Carving against the grain?

[jgourlay]

I made my first carving recently: a horse's head based on the Norbury video. It turned out pretty well, but I kept running into a recurrent problem. On side, I could carve well during the bosting out phase because I was always carving with the grain.

However, on the "left" side I kept lifting out big and ultimately fatal splints because the grain direction ran precisely against the cut direction. Because of the size of the workpiece and the blank I couldn't carve with the grain on that side. Because of the shape and small size of the features, I couldn't successfully go cross-grain either. For example, the dip in the face between the muzzle and the flat bony portion of the jaw completely lifted out in one large chunk. Rotating my wrist ala the Chris Pye tutorial seemed to cause bigger chunks to lift out faster. In one spot I tried going cross grain, but the short throw between "hills" made me take a levering action to get a "valley". That levering action immediately pulled out the last fatal splint.

The net effect of this was that the right side of Mr. Ed came out beautifully, while the left was basically bosted out and that's it. Reducing everything else down to match would have made the whole carving the size of a pinky-nail.

Being my first carving, and in some scrap Khaya, I wasn't torn up about it. But this is practice for carving smaller versions in some wickedly expensive and very unforgiving tropical hardwoods. For one set of these knights, I'll be using wood from a tree from which I also made some boxes and an occasional table. I know in this material particularly that attempting to cut counter the grain will cause a tool even lightly pushed to either stop dead, tear out a huge chunk, or chip. So I need to get a technique going here....

[sitesby]

Jgourlay,
It is hard to give any direction to your issue of splintering without knowing more about the size of tools you were using, were you using a mallet, and what type of wood species was used.
I have carved a couple of projects with cedar and also cherry of which I have found both to have the characteristic of splintering. To get around the problem I used smaller tools and shallow cuts to maintain the integrity of the piece. Once the shape was close, I used the larger tool to that final shallow cut.
I have also used a power carver on grain that gives me trouble and once again jumping back to the finishing with the hand tool for that final shape.
One last item. Chris Pye recently wrote a great article about commissioning your tools. It gives a great description on how to re-grind your tools so that you can obtain a less aggressive cut and thus helping with splintering. Here is a link to Chris' website that somewhat talks about the commissioning process.
http://www.chrispye-woodcarving.com/...eningNotes.pdf
After reading what Chris Pye wrote on how to commission your tools I re-worked every tool I own, and I have not regreated it. It was time well spent.

Hope this helps, and by all means post a picture of your work. It will aid your fellow carvers in providing advise. A picure is worth a thousand words!

Best of luck,
Jerry

[jgourlay]

Jerry: here are the details. The wood was Khaya aka "African Mahogany". I was using the flex cut starter set, hand pushed, and using only the three or four smallest tools. The workpiece was roughly 3" high from shoulder to ear tips. So the face area, where chipout was an issue, is quite small. In the final work, the pieces will be roughly 2" tall.

Also, the final work will be in Ceylon Satinwood (new to me) and either cocobolo or bois-de-rose both of which I have worked with a great deal. They don't "splinter" but they can tear out, sometimes in large chunks, if cut against the grain. Also, when they tear out they have the lovely habit of taking pieces of the cutting edge with them.

Because I am prepping for chess pieces, which will be "spindle turned", the axis of the spine runs parallel to the grain axis. So on one side, the grain direction is "down" while on the other the direction is "up". When bosting out the face, because of working holding and other issues, the only direction I can push is "down" or "across", but as previously detailed "across" doesn't work so well for this figure.