My Carving Page :)

New Projects and Toys to share...

Just working away... ;-)

~Updates will be Posted Soon ~

~ Welcome To My Carving Page ~

As I stated HERE, this Shield is the carving project I'm currently working on.  I thought it might be fun to share my progress as I transform a piece of wood into something I hope someone would be proud to hang on their wall.

Here's a Picture Timeline of my work...

It begins at the bottom, so start there if you like things in order ;-)

This is where I'm at...

I will add pics as time goes on.

I went ahead and added a few extra lines freehand to make sure the 3 dimensional aspect of the snake gets cut properly.

 Using a carbon paper, I draw over my design to transfer the elements I want. Again, this is only a guide as all these lines will quickly disappear as I dig into it.

So here it is, the shield all rounded out from top to bottom. 

It's time to transfer the rest of the pattern to the surface

so I can start working on the detail.

Clean up time.... Well more like clean up time #10...

I think, I lost track ;-)

After regaining composure, and tending to my wound, I return to my carving. I removed the stains on the back as I realized that my first reflex was to drop the carving on the table front side down. I suppose I wanted to protect my work, which I'm glad I did, because the back will be sanded down to smooth anyways, the front will not.

I then more carefully sliced away at the top until all the cut marks vanished to leave behind a visibly smooth surface.  

Now the inevitable happens. I have yet to make a carving without causing myself some type of bodily harm. And it always seems to happen around the same circumstances.

Carving is very soothing for me. Time ceases to exist and I drift away for while. Sometimes it becomes so automatic that my mind wanders as I chip away at the piece of wood in my hands. And on occasion, I do go to places I don't like as much. That's usually when I surprise myself with a slice. When this happens, I take it as a stark reminder to keep focused on my work so I can enjoy the soothing effects of it and not risk stabbing myself. I can assure you, I put my blood, sweat and tears into this carving, literally ;-)

Getting there....

I line up my pattern over the piece to mark just inside the cuts. This is only a guide as I rely more on how it looks and feels to decide when I'm happy with it. 

I'm really happy with it so far. Now comes the task of smoothing out the top. At the very least, to eliminate the choppy cuts I made with the multi-crafter. 

And there you go, both sides rounded off nicely, and no more burn mark. I made sure to keep the piece as thick as I could because of all the detail I wanna work into it. You can see that the middle part is still flat. That was intentional and most of the surface thickness you see will be brought down section by section revealing the stars, stripes, letters and the infamous snake ;-)

Now to finish off the left side to match the right, I'm met with a little hindrance.  I have to eliminate the pesky burn mark left behind by my fumbled attempt at cutting around my outline with a spiral saw. It just happen to be right inside the line... damn! I wanted to keep my original curve to the shield, so I took my time with it. One of the many things I like about carving is that as long as you don't rush and take out a big chuck of wood, possibly fucking up your masterpiece.... :/ you can cut away at almost anything and make it look good, and no one would be the wiser ;-)

Right side is looking good, smoothed all the way down to the table.

Making good progress. You can tell where more work is needed

by the way the light hits the piece. Even the shadow says alot...

Gotta balance things out ;-)

Right side almost done....

There it is, all ready to carve :-)

So I grabbed my tools, and my picky plank of wood, and headed over to borrow mom's garage for a second try. I figured it was probably best to relocate my activities in the interest of not scaring my neighbors into thinking I was gonna set the apartment on fire o_O

Option #2 was to use my Multi-Crafter tool. It's the first time I played with it, brand spanking new, right out of the box. I got it a while back to help me make renovations on "the old house". And since that's a lost cause, I'll be finding better uses for it. Starting now. I have to say, it was not the best tool for this job, but it made really smooth, straight narrow cuts, so I used these pluses to my advantage, and worked around my lines. The bottom was easy, to top was more of a challenge. But I saved my little pieces like I wanted to, and got my main piece set up for an easy round off.

My first option was to use my little Rebel spiral saw. It has served me well in places a jigsaw would have been way too sloppy. But all tools have their limit. My first concern was the thickness of the wood I needed to cut, and possible overheating. Just as I thought, the high speed bit had barely made a dent as a puff of white smoke told me to stop, or set this thing on fire :P

I have outlined my pattern onto the piece, so I can cut off the waste wood making the rounding out much faster. I would also like to keep the waste pieces, for other small projects. And Basswood is not that easy to get around here, so I don't want to shred them away. Now comes my dilemma. Since I'm a fairly new carver, I'm missing some of the basic tools. I don't have a band saw, or even a jigsaw. So I had to improvise with the tools I had in my chest.

My Project Dimensions are 1"1/4 x 7" x 10"

And so it Begins...

I chose a piece of basswood. It's really nice and smooth to carve into. Basswood is also fairly gentle on my knives, which is a good thing, since I'm not properly set up for sharpening and honing yet. I improvise with a paddle... ;-)

Thanks for looking at My Carving Page

Leave me a comment if you like :-)