with two-part epoxy resin glue or, if the stone is softer, drilling a small hole in the stone and inserting a drywall or Rawl plug, then attaching the pebble with a screw from the back. I finished the wood in a matte acrylic varnish.

Carving the Stream

■   Practice the stream grooves on a spare bit of wood first.

■   Flow the stream tidily around the pebble. Control the lines. Keep them parallel and uniform.

■   When you cut diagonally across the wood fibers with a deep gouge, one side will cut with the grain, the other will cut against it—as happened with the V-tool when you were lining in and we put the rough side to the waste. For our stream, however, there is no waste side. In fact you have rather vulnerable ridges in between the grooves. The trick is to cut each half of any groove separately, thinking more of the lines of the ridges. You need to reverse the direction of the cut for each side of the groove to prevent the ridge crumbling.

OVER THE

You have an idea for a carving, let’s say a small bird. What’s the first thing you might do?

     You’d probably do what most carvers do: you’d probably draw it; anything from a simple sketch to a quite detailed drawing, and usually with a strong outline.

     Now, if you were to perch that bird on your finger, what would you see? Well, certainly not lines like your drawing.

     You may say that there is an outline or silhouette but this is only true from one point of view and with the bird staying absolutely still. If either you or the bird moves, so does the outline, the silhouette. There are actually an infinite number of outlines to an object in the round. What we draw and call an outline is artificial, a contrivance. Actually what you see are not lines at all but horizons—a horizon being an edge beyond which we cannot see.

     By all means use drawings and outlines to help you with your carving, but you’ll get more of a sense of three-dimensionality and mass if you also think in terms of horizons. And in relief carving for example, once you have established the horizon line view running three-dimensionally around your subject from your particular point of view, you can happily and safely undercut wood from below and beyond.

SECTION IV: RELIEF CARVING

Chapter 9

Low Relief

Half an apple sticking out of a background is not a relief carving of an apple. It’s simply half an apple, in the round, on a background. To be a proper relief carving, you must effectively squash the whole apple so that you have a sense of the apple continuing around beyond the halfway, or horizon, line. In other words, you have to reduce the depth dimension.

     The difference between low and high relief is not so much a numerical amount, but a matter of how much this depth dimension is reduced; how much the subject is compressed.

     Low relief, which we are tackling here, is very flat. You’ll see some of the finest low relief on coins. Low relief comes closest to drawing and will often use tricks of perspective. There is not a lot of wood to remove and its success depends a lot on the fluidity of lines and the overall illusion of depth.

     I craftily tackled some of the initial techniques for a low relief in the last chapter where we finished with an outline of our subject neatly set in. Up to this point, the method is identical, so here I’ll just refresh the key points for this stage, then go farther with the subject’s modeling, detail, and undercutting.

Creating a 3-D

Movement of the form itself, the shaping, undercutting, and texturing, all create the illusion of dimension in thin wood.

MATERIALS & TOOLS

■   1 ½" x 9" (along the grain) x 11 ½" (across the grain) (40mm x 230mm x 290mm) limewood, basswood, or wood of choice

■   Wood bleach, or white stain or dye

■   Tung oil, Danish oil, or linseed oil

■   Carbon paper

I’ve provided a complete list of the regular carving gouges I used for this carving. Reasonably similar tools should work just as well.

■   Regular Gouges (Sheffield list):

■   #3 gouges: ½", ¾", and (13mm, 19mm, and 21mm)

■   ⅜" (10mm) #4 gouge

■   5/8" (16mm) #5 gouge

■   5/8" (16mm) #6 gouge

■   ⅜" (10mm) #8 gouge

■   ¾" (19mm) #10 gouge

■   7/16" (11mm) 60° V-tool

■   ⅜" (10mm) skew chisel

■   Flat short-bent gouge (optional)

■   Pencil and ruler or marking gauge

■   Rags or brushes to apply finish

Photocopy pattern at

DESIGN

I’ve chosen a koi or carp as my subject. I’ve only ever watched these beautiful creatures in ponds, looking from above, so that’s how I thought I’d carve it: looking down at it swimming past with a slow, lazy movement.

     I researched the fish and made a drawing based on many photos. I’m trying for the sense of smooth flow with a slight turn of the koi’s body. I am not too interested in factual correctness: this is a carving, a representation in wood, not a real fish!

     From many preliminary sketches I arrived at a full-sized working drawing, which I then transferred to my wood with carbon paper.

WOOD

I carved the low relief into the surface of a thick block of limewood. Basswood or similar would be an alternative. My intention is to saw the completed low relief carving from the block and carve a high relief version of the same design in the remaining material in the next chapter This will demonstrate the different impact of relief depths on the same design.

     The block dimensions were 11 ½" (290mm) across the grain by 9" (230mm) with the grain.

     Notice that I have the grain running horizontally, even though the height of the carving might suggest that vertical would be preferable. The principal reason for the choice is strength; you must always consider this right from the start. I have orientated the grain as best I can to run it into the weaker parts of the koi design: tail, fins, and whiskers.

     Additionally, rather than carve reeds or similar in the background to anchor the design, I wanted to bring out the figuring across the direction of the koi to give a watery effect.

     The depth of this carving is about (5mm). Score this depth line around your wood with a marking gauge.

STAGE I : THE

I covered this stage in detail in Chapter 8 in which we ended with an accurate outline of our subject. I’ll just remind you of the essentials here because we follow the same process:

STEP 1: LININGIN THE SUBJECT

■   Hold your V-tool in the low-angle grip.

■   Carve with smooth, flowing lines to a depth just above the final surface.

■   Place the clean or smooth side of the V groove next to the koi at all times and the rough side to the waste.

■   For now, do your best to ignore the details in the outline, tricky areas, and closed grounds. You can better take care of them later when we set in.

■   Give delicate parts, such as the whiskers, a wide berth.

Step 1: Lining in the

STEP 2: LOWERING THE BACKGROUND

■   I used a deep gouge (#10) for speed here, as the carving is a little deeper than the work we did in the last chapter. A medium gouge (#6 or 7) might be preferable for a shallower carving. Use narrower gouges on the closed grounds and tighter areas such as between the tail fins.

■   Hold the gouge in the low-angle grip for long running cuts.

■   Work methodically across the grain from the outer edge of the board, in. Keep the gouge corners clear of the wood.

■   Don’t go below the final surface depth. Aim to lay the bottom of the trenches just above your final surface, looking as though they pass correctly behind the koi.

STEP 3: LEVELING THE BACK GROUND

■   Use flat gouges for leveling: Sheffield list #3 or Pfeil cut #2.

■   Work with your widest gouge for as long as possible at any time. Turn to narrower tools for tighter recesses.

■   Make sure your cutting edges are immaculately sharp; this will be a finished surface.

■   Use the low-angle grip. Carve at right angles to the grain and slice the cutting edge to the left or right (unless it’s obvious you can work safely along the grain).

■   Work methodically so an area is clean and with no tears—finished—before you leave it.

■   Keep the surface level, passing uniformly behind the koi. Stop the smooth background short of the walls around the koi (left by the V-tool); it is better to leave cleaning these junctions until the next step.

Step 2: Lowering the

Step 3: Leveling the

Step 4: Setting in or accurately

Step 5: Finishing off the

Note the smooth junctions where the walls meet the

STEP 4: SETTING - IN OR ACCURATELY OUTLINING

■   Use the high-angle grip. Lean the walls of the koi about 10-15˚. Pay attention to the depth and try not to cut below the background.

■   Start with the tighter curves and match the sweep of a gouge to the profile of the outline, extending the cut if necessary.

■   Turn to slicing for longer, slower curves—most of the setting-in here was done in this way. Push with your thumb, treating the cutting edge of the gouge like a knife.

■   Carefully merge your separate setting-in cuts into a smooth, continuous line around the koi.

STEP 5: FINISHING OFF THE BACKGROUND

■   Return to flat gouges in the low-angle grip and finish off most of the background up the subject.

■   Keep with the flat gouges and finish the background up to the walls, returning to other gouges in the high-angle grip for setting-in to a neat junction.

■   Go back and forth between these techniques, repeating as necessary. Try your best not to leave stab marks in the background; we will be undercutting some of the edge around the koi and these marks will show.

■   When you have finished this stage, the koi should appear as a silhouette with smooth flowing walls, slightly sloping out, and with clean junctions where the walls meet the background.

STAGE II:

The next step is to model the blank fish: give it a shape or form that underpins any details or undercutting. It is important to see the order in which these processes happen: model first, then add details to the form. Undercutting normally takes place toward the end of carving, when you are sure all the modeled forms are correct. Since it is also necessary to finish the modeling before putting in the details, you can choose which you do first: details or undercutting You’ll know what seems safest at the time.

     Our koi carving readily divides into steps: body, head, and tail. We’ll approach the carving in that order. You won’t always necessarily have a carving that divides like this, nor one that you’d tackle in such a neat order.

Modeling

■   Details such as the scales must be added after the modeling to be in the right place. It’s a sign that you have put details in too early if you subsequently change the shape and have to carve the details away.

■   Undercutting normally comes last or at least (as in the low relief here) when you are absolutely sure you have the form right. You can’t carve fresh air if you need to change the shape of the edge.

■   By its very nature, a low relief carving is essentially flat: there is little wood to remove. It’s worth mentioning that without a router or similar tool, getting to this point in the carving can actually take as long, or longer, than carving the subject itself.

■   Start by looking at the koi (or any other subject) for two features that will start you off in the right direction:

in level or strong changes in For our project, those areas are: fins to the body; tail fins; whiskers.

In other words, where you must leave wood. For the koi, these spots are the center spine and the body to either side.

MODELING THE BODY

Lower the fins

1Start by lowering the fins on either side of the body. Line in with your V-tool with the clean side of the cut to the body.

2Lower the fins to about one third of the depth from the background—the middle or halfway line of the subject. Use a flat gouge for the smaller fins but try and give the larger fins an interesting shape.

Shape the body

3Turn your medium gouge upside down with its sweep in sympathy with the curve and round over the edge of the koi. Make long cuts in the direction of the grain and bring the rounded edge to the background. Merge your cuts with the rest of the carving so the edge doesn’t look chamfered.

4Run a deep gouge (#8) on either side of the center spine. Put the clean side of the groove to the spine and taper the spine towards the tail. Merge this groove with the rest of the body.

5Make the tail end of the body more interesting by tilting it: remove more wood to the inside of the curve. Do not carve the tail fins yet.

MODELING THE HEAD

Shape the eyes

1Set in the eyes with the 5/16" (8mm) #5 gouge.

2Shape the eyes with the ⅜" (10mm) #4 gouge, upside down. Remember, this fish is viewed from above, so it’s only the top edge of the eye that is seen. Merge the wood around the eyes into the body and mouth. Shape the mouth end, trimming back and setting in the whiskers.

Shape the lips and whiskers

3Use the V-tool to create the folds around the lips. Carefully separate the whiskers by cutting V grooves with an appropriate gouge.

MODELING THE TAIL

Shape the tail

1A big mistake would be to round over this part of the koi as we did the body. Make the contrast by keeping the tail flat, right up to the edges.

2You may need a grounding tool—a flat shortbent (spoon) gouge—to clean up the tight space between the tail fins.

STAGE III:

Undercutting, which we’ll see more of in the high relief version of this carving in the next chapter gives a sense of definition and drama to the subject by lifting it away from the background and forming shadows. Normally an angle of about 20˚ is quite enough to create the effect.

     Only undercut the fins and tail of the koi. Leave the body and head parts descending simply to the background, without undercutting. This makes the body seem more solid, in contrast with the fin and tail where undercutting makes them appear lighter.

One way to undercut is to use the edge of your

There are two ways to undercut:

■   Carving wood away beneath the edge with your V-tool (see photo at right below)

■   Setting-in again with gouges, but leaning the handle of the carving tool out

■   In both cases, check and clean up the junction between undercut wall and background. Take care not to cut into the background, dipping it next to the fish. Spread out any such depression in the background widely and it is not likely to be noticed.

The koi has been

STAGE IV:

At this point the koi looks finished, but naked (see photo on page it needs to be lightly clothed with scales and flutes (grooves) on the fins and tail.

SCALES

Plan your scales first: the body narrows towards the tail and you’ll need to shuffle the scales carefully to fit believably. You could use a variety of gouges to give different sized scales. Do practice on spare wood first! There are other ways to carve scales but this is the simplest:

a deep gouge in a high-angle grip.

down carefully into the wood, overlapping cuts to give the scale effect. It’s a better effect if you angle your gouge so the corners stab in more deeply.

Angle the gouge so the tips go deeper into the wood when creating

FLUTES

It’s not necessary to cover the fins and tail all over with flutes. Placing them selectively can be more effective and interesting. Again, practice on spare wood first.

out the flutes lightly first with a pencil. Note that they taper in towards the body and stop short of it.

the flutes with a deep gouge. You’ll soon see that the tool behaves like a V-tool, with a good, clean side and a torn one. Make a trial cut first and then work backward and forward along the flute, carving the clean side and avoiding the side of the flute that tears—in this manner you can create a clean ridge. Make sure the ridgelines in between the flutes—what you actually see—flow sweetly.

Run the flutes with a deep

The koi is now complete with scales and

STAGE V:

I wanted contrast between fish and water while keeping a sense of wood. To accomplish this, there are several options. You can bleach the koi, as I did; an alternative might be dying or staining the wood.

bleached the koi with a two-part product (Rustins) for wood, very carefully, taking care not to get it on the background. Protect your hands, skin, and eyes from inadvertent splashes.

I sealed the fish with a matte acrylic varnish that gives a light polish to the surface.

I brushed tung oil into the background (Danish or linseed oils are alternatives).

   I think the strength of the figuring that the oil brings out gives a watery effect to the background; a sense of the koi swimming in something. An alternative might be to carve wavy lines into the background, in which case a V-tool might be the simplest option.

TIP: OIL WARNING

Oil not only brings out the figuring but also any imperfections: stab marks, tears and so on. Make sure your background is immaculately tooled before you apply the oil!

A OF

Undercutting (as opposed to backcutting, where you literally turn the carving over and work from the back) is a very important tool in the carver’s design box. It adds drama by introducing more shadow and gives both a lighter and more three-dimensional quality to the work.

     On the other hand, undercutting weakens the wood and introduces junctions that can be difficult to clean up. For this reason the best guideline is: undercut as little as you need to make the effect.

     The lure of the added drama commonly causes students to undercut early, whereas it’s actually far wiser to undercut last. The reason for this follows on from two principles:

     You can only carve form, not space For example, once you have undercut the ear of an animal, the wood behind the edge of the ear is, by definition, missing. If you later change the shape of the ear and this involves removing wood toward that thin edge, you can soon find yourself with a disastrously different outline to the ear.

     Bear in mind too that edges are really horizons seen from a particular viewpoint that you can’t see behind Establish these three-dimensionally, and only when you are satisfied that the horizons lie true and where you want them, safely remove wood from beneath.

     A final point to make is the amount to which you undercut any carving, and where exactly you undercut, depends upon what you want the viewer to see. In other words, where is the viewer’s point of view? Are they looking up at the carving? In that case, most undercutting will be to the lower edges and the upper might need little. Is the viewer looking down at the subject? In that case, the undercutting will be to the upper edges and the lower ones might need little. Always consider the viewer.

SECTION IV: RELIEF CARVING

Chapter 10

HIGH

The low relief koi we carved in Chapter 9 was so flat that it had many similarities to straightforward drawing. Our project here uses the same koi carp design (see pattern on page but we reduce the background a lot further, which gives us a high relief. In high relief, the depth dimension is still compressed and perspective continues to be important for creating the illusion of true three-dimensionality, but much less so than for low relief.

The difference between low relief and high relief is evident when the two carvings are seen side by

     There is a lot more creative room to model our koi in high relief: there are opportunities for giving it additional life and movement, and more drama through cutting beneath the outline (undercutting).

Produce a dramatic effect by lowering the background and undercutting the

GETTING

I simply cut the previous low relief carving of the koi from its block and so started with the same material: Limewood, 11 ½" (290mm) across the grain x 9" (230mm) with the grain.

     In the low relief, we started by lining in around our fish. However, because we have far more wood to remove, we need to take a different approach here. It is important to grasp the main difference:

■   In lower relief, we set in an accurate outline, then model the subject. In other words we work edge to form.

■   In higher relief, we model the subject first and then set in the accurate outline. So in this case we work form to edge.

     This change of approach saves us a lot of time: we don’t clean up junctions that will be undercut later, or finish off walls in awkward places that will be mostly cut away. Additionally, carving the form first and letting the edge take care of itself is truer to life: any edge is only a horizon. The horizon in a carving is the outline, the line of the edge behind which you cannot see; it exists in a particular position because of our viewpoint. So we carve from a viewpoint and let the edge take care of itself.

Form to Edges

The more you carve three-dimensionally, the more you want to follow the rule of working from the form into the space. You see this principle working in this high relief: we carve the form first (shape the fish itself), set in the edges (where the form ends up meeting the space), and then undercut. This is by far the best way to carve but not always easy or comfortable for beginners to see or follow.

MATERIALS & TOOLS

■   1 ⅛"x 9" x 11 ½" (30mm x 230mm x 290mm) limewood or wood of choice

■   Two-part wood bleach

■   Oil finish of choice, such as tung, Danish, or linseed oil

■   Matte acrylic varnish

Here is the complete list of tools that I used on this carving. You’ll find similar tools will do the job as well:

■   Regular gouges (Sheffield list):

•   #3 gouges: ½" and ¾" (13mm and 19mm)

•   #5 gouges: ⅜", ½", and 5/8" (10mm, 13mm, and 16mm)

•   #6 gouges: ¼" and 7/16" (6mm and 11mm)

•   ⅜" (10mm) #8 gouge (scales)

•   ½" (13mm) #9 gouge (removing the background)

•   ⅜" (10mm) 60° V-tool

•   ⅜" (10mm) skew chisel

■   Shortbent (spoon) gouges:

•   #3 gouges: ¼" and ½" (6mm and 13mm)

•   ¼" (6mm) #7 gouge (flutes)

•   Shortbent skew chisels: (5mm) left and right

STAGE I:

Remember: Only lower the background to slightly above your depth line. We’ll want a little bit of room to plane the surface to its final texture.

STEP 1: LOWERING THE BACKGROUND

Lowering the Background

You’ll find carving the background within the inner curve of the fish more difficult the deeper you get: the walls foul the carving tool. Just do the best you can. Avoid the temptation to deal with small elements, such as the whiskers or tight areas such as between the fins; these are far better left until a later stage.

     The relationship between the finished vertical plowing to the drawing of the fish is the same as that between the finished horizontal plowing and the line marking the background depth.

     Roughing out across the direction of the wood fibers is a really good idea: the shavings simply break away and you don’t have to worry about working with or against the grain.

     You should have a uniformly lowered background at the end of this stage with a rough, but vertical, wall around most of the fish (see photo below).

     There will be an untidy amount of unwanted wood in the junction, up to about ¼" (6mm) from the subject. It’s a waste of time to clean up the junction now. Just ignore the mess; we will deal with it later.

Strive for a uniform background and rough, but vertical,

Mark up your carving

1Begin by imagining (or drawing) a buffer zone around the fish, ironing out the details. This will prevent damaging your subject. The depth of this carving is about 7/8" (22mm). Score a line to this depth around your wood with a marking gauge.

Lower the background

2Plow uniformly across the grain with a deep gouge in the low-angle grip. Start at one end and work toward the other. Stop short at the buffer line or before reaching the far side. Proceed methodically and think flat.

Trim the walls

3When you have lowered the background to ¼" (6mm) above your depth line, trim the walls vertically up to the koi with the same gouge. Return to lowering the background. Stop just above the depth line. Take the walls down to the background.

STEP 2: LEVELING THE BACKGROUND

To level the background, use your widest, flattest gouges in the low-angle grip, exactly as we did for the low relief carving of the koi. Switch to narrower gouges in the recesses. Work methodically across the grain with slicing cuts, skimming off the ridges. Finish well, down to the depth line. Remember, this is the final background surface. Keep the surface level, passing uniformly behind the koi. As with the lowering, stop the smooth background short of the walls around the koi. Work your way over all the background then move to the next step.

Level the background with your widest

STEP 3: ROUGH SETTING - IN

1We will lose our drawing as we shape the fish in the next stage. With the flat gouge, neatly clean up the walls of the koi by trimming off the vertical ridges. There is no need for precision. You are simply trying to preserve an overall sense of the fish.

2Again, do not try to clean up the junction with the background. This will be undercut and whatever work you do here will be lost. However, if you find you have too much debris washed up in the corner and getting in the way, just remove some of it with the deep gouge.

Rough Setting-In

This stage should end with a rough outline of the koi and a clean, finished background all the way around.

     It is difficult to avoid the temptation to clean up the junctions, but remember: they are not where you think they are! The final junctions will be back, under the edge of the wood outlining the koi. There is also the danger of cutting into the background in the attempt to clean up the junction and such marks will be highly visible once we undercut.

     You must leave areas of wood that are weak with more wood bulk for now. Also leave tight recesses alone, such as the ones between fins and body.

STAGE II:

The first thing we have to do in any carving is get the main masses, the lumps and recesses, in place and correctly related and flowing with each other in a general sort of way. These forms underlie everything else we subsequently do, both the modeling and detailing. If they are incorrect for the subject you’ll find you will never get it to look right. Although we are carving a simple relief here, the sequence that follows is extremely important in terms of carving principles.

STEP 1: VISUALIZING THE FORM

Start by trying to visualize the koi in the wood. Imagine you can touch your final carving beneath: place your hands in the air above the surface of the fish and pretend you can touch it. What’s happening? How does it go? Tell yourself. (See Carver’s Voodoo, page

     Mark in the high spots—areas where you will not remove any wood and from which the form runs downhill Here it will be along the front half of the spine, and one of the tail fins.

     Mark any changes of plane where you can remove a lot of wood safely. Here, the side fins will be lowered from the wood surface to about ¼ to ⅓ of the way up from the background. The exact finished level will be for you to judge as the fish is shaped; you might want the fins further back or a little nearer the front.

     Mark in the horizon line along the rest of the body. Remember, the horizon line is an important concept: The horizon in the finished carving is the line below which you cannot see and where you will be free to remove wood. Exactly where this line runs will always depend on the form and the viewpoint you have chosen. In this case, the horizon line will lie ¼ to ⅓ of the way up from the background at the level of the fins, rising at the tail, and much lower at the whiskers.

Visualizing the Form

■   The more you can visualize what’s beneath the wood, the better chance you have of finding it.

■   When you have your koi envisioned firmly in your mind and the wood well marked, you can take up your carving tools and proceed to the next step.

STEP 2: BOSTING IN

TIP: BOSTING

Bosting (with the o as in “Bobby”) is a traditional carving term deriving from an old French word for sketching, that essentially means knocking the whole thing into the overall shape. It’s a more refined concept than roughing out and implies getting the sculptural volumes in the right place and correctly related, and the correct overall flow and feel of the

1Take the side fins down to the horizon line. Keep the body rounded and the fins flat. I only hint at the dorsal fin in this carving. It forms part of a smooth curve that arcs along the back and into the tail, ending in the edge of one of the tail fins.

2Shape the spine and tail fin down from their high spots with upside down flat gouges. Round over the sides along the body and down towards the background. Leave wood for the eyes. Round over the head into the lips and lower the wood of the fragile whiskers fairly close to the background.

Bosting In

■   Bosting is probably the most difficult stage of any carving: you pass through a time of chaos as you explore and consolidate, seek out and define. It is also the most important: bosting underpins everything that follows and if you do it correctly, the rest of the carving will fall into place.

■   Your tool handle will rise and the cutting edge will pass to the vertical as you follow the form over the horizon line. Stop there; don’t continue round as if you would start to undercut after you reach this point.

■   Carve the koi with a variety of gouges and get the overall shape you want. Be bold. Don’t just cut away wood thoughtlessly: try and find the form you’ve been

■   When the overall form has emerged, you can begin to improve it.

STEP 3 : MODELING

1Gradually refine what you are doing, picking gouge shapes to match the curves more closely and shaping the fins a little.

Modeling

At the end of this modeling step, you should have caught your fish: you can feel its presence and see it turning in the water clearly. The surface should be clean and ready for any detail.

2Find the level of the whiskers and redraw them—they are effectively low relief. Don’t make the lips too prominent. Shape the tail more and then split the two tail fins. Turn the board on its side to carve the eyes more easily; don’t make them stick out too much!

STEP 4: ACCURATE SETTING - IN

1Define the outline of the koi. Go around the body and fins and set in the outline by matching or slicing ( page 97 ) along the walls. Take care around the whiskers. Merge all the setting-in cuts that make up the narrow horizon line so they pass continuously around the subject.

Accurate Setting-In

The outline of silhouette of any carving is one of its most important features and must be strong and clear, telling the viewer clearly what they are seeing.

     It is not necessary to set in across the edge more that ⅛" (3mm). Why? Because it’s a waste of time! When you set in the outline, the horizon, you are saying that you can undercut beneath it, which we will do later. Thus, making this edge line any more than ⅛" (3mm) down the wall is work you will necessarily undo.

STAGE III:

Undercutting comes last or at least when you are absolutely sure you have the form right. If you need to re-shape an undercut edge, you’ll soon find you can’t carve fresh air.

1Remove excess waste first with a deep gouge or V-tool. Mostly you can undercut as if you were setting-in at an angle of about 20˚ by slicing or matching gouges to curves. Clean up the background into the junction beneath the koi with flat gouges. Only undercut the whiskers slightly.

2You’ll find you need shortbent flat gouges (grounders or grounding tools) to get into awkward areas of the carving (as shown by the arrows). Also narrow shortbent skew chisels (or gouges) are excellent for tidying corners that are difficult to reach.

3The underlying form of the koi looks good now: clean modeled surfaces, flowing lines, and neat junctions. Undercutting is complete.

Undercutting

■   Flat areas such as fins have edges: keep these sharp. Masses, such as the body, are rounded. Don’t just think of space beneath the body; think of the form and lead it around and into the space beneath.

■   Grip the wood on its side for better access while you undercut.

■   The final junction between the body and background may not be visible in the finished piece, but it should be as clean and smoothly flowing as if it were. This is a sign of good carving.

■   Undercutting weakens parts of a carving. Because we undercut from both sides, the elevated tail is free from the background like the prow of a ship: a dramatic effect, but one that needs the presence of long wood fibers, as we planned here.

STAGE IV:

Work exactly as we did in the low relief koi add scales to the body and flutes to the fins.

     I ran a narrow flowing groove along the back of the koi to give the impression of its dorsal fin.

STAGE V:

Again, work exactly as with the low relief koi

the fish itself with a two-part product for wood. I used Rustins.

it in a matte acrylic varnish.

tung, Danish or linseed oil onto the background to bring out the figuring.

Finishing

Before finishing with wax or oil, change the lighting! Defects in the surfaces such as cuts or tears will show up and you must correct these before continuing.

SUMMARY

We’ve carved the koi in neat stages in order for me to make various points, but it’s really important to understand that most carving isn’t as neat. You are likely to combine the various processes for the sake of efficiency or convenience— that will come with carving experience.

     You have now seen the koi carp in three different expressions, as it were: drawing (flattest), low relief (flat), and high relief (moving from flat to round). Any higher relief and the fish will become completely round. Another relief option is to remove the background altogether, and we will do that in the next chapter.

FEEL THE

In the preceding chapters, I showed you how to level a background surface, first lowering the wood to just above the finished surface with deeper, quicker gouges, and then smoothing over the ridges by slicing with flat gouges to reveal the focused, final form.

     It may not be immediately apparent, but this is one of the most important woodcarving techniques you can master. All surfaces need finishing, not just backgrounds: rounded, hollowed, whatever. This technique is a potent and rapid way of working. But I need to add more:

     The main problem with carving is all the wood that gets in the way of what you want to find beneath. The clearer you can visualize the form beneath, the easier and more reliably you can attain it. That’s why you need drawings and perhaps a model to guide you.

     The real work is done in the earlier stages: using the quicker tools to find underlying form. The subsequent skimming of the ridges just clarifies the surface, as if by magic revealing the form of which you already have a clear sense. To be successful, you must strongly visualize the form beneath the tool and not concentrate on the tool as such.

     Feel into the form—the shape you want to find in the wood. Feel for its surface as you explore and search with your deeper gouges. Try to lay your cuts onto this imagined surface right from the start of your carving, following the form with the tool in a flowing manner. When this underlying form is right, then focus your surface.

SECTION IV: RELIEF CARVING

Chapter 11

PIERCED

In Chapters 9 and 10 I used the same koi drawing for both the low and high relief carvings in order to demonstrate how carving to different depths could radically alter a simple design.

     I’m going to push this point even further here by using the same koi drawing yet one more time, for what is known as a pierced relief. By treating the same design in technically different ways, you can readily see that you visually create entirely different carvings.

     So, whenever you think you have a single design for a relief carving, you almost certainly have the possibilities of at least three!

Three styles of relief carving—low, high, and pierced—can be created from one pattern, as shown

Open spaces add movement and drama to a relief

Photocopy pattern at 180%

The dotted lines in the drawing represent the reeds going behind the fish. Eye through them when carving but you absolutely mustn’t cut along

MATERIALS & TOOLS

■   5/8" x 6 ½" x 17" (20mm x 160mm x 430mm) limewood or basswood

■   ½" x 9" x 18 ½" (13mm x 230mm x 470mm) cedar of Lebanon or wood of choice (mounting board)

■   ½" x 8" x 18" (13mm x 200mm x 400mm) MDF or plywood (backing board for holding the carving)

■   Spray adhesive

■   Wood glue

■   Crepe paper or thin card stock

■   Two-part wood bleach, such as Rustins

■   Matte acrylic varnish

■   Tung, Danish, or linseed oil

■   Wood screws

Here is the complete tool list that I used on this carving. You’ll find similar tools will do the job as well:

■   Regular gouges (Sheffield list):

•   #3 gouges: ½" and 1" (13mm and 25mm)

•   #4 gouges: ⅛" (around mouth) and ¼" (3mm and 6mm)

•   5/8" (16mm) #5 gouge

•   ⅜" (10mm) #7 gouge

•   ⅜" (10mm) #8 gouge (scales)

•   #9 gouges: ⅛" (mouth) and ¼" (flutes) (3mm and 6mm)

(2mm) #11 gouge

■   ⅜" (10mm) 60° V-tool

■   ⅜" (10mm) skew chisel

■   Long thin spatula or blunt knife

PIERCED

A relief carving is pierced when it has a hole in it. A pierced relief generally means the relief, which still has its depth dimension compressed and thus will still have only one correct viewpoint, has had the background partly or completely cut away.

ADVANTAGES TO THIS TECHNIQUE:

■   Saving time—because you avoid all that work lowering and leveling the background.

■   Without the background, you see the full depth of wood and this depth, along with under- or backcutting, adds a lot of drama to the work.

■   Pierced relief looks very attractive mounted on a contrasting board of wood, or with a mirror insert.

DISADVANTAGES TO PIERCING:

■   The carving itself loses a lot of the strength that would normally come from the background wood.

■   You may need to alter your design to compensate for this.

■   The wall (and thus any wallpaper!) can be seen through the carving.

DESIGN

I’ve made some changes to my koi drawing in order to recover the strength that I know I will lose by entirely removing the background of the carving.

■   I’ve added two simple, flowing reeds to support the koi and add strength. The trick here is to make any strengthening elements integral to the overall design. Thus I’ve contrasted their curves to that of the koi and have the fish swimming between them.

■   The wood fibers (the grain) now run vertically through the weak elements, such as the whiskers and tops of the reeds.

■   The tops of the reeds wave free, but I’ve tied the reeds together at the bottom by having them grow out of a pond bed.

■   This bed also gives a balancing weight the design.

■   The dotted lines in the drawing represent the reeds going behind the fish. Eye through them when carving but you absolutely mustn’t cut along them!

PREPARATION

Attach the pattern

1Glue your drawing to the wood with photomount adhesive. Alternatively, trace or draw directly on to the wood—but be accurate: you need clean lines to saw to. When the glue is dry, bore holes in what will be the enclosed spaces to facilitate cutting them out.

Cut the outline

2Cut the outline accurately on a bandsaw, keeping just outside the line. If you don’t have a bandsaw, use a coping or jig saw, keeping the edge square and taking care not to cut into the carving. There is no need to clean up the outline at this stage.

3Cut the inner spaces up to the lines with a scroll or coping saw, inserting the blade through the holes. Leave delicate, small areas unpierced so as not to risk cutting into the leaves or fish. We can pierce these areas later.

Make a paper sandwich

4This pierced design is quite delicate in parts, difficult to hold, and there is a real danger of breaking bits off—either from the pressure of a vise or clamp, or the carving process itself. The best way to hold it is the paper sandwich method (see right).

PAPER SANDWICH METHOD

a 50:50 wood glue:water mix onto a flat board (such as plywood or MDF).

the board with thick brown crepe paper or thin manila card. I’ve used blue crepe paper here to show the outlines of the project more clearly.

more glue mix to the paper surface and the back of the carving.

the carving to the backing board. Make sure every part of the carving is pressed down firmly. Leave to dry. We will eventually split the sandwiched paper or card to release the fish from the board.

CARVING

Shape

1Start by carving the koi itself then work the reeds around it. Begin by delineating the reeds with a V-tool.

2Begin rounding over and shaping the fish itself. Cut right around and into the backing wood a little. You will eventually undercut, but don’t do that now.

3As you carve, think of the form of the fish and the reeds and how they fit together: it’s really important to get the illusion of the fish passing smoothly behind and in front of the reeds, and vice versa.

4Here you can see the flow between fish and reeds. Some of the original drawing remains uncarved as yet. The reeds are essentially flat ribbons at this stage, but you can add interest later by twisting them inwards a little towards the middle of the design.

Model

5Continue carving the koi and adjusting the reeds. Use the full depth of the wood and model everything right up to the edges.

Set the edges

6Then, as you complete the form, set in the edges of the koi and reeds exactly: matching gouge sweeps to curves, or slicing ( page 97 ). Carve the eye carefully down to the reed.

Undercut

7When you have set in the edges and are happy with the form, start undercutting: 20-30˚ is enough. The technique is the same as the high relief ( page 124 ), except it’s easier—there are no junctions with the background, and you can cut down directly into the backing board. Do so, ensuring the koi releases cleanly.

Complete small piercings

8Now is the time to deal with any small, pierced areas. You’ll find a skew chisel will readily get into these tight corners.

Add details

9Visually separate the bed from the reeds by texturing its surface with a medium sweep gouge.

10 As in previous reliefs of this design, add the final details: flutes to the fins, whiskers, scales, a center vein to the reeds, and a midline to the back of the koi.

Remove from the backing board

11 Starting at a strong point in the carving (such as the bed edge), slide the edge of a thin spatula or blunt knife between the carving and the backing board, splitting the paper. Keep the blade pressed flat to the backing. Move the handle from side to side in a slicing motion, carefully around the fish. Don’t lever!

12 Eventually the carving will lift away, leaving one half of the paper on the backing board and the other half on the reverse side of the koi. After tidying up the back edges, I chose to leave the paper on: it’s not seen and actually strengthens the weaker elements of the carving. To remove the paper, rub the carving on a flat platen covered in sandpaper.

FINISHING

Exactly as with the low and high relief koi carvings 113 and

the fish itself with a two-part product for wood.

with a matte acrylic varnish.

tung, Danish, or linseed oil into the reeds and base to bring out the figuring.

MOUNTING

Although there can be a problem of where to fix the hanger, you can leave a pierced relief as is and hang it directly on the wall.

     I chose to mount mine on a ½" (13mm)-thick board of aromatic cedar of Lebanon with a simple swirling grain by screwing through from the back into the koi.

SUMMARY

You have now seen the koi carp in four different expressions as it were:

■   Drawing (flattest)

■   Low relief (flat)

■   High relief (moving from flat to round, some parts perhaps becoming completely round)

■   Pierced relief (free from background)

     There is no rule to say you cannot mix different forms of relief in the same carving. The important question is: What effect do you want to have on the viewer?

ENTERING

The first stages of a carving in the round are often accompanied by anxiety. It’s definitely an uphill battle, with all that wood in the way. However, there eventually comes what I call the Point of Recognition: when you begin to see what you are after.

     This point is often unnoticed for what it is and smoothly passed. On the other hand, it may be a complete “Aha!” moment after leaving the carving for a while. For me, this point is definitely the top of the hill: I can sense my subject clearly enough to feel a lot more comfortable about succeeding.

     Here are a few suggestions to help you through the first chaotic stage until you get to the point of recognition:

■   Preparation really counts. Gather drawings, models, and your references. The more you can visualize what’s in the wood the better

■   Decide on the areas (surface) where you will not take wood away and mark them. These are safe points that reside on the surface of the carving. From these, move out to find others, carving downhill into the wood, moving from safe point to safe point.

■   Think big forms first. No undercutting. No details until much later on.

■   Try Carver’s Voodoo: Hover your hands in the air over the surface of the block and imagine you can touch the form you visualize inside the wood: its masses, hollows, and flow. Mumble to yourself at the same time about what your hands see. Carver’s voodoo establishes a sort of preemptive mind-muscle sense for your later carving.

SECTION V: CARVING IN THE ROUND

Chapter 12

IN THE

Carving in the round means exactly that: carving the subject completely three-dimensionally so it can be viewed from any direction. In some ways, 3-D carving is easier than relief because the perspectives and proportions will be true; relief carving often needs distortion or perspective to allow for the single viewpoint.

     On the other hand, as we’ll see in the next project you have to pay more attention to the wood fibers to keep their strength working within the design.

The cap’s

The cap’s

The front of the

Carving in the round creates a three-dimensional

DESIGN

I’ve chosen to copy a baseball cap partly because it’s a simple subject where the details are largely low relief, which we have already met and partly because it’s easy to find one that you will not mind sacrificing in the name of art to serve as your model.

     It’s vital to appreciate that I have no intention of creating a complete illusion of a real baseball cap, and I’m not going to undercut the bill, say, any more than I need to create the effect. What would be the point? Rather, I just want to fool viewers for a while, before letting them discover that the cap is wood. Context will help this: I see the cap as pulled off a head and thrown on a table among other items, perhaps sitting on a sweater, but it could hang from a hook with other caps.

     When you are considering your design, try to think of ways in which you can make the subject even more interesting. So, for example, I’ve not just gone for the straight, uncomplicated look of a baseball cap; I’ve pushed in one half of the cap to create a hollow while rounding the other half. Thus, sculpturally, we have a balance between space and form with all the lines of tension and relaxation in between. The lines of these folds—of which there is a confusion—need to be simplified so that the cap reads well and has immediate impact. The adjustable strap at the back is a weak area; I tucked it in to minimize piercing through the wood.

MATERIALS & TOOLS

■   Basswood or wood choice, sized to accommodate the cap you’ve chosen

■   Wood glue/water mixture

■   Permanent marker

■   Carver’s screw

■   Calipers

■   Knife or Stanley blade

These are the main tools that I used on this carving. You’ll find similar tools will do the job as well. You may need other shortbent (spoon) tools in the deeper hollow areas depending on your design.

■   Regular gouges (Sheffield list):

•   #3 gouges: ¼", ½", and ¾" (6mm, 13mm, and 19mm)

•   1" (25mm) #4 gouge

•   ¾" (19mm) #7 gouge

•   ¼" (6mm) #8 gouge

•   #9 gouges: ⅛" and ½" (3mm and 13mm)

•   ⅜" (10mm) skew chisel

•   ⅜" (10mm) 60° V-tool

■   Spoon bent gouges:

•   ⅜" (10mm) #3 spoon bent gouge

•   ⅜" (10mm) #7 spoon bent gouge

•   ½" (13mm) #8 spoon bent gouge

•   Spoon bent 60˚ V-tools: ⅛" and ⅜" (3mm and 10mm)

•   Spoon bent skew chisels: ⅛" and ¼" (3mm and 6mm)

Get a spare baseball cap and have a good look at

Stiffen the cap with a 50:50 wood glue:water mixture, arrange as desired, and mark a few of the most prominent edges with

MODEL

find your baseball cap: mine came from a thrift shop. Put it on a table and have a really close look. Above all, this is an exercise in acute observation—you’ll never look at a baseball cap in the same way again! Play around with the shape of the cap until you find an interesting design.

   Look at the folds and valleys and how they are influenced by the stiffness of the seams. Note how the cap material folds under where it sits on the table; how the bill arches and is narrower than the cap itself; and how the edge of the bill swoops down and up as it meets the body of the cap.

we must stiffen the cap so it will keep its shape. Brush wood glue diluted with the same amount of water onto both sides, making sure it soaks through the cloth.

the cap on a board and recreate your design, tying the bill into more of an arch and padding the inside to prevent collapse if you need to. Leave the cap to dry.

lines along ridges of the main folds with a permanent marker. You will need to simplify what you see: concentrate on the most telling forms rather than obsessing over every little crease, and the appearance of the final carving will have more impact. The tops of these folds are high spots and thus vital reference points from which to begin carving. Also mark any other interesting areas that are high points.

a centerline through the bill and to back.

the cap on a sheet of paper and draw its outline. Measure up for your timber.

WOOD AND

If you have a single block of wood large enough, you can carve the cap in one piece, bandsawing the timber to your drawn outline.

     The dimensions of my cap were such that I could glue together two pieces of 2 ¼" (60mm)-thick, tight-grained basswood, with the join lying where the top of the bill met the body of the cap. By bandsawing out two pieces before gluing up, I save a lot of time removing waste wood. On the other hand, there is the danger of a visible glue joint so, if you work like this, take a lot of care to match the color and grain of the two pieces to make the join as inconspicuous as possible.

     A carver’s screw will let you work easily all around the carving. The screw must go into a thick part of the block—you don’t want to carve into the screw with your sharp gouges, never mind leaving a hole in the top of the cap! Carefully calculate the best position before boring the requisite holes and inserting the screw.

     I ran the shaft of the screw through a hole in a board gripped by a bench vise for the first, heavier stage of carving. Later I found an upright post more useful for holding and accessing the work.

CARVING

When carving your baseball cap, remember to constantly compare your carving with the model you created. This is the best way to ensure that your carving looks realistic. Start out as we did for the high relief carvings bosting in the general shape and establishing the relationship of various parts; then you refine the form by modeling, working toward the details of the seams, button, etc., and finally undercutting.

I chose to create my cap blank from two pieces of bandsawn basswood rather than one thick piece. This saves a lot of time—no carving away all that

If you choose to use two pieces of wood for the glue-up, arrange them as

GENERAL SHAPE

Establish the length

1This first pass gives you the overall, undifferentiated shape of the cap. Start by establishing the lengthwise profile. Take a large middle sweep gouge (such as a ¾" [19mm] #7). Beginning at the highest spot in the middle, carve along the centerline to the bill. Redraw the centerline and compare it with your model until the line on your wood lies along the same plane as the model’s.

2Carve in the opposite direction, from the topmost point to the back. Redraw the centerline as before. The new line should lie on the silhouette of the cap when seen directly from the side. This is a useful reference point: the line is a new high spot from which you can next work down into the wood to either side.

Shape the sides

3Using the same gouge, now carve down toward each side from the centerline to the side. Take one half first, then the other, working over the whole cap and copying the shape and form of your model. My cap was quite rounded on one side and deeply hollowed on the other.

General Shape

■   Essentially, the way we will work is to take a preliminary pass around the piece, followed by refining passes, until we get to our finished surface. The first few passes make up that very important bosting in: sketching the main masses and shapes Use calipers to confirm the positions of key landmarks but more than anything else trust your eye when comparing your model to your wood.

■   The principle in the first stage is to go for the big picture: Think of where you are leaving wood rather than what you take away. Aim to place the fold lines in the wood as you have them in the cap but only lightly deal with the hollows, as if the whole cap were covered in plastic wrap from high spot to high spot, fold line to fold line.

■   Note that, on my somewhat distorted cap, neither the button nor the strap lay along this line—yours might not either.

■   You should now have the body of the cap looking something recognizably like the model, with the fold lines in the right places and some hollows to give shadows. The bill itself we deal with next. The button, seams, air holes and buckle are all details to be put in later—just make sure you leave adequate wood for them now.

Check the bill and button

4Refine and re-draw the fold lines. With calipers, compare your carving to the model. Draw the button’s position and run a U-shaped groove around it. Lower the surrounding wood so the lump stands slightly proud and leave it for now.

Deepen the hollows

5Refine the shapes and hollows of the body and redraw the fold lines. In my cap, the hollow to one side was so deep that it came within ¼" (6mm) of the underside. You’ll need spoon bent gouges to work into the depressions and hollows.

BILL

Carve the bill junction

1The fabric of the cap folds over the junction of the bill a little at the top of the arch, then more at the sides. Find the line of the bill as it joins the cap, starting with its lower edge around and under the side, and smoothly arching over to the opposite side. Define the junction of the bill and cap with a V-tool.

Set in the outline of the bill

2Set in the outline—the whole outer edge—of the bill in a lovely flowing line, just as you did with the high relief carving ( page 123 ). Check for symmetry. Resist any temptation to undercut yet! You may need to change the position of the bill.

Establish textures

3The material of the bill is flat and hard, compared to the loose cloth of the cap body. To make this clear, smooth the surface with flat gouges or a fine rasp, then scrape along the grain with a sharpened piece of metal. I’m using a section of old hacksaw blade sharpened to a cutting edge, but a knife or Stanley blade will also work.

Bill

Avoid sanding the bill; this will only make it look shiny and the illusion of fabric will be lost.

DETAILS

By definition, details lie substantially on the surface of the carving and are the last things you put on it. You must have the underlying shapes and forms correct before adding details. If you have to cut out details to re-model, it’s a sign you added them too early. Thus for the seams of the cap: these are only very low relief on the wood surface, and for them to read right you must be happy that the folds and hollows on which they lie are correctly positioned and well finished.

     Go over the cap and check the shapes and hollows and generally clean up the surface. You can further refine the areas to a lightly faceted finish just before you add the details, and then around the details as you complete them. As a result the whole cap proceeds to a finish.

BUTTON

1Set in the outline of the button with a deep gouge (a #9 is often semi-circular, but #8 will also do) with a sweep that gives the appropriate diameter. You may need a mallet for this. As you are carving weak end-grain, be careful not to stab in too deep and pop the button off.

2Lower the wood around the button. Round it over with a gouge held upside down. Clean up the surrounding area.

SEAMS

are six seams that arise at equal angles from the button. Notice that what you are doing here now is nothing short of low relief carving Mark the arising points around the button for both sides of each seam but only draw the line of one side of that seam down and along the fabric to curl under the edge of the cap. The trick here is to carve one edge of the seam and then use that edge to make the other parallel. Don’t make the seams too pronounced: (2 –3mm) is plenty deep enough.

the waste side, run a sharp V-tool down the line you drew and tilted so one side of the V-groove gives a slightly off-vertical wall to the raised seam. Take the seam right over the lower edge and underneath the cap.

and merge the waste into the background. Where the seam passes through a deep hollow, you will either need a shortbent V-tool or to set in the line with gouges before removing waste.

your fingernail along the first seam edge as a guide to draw a parallel second edge.

the second edge of the seam to mirror the first. Stop the very front seam about 2" (51mm) short of the bill; you will need room for a logo. You should now have the button and seams finished, along with most of the fabric of the cap.

Cut one side of each seam with a

Run your finger down each seam, holding a pen against that finger, to make a parallel second edge to each

AIRVENTS

Mark the positions

1Carefully mark the positions of the air vents, which are small holes that have been raised on a sort of flat dome by the surrounding stitching. Use calipers to measure equal distance from the button and your eye to place them uniformly between the seams.

Shape the mounds

2Create the little hill first (very like the button) by stabbing in a circle around your mark with a ¼" #9 gouge.

3Lower the surface around your circle to make a shallow cylinder. Round over the hill to soften the corners.

Air Vents

■   Again notice that what you are doing here is nothing short of low relief carving

■   You’ll get more uniformity if you complete each stage for all six vents before passing on to the next—all vents will finish at the same time.

Remove the centers

4Rotate a ⅛" (3mm) #9 gouge into your marked point; the center will pop out due to the bevel’s wedge effect ( page 54 ). Be careful not to break off any of the hill by pushing too strongly or deeply, or levering the blade. If you damage the hill, re-carve the cap surface and start again. Punch the hole a little deeper with the flattened tip of a nail.

BUCKLE

This is a tricky bit of the carving but a fun challenge. The principles of carving the part are the same as carving the whole:

carefully at your model—place your model close to the wood and in a parallel position so you can observe and copy it more easily. Think in terms of the main planes of the buckle and the folds of the fabric loop. The buckle itself is flat metal and lies in its own plane; the strap passes through the buckle. You need to make these two points clear by simplifying. Look too where the strap passes underneath the edge of the cap.

and remove the obvious bulk of the waste wood with a coping saw.

the safe points (the high spots): the side of the buckle, then front down to the strap; the fold line of the strap, etc. Work from these into the wood to other safe points.

you follow the form into the space, you may find you pierce through the wood to the other side. Be careful you don’t make the elements of the strap and buckle too weak.

the buckle, the carving of the cap should be finished. Check all over for clean, light cutting. Do not sand! The lightly faceted surface gives a very convincing feel of cotton at a distance.

Carve the buckle carefully, and remember: you have a model there for

UNDERCUTTING

Undercut the bill

1You’ll find the carver’s screw comes into its own here. Move the cap to the end of the post. Turn the cap over and scoop out most of the wood from the bill along the grain with a large gouge. You need only undercut the main body ½–1" (13mm–25mm)—just enough to create the effect.

2As the hollow cave beneath the bill deepens, switch to shortbent gouges, such as a 5/8" (16mm) #7, and carve from the sides across the grain. Use your fingers to check the bill thickness; don’t make it thinner than necessary!

LOGO BADGE

Design the badge

1Draw out whatever shape of badge or logo you like onto thin tracing paper. Mine has the initials of the eventual owner of the carving. Glue the tracing paper accurately in position on the front of the cap. Set in by stabbing all around your letters to a depth shy of 1 / 16 " (2mm) and sloping out at 10˚.

Carve the badge

2Carve away the waste wood around the letters, making sure you have neat, clean junctions. Take care—you are working in end-grain. Now outline the badge itself and reduce the background another 1 / 16 " (2mm).

Logo Badge

On the front of the cap is a badge with embroidered letters: effectively just setting-in a flat plane page Because we have carved the cap surface on which it will be placed first, the badge will naturally be carved in a way that it deforms with that surface and looks right. Keep whatever logo you design simple!

     After cleaning off the paper drawing, I make the letters stand out from the surrounding fabric by sanding them with 400-grit sandpaper on a small block. I then burnished them with the polished bevel of a flat gouge, strongly pressing and rubbing the wood surface.

An easy way to turn letters into a logo is to use perspective and two vanishing points, as

FINISHING

After checking over the carving for torn grain or other defects, I applied a couple of coats of clear paste wax. I used J. E. Moser’s Premium Clear Paste Wax, which finishes with a light sheen.

     Brush on the wax at the same time as warming the surface with a hair dryer. This prevents the wax building up in crevasses and works it deeper into the wood fibers. Wipe off the excess and polish the carving with a clean, cotton cloth.

MAKING AS

One area of carving in particular requires great discipline and exactness to make beautiful: lettering. We are not dealing with the details of letter carving in this book*, but you can imagine there absolutely has to be, say, a uniformity of thickness in the letters. For example, if one number nine in the year 1999 or a zero in the year 2000 appeared extra thick or oddly shaped, the effect would be like an over-loud or flat note in a melody. Worse—it’s permanent.

     In all other branches of carving— leaves, faces, etc.—you have a degree of latitude. Rather than slavishly follow your drawing, you can just see what happens; hence the idea in Chapter 10 that you shape the high relief koi first and then set in the outline.

     Whatever idea you have to start with, the final result always looks different, for two reasons:

     First: The carving process—the very act of carving itself—influences the result. This is essentially what stylization is all about. Stylization takes place when a maker adapts the reality of their subject to the medium in which they work. So, life is stylized as it is rendered differently by an oil painter or a water colorist—or a woodcarver. The more liberties we take in adapting, the more stylized the work becomes. In a nutshell, woodcarvers have to think wood. Add to this inevitable stylizing of the subject by its rendering into wood the fact that individual carvers have difference abilities, tools, approaches, and talents and you can see that your idea may change substantially before it manifests in the final carving. You should make allowances for this in your designing.

     Second: One of the great joys of carving is adapting or varying your initial idea as you go along; finding something new; something you hadn’t thought of before; some new relationship. Unless there is a need to copy or be exact, you should allow this to be so. This process is your essential creativity, similar to that of painters who make up their canvas as they go along.

     Sometimes, the less you think, the better you carve.

     *Note: I’ve dealt with letter carving elsewhere. See my book, Letter Carving in Wood: A Practical Course and my DVD, Essential Letter Carving

SECTION V: CARVING IN THE ROUND

Chapter 13

IN THE

The more complicated your carving, the more information you need. It’s often helpful to make a little model in clay or Plasticene of your idea. Such a preliminary sketch helps with:

■   Visualizing the finished carving

■   Deciding how to use grain strength in the design

■   Creating a working drawing by making the model to scale

■   Measuring for the wood

     I’ve chosen to carve a simple bird (a wren), and to give it context, I’ve perched the bird on a little ledge of rocks and added some flowers. You could choose to carve the wren by itself.

     A wren has a characteristically cocky tail, and my clay model immediately shows a problem with this design. The two thinnest and therefore potentially weakest elements of the bird—the tail and beak—are more or less at right angles to each other. Long wood fibers give strength to any element, but if we run them into the tail to make it strong, we must have short fibers in the beak, which in turn would make the beak very vulnerable. Additionally, little bird legs are very thin (and normally added in brass by bird carvers) so I had to decide how to find strength for them too—but all this is part of the challenge of carving. Keep in mind that a design may need modifying or compromising (“Stylizing,” page to suit wood. Here is what I decided:

■   The beak is by far the most vulnerable element, so I maximized its strength by running the grain along it.

■   I angled the tail back as much as the character of the bird would allow. The wood fibers now run more diagonally through the tail, rather than across it at right angles.

■   I kept the tail as thick as the design would allow, especially front to back. The tail still needs special care throughout the carving process.

■   I supported or tied the spindly legs to the wood (the rocks) beneath.

■   To give the wren a bit of character, I turned the head to one side a little and added a couple of flowers to the rock for a bit more interest. I achieved a sense of space and action beneath by allowing the head of the wren to clearly overhang the edge of the rocks.

Work with the grain and use supporting wood to give this carving the strength it

Photocopy patterns at

MATERIALS & TOOLS

■   4" x 4" x 3 ½" (100mm x 100mm x 90mm) lacewood or wood of choice (I started with a 7" [180mm] piece of lacewood and sliced off the bottom of the completed carving.)

■   Coffee (to stain wood)

■   Red water-based dye (flower centers)

■   Danish oil

■   Matte acrylic varnish

■   Black India ink (eyes)

(Similar tools will do the job as well and you may need shortbent (spoon) versions of these tools in some areas where access is difficult.)

■   Regular gouges (Sheffield list):

•   #1 chisels: ¼" and ½" (6mm and 13mm)

•   #3 gouges: ⅛" and ¼" (3mm and 6mm)

•   #6 gouges: ¼" and ½" (6mm and 13mm)

•   #8 gouges: ¼", and ⅜" (2mm, 6mm, and 10mm)

■   60° V-tools: ⅛" and ⅜" (3mm and 10mm)

■   Skew chisels: ⅛" and ¼" (3mm and 6mm)

■   Bench vise

A wire armature is necessary to make a clay

Shape clay around the wire armature to create the

Transfer the pattern to the wood with whatever method you

MODEL

In itself, clay has no strength and needs an internal skeleton (called an armature) for support. Insert a screw into a board and wrap wire roughly to the bird shape. Note how I have run the wire into where the tail and beak will be.

     (See my book Woodcarving Tools, Materials, and Equipment Vol. 2 for further information about clay modeling.)

     Add clay to make the bird. The model doesn’t have to be exact, just clear enough to help you sort out the size and forms in the subsequent carving. Here I’ve only roughly added the rocks and two flowers; I intend making these up later on.

     From the model and other information you can create the working pattern. I used carbon paper to get the drawing on the wood, carefully orientating the grain according to my plan.

WOOD

A darker wood such as walnut, Brazilian mahogany, or butternut would be best for this dark bird. I’m using so-called lacewood: London plane (a hybrid of sycamore and field maple), which is dark with dry, tight grain that carves well. But you can use any decent carving wood.

     You’ll see that I started with a long block measuring 4" x 4" x 7" (100mm x 100mm x 180mm), thinking that I would have a cliff face below the bird, but I changed my mind as I went along. Thus, the end design really only needed half that length. On other hand, that extra wood was useful for holding the block, which I took advantage of by using a simple vise.

CUTTING

1Saw the outline of the bird with a band or coping saw.

2Remove wood to either side of the bird, again with a band or coping saw. Leave enough wood for the wren to turn its head a little to one side, here on its right.

Cutting Out

Remember there will be flowers higher than the wren’s legs, so don’t saw wood away here. Be generous with the wood around the beak and tail at this stage.

CARVING

Round the body

1Begin rounding from the back of the body and head down and across the grain with a medium gouge, allowing thickness for the wings. Work from the tail toward the body, keeping both the tail and the beak fat. Tilt the head to one side.

2Start to define the wings with a V-tool, and begin cleaning up the ground (the rocks). Turn the block around in the vise to get at all sides of the carving. Switch to working along the grain as you move toward the head and beak.

3Don’t undercut deeply yet, but carve around the body. Establish a level for the upper surface of the legs. Think how the legs must lie in relation to the bird, splaying out from the body toward the feet. Draw the legs on the wood. Lower the wood around the legs so they begin to appear.

Create the flowers

4Draw in your simple flowers wherever you would like and lower the ground around them so the wood rises up to their levels. Angle the flowers away from the bird to add more interest.

5With the wood lowered, you can start giving the flowers some definition. You can carve a true flower or something generic: five or six simple petals radiating from a center button of little balls. Create the main form and separate the petals.

6Define the outsides of the legs and feet clearly. Lowering the area within the legs is a little tricky. As you carve from the front, you’ll need to cut against the grain in between the legs. Use a sharp narrow V-tool to define the inside edges.

Define the legs and feet

7Shape the petals. Then set in a cluster of circles with a ⅛" (3mm) #8 or 9 gouge. Turn the gouge upside down and round the circles into domes or half balls. Clean up the spaces between with the point of a skew chisel. Undercut the finished petals.

8With a narrow skew and flat gouge, slice slivers of wood away—not too much at once. When you are happy with the position and shape of the legs, undercut them from both sides. It is not necessary to separate the legs from the ground.

9Cut below and around the feet themselves in front so they overhang the edge of the rocks. This is visually more interesting.

10 Separate the three toes of the wren with a narrow #3 or 4 gouge.

Add details to the bird

11 Turn now to finishing the bird completely with fine tool cuts from a flat gouge to mimic feathers. Be simple. Narrow the tail and sharpen the beak. Use the V-tool to define the wings and their feathers.

12 Carve the eye like the little balls you made in the center of the flower (Step 6). You’ll need a very narrow semi-circular gouge for this. Be careful not to wedge the eye out as you rotate the gouge.

Carve the ground and

13 Shape the wood around the wren and flowers, removing the corners of the original block. Chop out various sizes of geometric rocks and cracks with different widths of chisels and the occasional gouge. When the rocks were completed, I sawed the cliff part off.

Carving the Ground and Rocks

Try to compose the rocks fairly spontaneously, making it up as you go along and varying what you do. Random, irregular sizes and shapes are best. Leave the wood immediately around the wren plain. Practice in a piece of spare wood first if you are unsure.

Finishing

■   Test stains on a piece of similar wood first and aim to build up the color rather than go for a full depth of color in one go.

■   To make sure that the darkness of the wood didn’t disguise some of the light and shadow that creates a sense of three-dimensionality to a carving, I stained the rocks even darker and added a touch of red to the center of the flowers. I left the wren the natural color of the wood.

■   I darkened the ground and rock wood with concentrated coffee and darkened the rocks even further with Danish oil.

■   I used a water-based dye on the flower center, followed by more Danish oil to give a mellower look.

■   Lastly, I finished the wren and petals with a matte acrylic varnish and inked in the wren’s eyes black.

INDEX

A

angle stabbing, 62

B

baseball cap, 138–49

about: carving guidelines, design, finished carving illustrated, materials and tools, model for, overview of, preparation for carving in the round, wood and holding, 142

air vents, 147

bill, 144–45

buckle, 148

button, 145

details, 145

finishing, 149

general shape, 143–44

logo badge, 149

seams, 146

undercutting, 148

bevel scratches, 28

bevels. See also sharpening tools

benefits of, 27

inside, 26

outside, 24

book overview, 9

bosting in, 121–22

Burghead Bull, 81–87

about: design, materials and tools, pattern to photocopy, transferring drawing, wood for, 82

project I (the simple line), 84–85

project II (cavo relievo), 85–86

project III (frosting or matting), 86–87

C

carving. See also relief carving

adding drama, 114

cutting diagonally, 95

feeling form, 126

form into space, 118

horizon lines and, 100

latitude in (making up as you go), 150

chisels, See also skew chisels

commissioning tools, See also sharpening tools

aspects of, 24

guitar analogy, 22

meaning of, 22

reasons for, 22

corners, of gouges, 63

crescents and lozenges, 52

cuts. See also specific cuts

about: preparing to learn, 56

of carver, 58–61

nine, from same gouge, 62–63

cutting angles, 28

cutting edge

illustrated, 24

sharpening key points, See also sharpening tools

as wedge, 54

E

environment, 36

equipment. See also tools

holding devices, 38–39

for sharpening tools, 29

workstation and benches, 37

eye, creating, 51

F

feeling form, 126

fish carvings. See high relief (koi); low relief exercise (koi)

fishtail gouges, 17

form, feeling, 126

form into space, 118

full cuts, 63

G

gouges

beginner’s set, 19

bent gouges, 16

cutting parts, illustrated, 24

depths of, 14

fishtail gouges, 17

‘true’ gouges, 14

U-gouges, 15

grips

about: overview of, 44

ambidexterity and, 48

Golden Rules of, 46

high-angle grip, 50–52

low-angle grip, 46–49

putting them together, 53

safety tips, 47

grounding tool, 124

grounds and grounding/grounding out, 90

guitar analogy, 56

H

habits, good, 64

high relief (koi), 116–25

about: finished carving illustrated, getting started, materials and tools, overview of, overview/summary of, wood for, 118

background stage, 119–20

bosting in, 121–22

details and finishing stages, 125

lowering background, 119

modeling, 122–23

setting-in, 123

shaping stage, 121–23

undercutting stage, 124–25

visualizing form, 121

high-angle grip, 50–52

holding devices, 38–39

horizon lines, 100

I

ideas and designs, 41

in the round, about, See also baseball cap; wren

J

journals and sketches, 41

junctions, 76

L

lighting, 36

lines, 76

longitudinal shapes, 16–17

low relief exercise (koi), 102–13

about: design, finished carving illustrated, materials and tools, overview of, pattern to photocopy, wood for, 105

details stage, 112

finishing background and edges, 107

finishing stage, 113

flutes, 112

leveling background, 106

lining in subject, 105

lowering background, 106

modeling stage, 108–11

scales, 112

setting-in or accurately outlining, 107

silhouette stage, 105–7

undercutting stage, 111

low-angle grip, 46–49

M

moldings, 66–75

about: overview of, 66

blank, 68

corners and laying out, 75

holding jig for, 68–69

pea molding, 71–72

ribbon & stick molding, 74–75

rope molding, 72–73

setting up for, 68–69

thumbnail molding, 69–70

N

numbering systems, of tools, 18

P

paper sandwich method, 132

part of cutting edge, 63

pea molding, 71–72

pierced relief (koi), 128–35

about: design, finished carving illustrated, materials and tools, overview/summary of, pattern to photocopy, pros/cons of, 131

carving steps, 133–35

finishing and mounting, 135

paper sandwich method, 132

preparation, 132

power tools, 39

R

relief carving. See high relief (koi); low relief exercise (koi); pierced relief (koi); setting-in exercise (Japanese writing)

ribbon & stick molding, 74–75

rope molding, 72–73

running cuts, 58

S

safety, 47

setting-in exercise (Japanese writing), See also high relief (koi)

about: critique, design, finished carving illustrated, materials and tools, overview of, pattern to photocopy, wood for, 93

carving stream, 99

cutting diagonally, 95

finishing background and edges, 98

fixing pebble in position and finishing, 99

leveling background, 96

lowering background, 95

setting-in (matching and slicing), 97

special tools for awkward places, 99

step by step, 94–99

sharpening tools

about: overview/summary of, 31

benefits of bevels and, 27

chisels and V-tools, 31

correctly sharpened gouge, 24

cutting angles, 28

cutting edge, 24

eight things to remember, 25

equipment for, 29

finishing stage, 29

guides to, 28

inside bevel, 26

key to, 24

meaning of sharpness and, 24

new tools, 22

outside bevel, 24

parts of working end of gouge illustrated, 24

process, 28–31

shaping stage, 29

white line and bevel scratches, 28

skew chisels, 99

slice-along sweeps, 62

slicing cuts, 61

space, form into, 118

specialty tools, 17

stabbing cuts, 58–59

stop cuts, 59

surfaces, 76

sweep (rocking) cuts, 60

sweeps

defined, 14

types of, See also specific tools

T

thumbnail molding, 69–70

thumbnails, 59

tools. See also sweeps; veiners; V-tools

about: overview of, 12

attitude toward, 12

for beginners, 17–19

bent gouges, 16

best makes and where to buy, 18

buying, 17–19

chisels, 31

choosing which to use, 20

cost considerations, 19

fishtail gouges, 17

grips, 42

longitudinal shapes, 16–17

numbering systems, 18

other hand woodworking, 39

power tools, 39

specialty, 17

storing, 36

‘true’ gouges, 14

U-gouges, 15

‘true’ gouges, 14

U

U-gouges, 15

upside down cuts, 63

V

veiners

about, 78

bevels, 80

cuts illustrated, 79

cutting edge illustrated, 80

side walls, 81

V-tools compared to, 80–81

vertical entry cuts, 62

V-tools, 15

about, 78

cutting edge illustrated, 80

keels and bevels, 80

sharpening, 31

side walls, 81

veiners compared to, 80–81

W

wood

cost considerations, 40

cutting. See cuts; specific cuts

ideal for carving, 40

sources and storage, 40

surfaces, lines, and junctions, 76

types and characteristics, 40

understanding, 32

workshop, 36

workstation and benches, 37

wren, 152–58

about: clay model for, finished carving illustrated, materials and tools, overview of, patterns to photocopy, preparation for carving in the round, wood for, 155

carving, 156–58

cutting out, 156

finishing, 158

COPY EDITOR

Paul Hambke

DESIGNER

Lindsay Hess

EDITOR

Kerri Landis

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Liz Norris

INDEXER

Jay Kreider

PROOFREADER

Lynda Jo Runkle

Visit www.ChrisPye-woodcarving.com for more carving advice and a list of Chris Pye’s other carving

© 2010 by Chris Pye and Fox Chapel Publishing Company, Inc., East Petersburg, PA.

Chris Pye’s Woodcarving Course & Reference Manual is an original work, first published in 2010 by Fox Chapel Publishing Company, Inc. The patterns contained herein are copyrighted by the author. Readers may make copies of these patterns for personal use. The patterns themselves, however, are not to be duplicated for resale or distribution under any circumstances. Any such copying is a violation of copyright law.

eISBN 978-1-60765-410-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pye, Chris.

Chris Pye’s woodcarving course & reference manual / by Chris Pye.

   p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN: 978-1-56523-456-7

1. Wood-carving. I. Title. II. Woodcarving course & reference manual.

TT199.7.P868 2010

736’.4--dc22

2010006791

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Printed in China

Fifth printing

Because carving wood and other materials inherently includes the risk of injury and damage, this book cannot guarantee that creating the projects in this book is safe for everyone. For this reason, this book is sold without warranties or guarantees of any kind, expressed or implied, and the publisher and the author disclaim any liability for any injuries, losses, or damages caused in any way by the content of this book or the reader’s use of the tools needed to complete the projects presented here. The publisher and the author urge all carvers to thoroughly review each project and to understand the use of all tools before beginning any project.