Example of my knife work

[arbarnhart]

I posted in a couple of other threads about trying to learn to do single blade carving. I have been doing mostly shallow relief primarily using my Flexcut palm tools - decorative touches for other woodcraft, leaves, shields, etc - and larger scale wood shaping (carved bodies and necks for musical instruments) mostly with power.

I used the "just cut triangles" article from the current WCI issue to try to learn the knife over the weekend. I roughed out 4 faces; 2 in basswood and 2 on a found wood stick (actually one on the stick is pretty close to being completed). I took pictures and my photography is as bad as my knife work, but one of the basswood photos came out reasonably okay and it is probably an accurate representation of how things went. It is unfinished (in more ways than one). This was taken in macro mode; it is actually under 3" tall.



I am not too disappointed; it's a start. I was fairly pleased with the right side ("his" left) and general shape but I really butchered the other side and it could be cleaned up quite a bit. One of the found wood stick faces came out better, but the picture isn't as good (too much reflected flash).

I also tried cutting some chips; another skill I would like to work on and that also met with mixed results:



I hand drew the single twist Celtic knot and roughed it out in shallow relief using palm tools just to feel competent for a few minutes.

[arbarnhart]

I went ahead and uploaded acouple of bad pictures; you may still be able to see enough to offer feedback. Please don't pull any punches,; other than that tender spot on my left thumb I have been whining about, I am pretty thick skinned.

Anyway, if you can make it out, this is probably the best of them:



Here is an even worse picture of one that is barely started, but a very cool thing happened. I gave him an expression I had in mind. It is way too early in the process to do that if this wasn't just a practice piece, but I had the urge to do it and it sort of worked.



In the background, you can see the one I posted earlier. Without magnification, it looks okay and friends and family think it looks good (or that's what they are kind enough to tell me). At the very least, it is quite obvious what it is supposed to be.

BTW, it may be obvious to you but I should say that I seem to learn best by repetition of techniques until I get it right and I don't have a problem with doing practice pieces that get discarded (I will save some reminders). I know some folks start with a carving project that they will carefully bring through the entire process and some have had great success; but that's just not how I am wired.

So bring out the long knives - suggestions, criticism and praise (HA! I know whose company I am in here) are all equally welcome...

[AlArchie]

Doing faces is HARD! It takes a while to get the proportions etc, but you have the starts down. I've only carved a few faces but have learned that most of my mistakes have been in making the faces too flat. That looks like what you have done......maybe a bit too narrow, too.

Here's how I was told to visualize a face. When we look at someone from the front, we are pretty well putting the whole face on a single plane in front of us. To get the "topography" of a face down right, put your hands together in front of you own face, touching the edges of the little fingers together. Now bring your hands up to your nose , and place your thumb sides of you hands on your cheeks. Then, keeping this same angle, bring your hands away from your face..........that angle between the end of your nose and your cheeks will be somewhere between 70 and 90 degrees. That cured me of visualizing faces as flat.

Al

[Gear Dog]

Well it looks like you are off to a good start.
I'm still a beginner myself so I can't comment too much on the carving besides make sure your knife is sharp. It looks like your cuts could be cleaner.
But for the pictures it looks like you are getting close to the subject to take the picture. By doing that your flash is washing out all the details. Try stepping back and using the zoom to get in close. You could also try shutting off the flash and see if they come out any better.

Good luck and don't toss the practice pieces. You can learn from them or even save them when your techniques get better.

[CarverFromNoWhere]

The only thing to really do is to keep carving, both for your thumb and for your skills. Take a look at my faces, there are some of my very first ones and then my most recent ones. I try my best, a very good idea would be to look up jeff phares. I have all of his books and if you look at my improvements the books really helped me alot. He has books on just parts of the face or one big book covering it all. By the way for whatever reason I can't see your pics. Let me know if you have any qustions I will try and help. As for the sore thumb I would say ignore it and just keep carving, I use my thumb a huge amount, one thing that you can do, I do this to my custom knives is round over the back of your blade where your thumb rests.
Good Luck and Have Fun
Carve Safe Everyone

[Ron T]

Hi Andy,

Like Al says, faces are hard to carve. I'm getting better but still struggle with each one.

You are absolutely right in carving repetitously instead of agonizing over one. The practice gets you used to the tools and Improvement will come naturally.

[arbarnhart]

Al,

The ones I did in basswood (the one pictured an another similar one) are on corners and are not flat; the first picture just makes it look that way from being too close and directly facing the center. In the bottom picture of the second post, you can see the face from the first post in the background at an angle that shows that better. But on the stick, you are absolutely correct - I made a flat spot and the basically did them in shallow relief. I formed a small ridge before starting the triangle cuts, but the rise was pretty small. These kinds of faces are in that gray area -are they ITR or relief? I have seen some really good ones done on the face of 1" stock that are absolutely relief and I have seen some canes where it is absolutely ITR. I should probably do a full head to work on proper shape, but I am not sure I want to throw end grain into the mix just yet (though I could "cheat" and use my fishtail gouge there).

Ron,

I agree it is right for me and apparantly for you, but I do understand how some people prefer to pay strict attention to instructions and carefully get it right the first time. I am married to one of them. The one concern I do have with our approach is that I need to make sure I am not making any new bad habits second nature.

Dog,

I think the cuts that aren't clean came from using the thick blade single bevel chip knife. It's quite sharp (stropped often) but the bevel is so steep that the full thickness of the blade gets wedged in as you cut and you start tearing the wood as much as cutting it. The pocket knife cuts a lot cleaner (and it has been well sharpened and stropped also). It is also sloppy technique, because I will get a shiny facet and then leave one rough right beside it; maybe a variance in angle of attack or something? I will save a few practice pieces to see my progress.

Nowhere man ,

I am going to try stoning the back corners, but I think you are right about just getting past it. I will look into the books.

Thanks all!

[Just Carving]

If you want to know for certain if your tools are sharp, just make a cut across the end grain of a board. If it doesn't cut, or it tears or rips, the tool is either not sharp or not sharpened properly. i.e. the bevel is not right for the way you work with the tool. If it does rip or tear, slightly changing the angle of the tool while making a cut in the end grain might give you a clean cut. If it does, then that will indicate the bevel of the blade needs to be changed so that it will cut cleanly when you are working with it as you normally would. I have found this to be true after making a tool. I know it's super sharp but it doesn't cut cleanly. By trial and error, I learned that it only takes a little bit of work to change the bevel slightly, and the tool will work much better.

Another test that I use is to take the tool after I think it is super sharp and carve a piece of hard maple, rock maple, etc. If it carves the maple cleanly, and continues to hold it's edge, then I know I have a good, sharp tool.

[arbarnhart]

JC,

I know the chip knife I started with before switching to the pocket knife is that sharp because that is a common use - cleaning up the ends of boards that have little protrusions from sawing. I honed the pocket knife to the same "standard" (IOW, I think it is just as sharp).

[Just Carving]

If it's good for you, then its sounds good to me! LOL