White oak

[rodue]

I had a project that I wanted the grain to show in some areas of the carving. I had some butter nut,but it was not right size.I also have a lot of bass wood,but I chose the oak. It was not the best decision. Years ago I see they used both white and red oak in backs of chairs and claw feet for tables,next time I will chose a different wood.

[BRIAN D]

I have found if you take a little stain & a test piece of wood and play with it different ways you can make basswood look almost like other woods. Brian D

[jmischel]

I'm new here, so I'll ask the obvious newbie question: Why was the white oak a bad decision?

[TreeWizard]

Hard as a rock, and gets harder the dryer it gets.

[rales]

I really enjoy carving oak - but it does have it's limitations... it won't hold fine detail and it can be hard on your tools unless you slow down and take a little less wood with each cut. You don't really need to change your bevels but you do need to take it easy - especially with v-tools and veiners.

The spring wood in red oak is very soft and it's easy to get bumpy - bouncing off the summer wood and plunging into the spring wood if you are not careful. White oak is much more uniform - the pores that give red oak it's very obvious grain are filled in white oak and thus less obvious but harder overall - very weather resistant and great for outdoor stuff.

All that said - you get a really nice tool patina on oak - very polished right from tool bevel. For the right project - Oak is beautiful!

[rodue]

This was a full dimension figure and the problem was end grain and cross grain with the grain it cut real nice. A lot better than cedar,cedar is so soft that it wants to tear inplace of cutting.I think I got spoil by using bass wood .The end result give me a nice looking face and that is what I am leaving natural.I am going to paint the hair and hat.Wink

[CarverFromNoWhere]

I carve in all kinds of very tough woods but I tend to steer clear of the White Oak, my grandpa had it eat the blades off of a heavy duty 20" planer taking a 1/16" cut. It destroyed the HSS blades and wrecked the whole planer. I haven't carved the White Oak but I have used Red Oak and Burr Oak regularly.
Carl

[arbarnhart]

I have some white oak and was going to make myself a little shop sign with it. I changed my mind before I finished the first letter. I am sure I could do it with the router, but I wanted a hand carved sign. I have some cypress that has enough contrast in the grain to stain similar to oak.

[rodue]

I also had some problems with it checking,this was air dried oak. I drilled a large hole up the center,hope this helps. You can see from the picture that the grain shows up well. That is if I got loaded right.

[Irish]

Rodue,

Oak is a hard wood but well worth the work especially with it's beautiful grain patterns.

Check the bevel angle on your chisels. If you have been working basswood and butternut you probably have a minimal bevel of 12 degrees. The harder the wood the steeper you need your chisel edge angle.

You might try taking one of your least favorite chisels and changing the bevel to something closer to 25 degrees. Also go get your mallets! Give a steep bevel a try before you change your favorite tools.

For me, the problems that I have had using harder woods over the years has been related to secure clamping. If your hardwood is not absolutely secure every mallet hit's power loses some energy to moving the board. So some energy goes into the cut but some gets lost to rocking or skutting the board in the clamps.

My work bench has a nice strong backboard that I use all the time. I use scrap wood in the space between my project wood and that backboard then bench dog everything into place. That way when I do a 'smack' with the mallet it all goes right into the carving wood ... no rocking - no skutting.

I have on occassion though shaken the entire table ...

Susan