chip cleaning up.

[aulddiy]

I read with interest about how others tidy up there relief carvings.
However a friend pointed out to me my recent chip carving ( a clock plate) suffered from the same fault..

Do others need to clean up there work, and if so how do they go about it on a chip carving?. I use a good knife sharpen regular, around every 15 minutes when chipping, however when the picture is enlarged my chips look rough. This is more so in across the grain cuts.
Looking at the carving I do n't see ithese irregularities, but age and a growing cataract may account for this.
Any ideas please pass them on.

[pallin]

Keeping your chip knife very sharp is normally the key to clean cuts - and the ideal is to have the final shape when the chips are removed, BUT the texture of the wood can work against you. If the cross-grain cuts are crushing the fibers, you will have some roughness. I often do not make the cross-grain cuts to the final line, but do a light shaving cut to finish. I have done several chip carved plates similar to your clock. None of the chips were removed by the simple "three cut" method described in literature.

[aulddiy]

"Three cut" is exactly what I 've been doing. The cross grain cut is the one causing the "fuzz". I'll shave that area in future.
Thanks for taking time to reply.
rgds
John

[RUssL.]

I go over my chip carving pieces all the time.
I think, it truth, everyone does.
If you watch instructional videos by even the Great-One-of-Chip-Carving you'll see he has to go back on some cuts...and he is a chip carving Master and it is recorded (where it could be edited out).

Russ

[kitaye]

I'm not a master but I have to go back over my chips all the time. Especially if I let it sit overnight, the next day I see all kinda of places that need to be cleaned up. I think, and hope, it is a normal part of chip carving.

[CarverRog]

I'm far from being a Master chip carver but If I do have any cleanup I take care of it before I go to the next chip. I wear a pair of magnifing glasses when carving so normally I won't see problems later with normal vision. I will shave a cut sometimes on the large ones where I couldn't cut all the way down to the bottom with my first cut. To keep my chip carved piece from getting dirt on it from my hands and arms I will tape a piece of paper over the areas I'm not cutting on at the time. If I need to shave or recut a radious I will shave it only up to where the grain changes direction and then shave from the other direction up to that same grain change. Did that make sense?

I have used a knife that 99.99% of the people say is good and sharp but isn't sharp enough for me. I had a fellow from Shapton sharpening stones sit in on a class I was teaching and when we took a break he asked if he could put my knife under a microscope to see just how sharp I had it, of course he was promoting his stuff. As he looked the cutting edge over I heard him say Oh that looks really good and it might even better than what I could do with my stones, yea sure buddy. Needless to say I felt pretty good about what he had to say and so did John Dunkle my knife maker. I think you get the picture that the knife being super sharp is the #1 thing for quality cuts, it also needs to have a mirror finish on the entire blade which helps the knife to move thru the wood eaiser. I've rambled on to much. Good Luck!

[RUssL.]

Thanks Roger! That's all great stuff.
I hope you feel free to "ramble" more often! ;-)

Russ