Tag: woodcarving methods

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Speed

I am reposting this as part of Fandango’s Flashback Friday – April 16th.

<p class="has-drop-cap" value="<amp-fit-text layout="fixed-height" min-font-size="6" max-font-size="72" height="80">My long-suffering guitar teacher Sid Glick: "Get that tempo down! You always want to rush!" Of course, he was correct. I was poorly self-taught, and he was trying to correct the errors of that self-tuition. Slow…down. "You can't gain mastery unless you can do slowly what you now do at full speed." My long-suffering guitar teacher Sid Glick: “Get that tempo down! You always want to rush!” Of course, he was correct. I was poorly self-taught, and he was trying to correct the errors of that self-tuition. Slow…down. “You can’t gain mastery unless you can do slowly what you now do at full speed.”

Fast forward forty years, and I found myself giving the same advice to woodcarving students. In some cases, I’m trying as Sid did to hide the frustration in my voice.
Once I started teaching carving, I had to master the art of slow. You can’t explain what you don’t understand, and every day, most of us do complex tasks at full speed. Such full speed that we don’t know what we are doing, and when called upon to show others we fumble.
If you teach manual skills, you know what I mean. The teacher has to be a master of slow to show the way to the student. The student, of course, is frustrated by slow and wants to go fast.
I thought I understood this. Then at age sixty, I returned to martial arts. I practice a Japanese sword art called Iaido. Iaido is the art of drawing the sword. There was the usual master to student instruction to “slow down.” which I found amusing and frustrating; because I thought I understood that part. I gradually started mastering the basics. Then both my senseis threw in a curve. My draw and cuts need Jo-Ha-Kyu. Jo-Ha-Kyu implies a sort of acceleration in the process of drawing and cutting. Like many concepts, there is more to the telling, but a simple English explanation is slow at the beginning, faster in the middle, and fast like an express train at the end. For something so deadly, it’s quite beautiful to watch when done correctly ( not by me). Let me add that, like many simple things, this is not easy to master.
I didn’t think there was anything comparable in carving. Then one day, I was smoothing the background of boat portrait, working hard to flatten the background with a large flat fishtail gouge. I woke up to the slow initial set of the tool. Then the gradual acceleration into the cut. And, the ending sweep as I added a bit of fast rotation to the gouge at the end; Huh. Jo-Ha-kyu.
I am very much in the early days as far as Iaido is concerned so, I won’t comment further on the functions it has in sword work. In carving, however, there is a feedback mechanism involved in the technique I described. To fast and too hard at the start, and I can dig my tool into the wood resulting in a wedge that can split and raise a shaving. After the initial set, I sense the progress of the gouge and the way the wood responds. I can detect if it drags, pulls to one side, or starts descending. If I react early enough, I can correct it. In the end, I control the rotation I use to finish the cut. As one sensei like to say, “and that’s all there is to it.”

Slow is essential, but the next level is knowing control and acceleration. But, to see that you have start slow.

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Hancing Pieces

I think it was 2001 that I came across these small carvings on a boat in Newport, RI. I took the photos because I hadn’t seen many examples of small “hancing” pieces on modern watercraft. In traditional ship carving, a hancing piece was a carving applied to the break between decks. Or, placed at the end of a beam. In general, you might have a hancing piece in any place that needed a graceful transition. In this case, they have the semi-practical purpose of reinforcing a stanchion base.
Both would be great projects for a budding carver who owns a boat and wants a bit of eye candy to make it genuinely notable.
The star is an easy do. Navigate to my post on carving a star for much of the information you’d need to carve this piece.

The little eagle head is a gem, and more of a challenge to get the look right. Look for a pattern you can modify, and do a practice run; eyes and feathers can be painful to get right without practice. I have a tradition that I picked up from other eagle carvers. After roughing in the body plan, I work on the head of the eagle first. The nearly completed eyes and beak can watch me carve the rest. In this case, it would only be the head. So be kind to the birdie.

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Gentle

“Now let the tool do the work. The edge is sharp. All you have to do is guide it.” That was me to a student at the WoodenBoat School years ago. More recently, sensei said to me, “Lou, the sword is sharp, let it do the cutting. All you have to do is guide it.” In the first case, I was an instructor in maritime carving, and in the second, a student in Iaido – a Japanese sword art.
After years of working as a carver, my hands knew how to finesse a cut. To apply just enough strength to shave off what I wanted, and no more. As a neophyte student of Iaido, I was fighting the impulse to put too much power into a cut, and not trust the sword to do the work.
The solution is, as it always seems to be, lots of practice. With a gouge as with a sword, the control you need can’t be just a matter of mind over a tool. Something called muscle memory needs to develop. Muscle memory allows you to do the right thing as required without thinking now I’ll apply just this much pressure, rotate the tool five degrees, swivel two and finish.


When you begin carving, you can’t imagine how the carver almost idly manipulates the tool to remove precise shavings with the gouge. The secret is in part in the hands, but the entire body can be involved. Watch a carver or the swordsman cutting. The body shifts, the hips move, the shoulders flex. The hands are the recipient of all the focused energy and direction. Ask to be shown in slow motion how to do it, and most people won’t be able to explain it. It slips from the mind. One day you’ll be carving and wake up from musing on car repair or cooking dinner. You’ll realize that the past fifteen minutes, your carving has been on a sort of autopilot with your hands, body, and some deep part of your mind operating without you.

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Little

Have little space, no time, and just a few tools? Try miniature work.
When I started woodcarving, I had just a few tools and almost no wood. I carved the little box from scraps of cherry and walnut. The tool kit for making the small sloop was minimum: a few small gouges, V-tool, and a riffler file. For work in this dimension, my bench was a handicap; I did most of it on a carver’s hook with some anti-slip fabric to hold the piece in place ( you can use woven shelf liner material or carpet underlayment). I did finish the piece in varnish, but you could do as many European carvers have done for centuries and rub the carving down with a bit of beeswax candle. The beeswax gives a beautifully mellow, soft look to the carving.

Small boat box


Access to a bandsaw made it possible for me to create a small box with the boat carving as a lid. But, I created similar pieces for small glued up business card holders and refrigerator magnets. This little boat has an LOA of less than an inch and a half.
Work in small dimensions doesn’t seem to be as impressive as more substantial work, but it requires thoughtful attention to detail and forces us to focus our skills. Doing small versions also can be a way of working out design elements for later work when you scale up your design.

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Thoughts On Carving – Pine

A professional carver who gives internet lessons on carving commented online to a student that pine was not a suitable wood for carving, get some good basswood was the advice. I laughed at this. Pine was the go-to wood for several generations of New England ship carvers, and the lines of many a schooner hull were carved first in our regional white pine, not to mention figureheads and much of the work of John Haley Bellamy. Pine is terrific to carve is you are mindful of its character and use sharp tools.

Here is a pine paradox: southern yellow pine can be harder than many hardwoods, and was once widely used for pattern making and shipbuilding. In the ’70’s I was gifted with a section of southern yellow pine that had been a beam in an old factory. Cutting it up into carvable pieces was challenging. In that case, the sample was old-growth cut in the 1890s.

Regional variation, the environment in which the tree grew, how the sawyer cut it ( quarter sawn or plain), how fast it grew, how it was seasoned, and other factors all contribute to suitability for carving. For example, the transom eagle on the USS Constitution is ponderosa pine. These days ponderosa is better known for its use as structural wood and not for its use in carving. In 1910 the old-growth ponderosa selected by a Philadelphia shipyard carver was not exceptional. The ponderosa chosen was sturdy, hard for a “softwood” and tight-grained. Until the Constitution maintenance shop carpenter told me about the carving as he worked on it, I’d never have thought to select ponderosa for a project.

This Transom eagle on the USS Constitution was carved in 1901 from Ponderosa pine. At some point it was modified to allow a line through the lower section of the carving.

Another pine that you might be interested in trying is western sugar pine. It has a clean tight grain and a distinctive sweet odor. You may need to shop around for this, but won’t be disappointed in the real deal. I carved this little eagle out of sugar pine and loved the experience.

A few words of caution on technique while using pine: it can seem like a good idea to try to “hog out” wood fast with a large gouge and a mallet. If you are hollowing the wings of an eagle for depth and shape, this can be a temptation. In fast grown pine, this is a mistake. Your gouge will tend to dig into the grain, and if you attempt to wedge it out, the grain will tear out deeply, leaving you with a rough and deep tear in the wood. Be gentle. Remember going fast is not always going to get you there sooner.
Another issue can be cuts that run on a bit further than intended. The answer to this is less force and more finesse on the cuts, If you are using a mallet switch to a lighter one or use your palm. Some years ago, I took a knot of elm from the firewood pile and fashioned it into a palm mallet. The palm mallet protects my hand from impacts while allowing me to get a bit more force into a cut.

Pine is a worthwhile wood for carving: It’s readily available in a variety of species; many times, it will be the economical choice of wood, and with sharp tools can yield a rewarding carving experience.

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Thoughts On Carving – Three Eagles

I once decided to carve ten eagles from variations on the same basic pattern. The 18th and nineteenth-century carvers had done it. Look at the repetitive poses of young women or men carved as graceful additions to ships bows. Eagles also seem to fall into family groups.
Shipscarver’s knew the knack of altering arm or leg positions, changing a collar, or a gown to something more 1860 than 1850. Who was I to pretend to know more than my masters?
I began with a photo of my favorite eagle at Mystic Seaport. The transom eagle from the first U.S.S Pennsylvania. I enlarged it to a size that I could use as a pattern, and from there, set about a two-year-long excursion into variations on themes.

In my first iteration, I found myself channeling a bit of McIntire as I played with the head . However, I checked myself short of going the McIntire serpentine neck route. I carved this one in a lovely piece of sugar pine, and the closeness of the grain allowed me excellent control of the tools. The movement in the legs of this eagle permited me to create a real sense of depth and movement in a piece of wood that was not that thick.


In the middle of the cycle of ten eagles, I channeled a very tiny bit of Bellamy with the head, neck, shelving of the upper wing, and banner. Anyone knowing Bellamy’s work though will recognize that he was an influence on my approach without any attempt to copy his style. It was just fun to acknowledge the master without imitating him. Made out of white pine, I gilded the piece, which I usually do only at client request.

Eagle based on the transom eagle for the first USS Pennsylvania

The final eagle was a bit more architectural in approach. The head looks downward, and the body seems to be marching forward under a canopy of threatening wings. The wings were hollowed, to giving the eagle an aggressive look. Carved from thick local Massachusetts pine, I had a piece of wood that could take bold carving. Preparatory to gilding, I thinly painted with bronze paint. I liked the semi-transparent effect so well that I’ve left it that way.


Boat shops are full of patterns with notes and measurements on how to alter the boat to desired length breadth or other features. The old-time carvers most likely did the same.

The great martial artist Miyamoto Musashi said that from one thing, we could learn a thousand things.
Mix things up. Learn something new from something old.

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A Carved Star – as mariitme a decoration as you can get


A little carving can be a good thing for a boat. I’ve used chip carving to carve incised stars; compass rose designs and other designs on everything from quarterboard ends to compass boxes. Chip carving requires only a sharp carving knife and can be used to accent flat surfaces with pleasing designs that won’t foul lines. The average student picks up the basics in a few hours. Carvings can be simple or very complicated—simple works best for the beginner, and on a boat. 

The chip-carved designs I’ll show you all have one underlying feature: the small pyramid or chip which you excise from the workpiece in six precise cuts. Once you master these basics, everything else falls into place. The basic pyramid forms the basis of all chip carving from the easiest to the most complicated.

But, first a few words on safety: always wear eye protection, and always secure the work on a non-slip surface. Consider wearing finger guards or carvers gloves. The old rubric of never cutting towards yourself makes little sense when you need to reposition your work periodically. Preferably, avoid having to cut towards yourself, but if you must keep delicate body parts like fingers out of the path of a moving blade. Critically don’t carve while tired or on medication.

The Pyramid

If you look a the first figure, you’ll notice a triangle with three lines running towards the angles from the center. Each of the six lines represents one of the cuts you’ll make to free a pyramid of wood. 

We can start by selecting the wood. Basswood and close-grained pine are both excellent choices for beginners. 

The three lines inside the triangle are the ones you’ll cut first. They are started deep where the lines meet and run out shallow at the angle on the outer edge of the design. These first three cuts are made perpendicular to the surface of the wood. Don’t let these become angle cuts; keep them vertical. The photo I’ve included shows a practice board that I use to remind myself of the order of how cuts on designs that I frequently cut.

Remember, these cuts will be deeper at the center and shallower at the outer edges of the triangle. The best way to achieve this is to set your knife into the center deeply and pull back with decreasing pressure on the blade. You will need to ensure that your blade is very sharp. 

You do not want to overrun the edges of the triangle while making the initial perpendicular cuts.

After making the perpendicular cuts, you’ll make three cuts along the edges of the triangle. These are slicing cuts made at an angle of about 65 degrees. You can approximate this angle by placing your knife at 90 degrees, halving that to 45, and then bring it back towards the vertical about halfway. There is no need to be too fussy here. A few degrees in one or the other direction should not matter if you are consistent, and practice will ensure that. The cuts along the long axis of the triangle will be most straightforward, while the final cut at the base needs a bit more care because it is relatively short.

These angle cuts have more to do with your wrist movement than bullying your way through the wood. The wrist flexes, and the very sharp knife does most of the work. Reminder: keep that edge sharp. If you’ve done everything right, each chip will pop out cleanly. Practice makes perfect.

Avid chip carvers take it as an article of faith that all chips should pop out like toast from the toaster. If yours don’t all the time, you may not have cut deeply enough or used the correct angle consistently. If the angle of cuts is consistent, the cuts meet.  

Don’t yield to impatience and use the tip of your knife to wedge or flick the chip out. You’ll dull the blade and spoil the work. Or worse, flick that chip right into your eye. I’ll confess that not all my chips pop the first time all the time.

After you have the essential chip down, you’ll be ready to move along to cut the star.

The Star:

1.) Mark out the lines for the star. Include those radiating from the center of the figure to the ray tips, and those extending inward to stars base.

2.) Make the vertical cuts from the center outwards, deeper at the center, and shallower at the edges. Just as you did with the pyramid.

3.) After those make the ten angled slicing cuts to clear the chips. 

4.) Work your way around the star until you finish up all the rays.

The only caution on cutting stars is that it’s easy to cut the rays unevenly. Careful recutting can rectify this, but once out of balance, a star can become a carvers headache. 

A good trick is to take a compass and scribe a circle around the outside edge of the rays. If you don’t cut beyond the circle, the rays will stay equal.

The star is a lovely and traditional design you can use to finish off the end of a quarterboard, boom, chest, door, or whatever you fancy. Gold-leafed, it will be an incomparable decoration.

Here are some examples I’ve carved using chip carving:

  • maple leaf chip carving practice piece
  • Chip carved decoration
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Acorns to Oaks

We all want to be instant experts. One of my sensei describes this in terms of the training montages that are standard fare in martial arts movies; the neophyte progresses from clumsy beginner to skilled pro in thirty seconds of cinematic snapshots. The rest of us suffer from dissatisfaction and disappointment from being less than optimal for much longer.
Not every time, but more frequently than I’d like, I get confronted with the unique. And, all of a sudden I am a neophyte once more. Incorporating new materials, using new types of paints, complex constructions, and most especially very small parts that need fabrication all create confrontations with the problematic.

When I was doing banners, quarter boards, transoms, and the odd eagle, the problems were mostly mechanical – design layout, curvature to fit, and calculating shadows in carved lettering.

Boat and ship portraits offer many more issues. I am presenting a practice piece of the very first boat portrait I ever did. Remember, practice pieces are exactly like the rough sketches you do of a subject before you paint – the practice is to work out the approach, shapes, and rendering before you start the actual work. Being that carving is subtractive, this saves you from ruining expensive wood and wasting time.

  • practice carving of a 19 foot Eltro for a mast hoop portrait

Over the years, I’ve done many portraits. I’ve borrowed techniques from model makers, painters, and illustrators. I’ve also had to develop some tricks of my own. The single most important thing will seem trite: challenge is what differentiates those who are growing from those who are standing still intellectually and as artists.

There are about two years between my first practice piece and my rendering of a cat boat for a mast hoop portrait. Principal carving is complete, finishing the coaming and adding some details are all that’s left before fitting into the hoop

Principal carving is complete, finishing the coaming and adding some details are all that's left before fitting into the hoop
Principal carving is complete, finishing the coaming and adding some details are all that’s left before fitting into the hoop.

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How Much Cherry? How many pieces of treen?

The featured image shows the current batch of treen destined to be Christmas presents for family and friends. Fall is treen season. I pause from other work to dig through the cherry splits for good spoon wood.

These past few years, I’ve been working through a bountiful stock of native cherry. It was cut about two years ago and is still not totally dry, but dry enough for me to use ( according to my moisture meter). The average length is 15 – 18 inches, but if I need larger stock, there are some unsawn logs available to me. For most of what I carve firewood length is excellent, and that’s what the cherry pile originated as; firewood. When my firewwod provider told me there was cherry in the load I instantly started digging for it.
If you sell treen it’s essential to get an idea of what you can get out of a split, log, or plank. Wood, like I am working with, has bark, sapwood, wane, knots, cracks, and all sorts of imperfections in it. But, it’s gorgeous wood after you get rid of the faults. I begin the work by taking a maul and a froe to the large splits of wood. In reducing the bigger wedges, I have my first opportunity to evaluate what is inside. All that is rejected at this stage is lovely kindling for the woodstove. I gradually work the piece into a large blank, as you see at the top in the photo below. If there are no severe checks or significant splits in the wood, I can proceed.

Below the blank is a partially worked piece. The blank has been refined into a general the general shape of a dipper or deep spoon.
Below the rough out is a completed spoon. With luck and some careful cutting, I can get several products out of one blank. The examples shown are a bowl scraper and a spatula. You do not always get lucky, and lots of time, there are hidden knots, cracks, or other flaws that mean you have one piece and a pile of kindling. I heat with wood; cherry kindling is always welcome.
I use my jointer to get a flat surface if the splitting doesn’t provide one. After this, it’s off to the bandsaw to refine the shape a bit. Once upon a time, I did much of this work with a shave. Selling good volumes of treen at boat shows ( not everyone wants a boat portrait, you know!) dissuaded me from this. Not to worry. There is still much hand tool work to take a rough blank and turn it into an elegant spoon.

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Hand Carved Sails – of cherry of course!

Poor Servia. I haven’t even finished the portrait and already I am working on a second suite of sails. Originally I had planned on ones made from modeling vinyl. But, as I was assembling them I was disappointed in how they lay on the model. It was back to the very old school technique of carving sails from wood. My friend William Bromell, a professional model maker for many years, demonstrated some of the techniques to me. Actually fairly simple with a bit of practice. If the sails are flat against the background, as most of these will be, it’s simply a matter of contouring the shapes on one side. But, when the sails need to be hollow, to allow them to be seen from multiple angles, it becomes a devlish proposition.

On Servia the sails mostly will lie flat, except where they will overlap. There, no chafing gear pun intended, will be the rub. I’ll have to hollow the shapes out to overlay.

More on the sails. They won’t be in their native cherry color. Experience has taught me that sometimes the color and grain of the wooden sails fight with the cherry used for the background. So, I varnish, sand and finally paint the sails an aged titanium white, or parchment color. This can also be shaded depending on the age of the sail cloth. If the whole is finished with a coat of satin varnish a certain amount of darkening of the sails will occur anyway.

My much earlier carving of Belganland was also complex, but the sails were carved directly as part of the entire, and not attached individually. Two different approaches.

  • In progress dry fitting of elements for S.S. Servia project
  • S.S. Belganland

A final bit on the featured image. It’s a painting by Antonoio Jacobson of Servia done soon after launching . To determine sail plan, details and colors for these ships I have to depend upon photos, plans, sketches and paintings. In Servia’s case there were several paintings and photos available so I could make choices in items like the sail plan. Part of the process, enjoyable, and less than enjoyable, are the surprises you encounter along the way. My notes indicate that I began research on this project in January, began construction in April, and have worked on the piece periodically since then. Not all projects are so involved, but this one has had a real learning curve to it.