It's the Wood's fault!

[Irish]

It's the wood's fault!!!! Obviously it was a rotten, over dry, brittle piece of wood !!!!

I know that you don't get to see us 'authors' make mistakes. Every cut line looks so clean and crisp, every stroke looks so very easy to make and every project seems to go without a hitch in our getalongs. In fact "We" don't even get those nasty chip build-ups that surround everyone else's carvings ...

NOT!

We just don't show you the messes, the mistakes and the wonderful and creative pieces of firewood that we occassionally carve.

So ... I thought I would do a little chip carving this morning. I am not a chip carver. I play occassionally at chip carving but I probably don't complete two pieces a year. Chip carving fasinates me with the wonderful intrique designs but I simjply don't have the patience to work through more than an occassional project.

Because of that I always start with a practice session to get into the swing of the angle, pull motion and rotation of the board as I work through each chip. The board I am working on is one that I have set aside just for chip carving practice and it had plenty of room this morning for another carving session.

I sanded first, removed the dust with a tack cloth and found my can of repositionable spray adhesive. I gave my pattern paper a light coating of adhesive and laid the pattern down as close being square with the grain as I could. A firm rubbing with my finger tips set the pattern enough that it won't move while I am carving.

I checked my blade edge, did a few pulls across my fine sharpening stone and some time on my strop. Ready for the first cut I grabbed up my chip knife, got it to settle nicely into my palm, set my hand angle and made the pull stroke. I even remembered to swing through the stroke - light pressure and a very shallow cut into a deeper cut then back to the light shallow cut at the other end of the line.

Ok ... that went sort of well and so I moved onto the next cut and then the last of the three cuts to free the chip.

Susan

[Irish]

I knew almost instantly that something was not right.

The first triangle was not as clean as I would like and the first side has a wobble but that's why I am working on a practice board and didn't just dig into my good project wood.

"Really, Susan, you can do better than that!!!! "

I knew that I was working large triangles and that means a steeper angle to the cut but that should not be causing the points to chip out or the hard feeling the knife had in the wood. A large triangle with a steep angle can mean that I need to go back and make an occassional second cut over a line to free the chip but that was not what was happening.

Even after the first motif was done ... 32 triangles ... I just knew that this is not going well and that something was wrong. The knife did not feel right through the pull of the stroke. It felt as if I was having to work extra hard to finish the cut.

Let's try a few more motifs and see if this doesn't straighten itself out.

HMMMM! No much imporvement. I still have wobbly edges and the points seem to be tearing out or being pulled out ?!?

"Check your grip, Susan!"

The chip knife should be held loosely in your finger tips and rest comfortably across the center diagonal of your palm. Your hand should feel relaxed not as if you are making a fist.

I tried loosening, relaxing my grip as it's been a while since I chip carved. Maybe I'm choking up on the blade. Nope! No white knuckles, no fingers too close to the blade and no change in the cut.

"It's the wood's fault! Obviously the wood must be overly dry or brittle."

Old dry wood feels dry to the touch and will chip or break out unexpectedly during the carving process. Damp wood, overly moist wood, feels cold and sometimes it seems like the knife is pressing the soft wood instead of cutting it.

So I checked carefully but I didn't find any spots along the cut lines that look like the wood is chipping out away from the cut. The wood feels like it has no temperature - it neither feels extremely dry nor damp. No temperature feeling should mean that the wood is at the same humidity level as my carving room.

My practice board is not that old. It's been around the studio for about one year and never stored in the shop that has no air conditioning nor heat. It's not even old enough to have a decent layer of dust on it yet.

Susan

[Irish]

"Susan! You really do need to do a little more practice as this is not going well at all."

OK... the wood doesn't seem to be the problem so I need to think what else might not be right.

"When in doubt, Susan, sharpen your tool."

Maybe I didn't get a nice edge this morning. So I grabbed my fine stone and gave my chip knife another few licks. A careful glance along the blade's edge showed no dings, no dents, no shiny spots that mean a dull spot. The tip is nice and crisp and the blade is straight.

My strop was extremely dirty so maybe something happened there that is causing my blade to ... not hang up ... drag through the wood. Maybe I am not getting as clean an edge as I think.

So I grabbed an older bench knife and scrapped all of that old black crusty rouge off. I worked carefully to keep from going into the leather. Instead of cutting the old stuff off I scrapped ... and scrapped ... and scrapped some more.

After the scrapping I did a quick rinse with clean water in the sink. Some new rouge and I dressed out my blade. Then I did the paper check where you hold a sheet of newspapre in the air at one corner and see if the knife is sharp enough to cut through the edge several inches away from your hand. If the paper bends under the knife the knife isn't sharp yet ... but my chip knife cut the paper easily.

"OK. Sue, did you check your paper pattern?"

Hmmm ... the pattern paper does not feel damp from the spray adhesive. When I run my hand across the paper I can't feel the adhesive underneath so I don't have any thick spots of the spray rubber cement
product. It's not the paper pattern.

Susan

[Irish]

"Think this through, Susan, 'cause you haven't figure out what is wrong yet."

I moved to another motif on the pattern. This one has smaller chips so my blade is closer to a 65 degree angle (shallow) than the 45 degree I was using on the large triangles in the first motif. The 65 degree means I am biting less wood. The chip cuts are not as deep so there shouldn't be as much pressure on the points.

Nope, don't have it yet! I am still getting chip outs, pulled points and breaks. I still feel like I am 'fighting' the cut.

So check everything again! It's not the wood, the wood is just fine. It's not the paper pattern, the pattern is flat on the board, dry and has not thick spots from the spray adhesive. It's not the sharpness of the blade, I can cut super thin slivers easily. It's not my hand angle because I have adjusted that to closer to 65 when I moved to the second motif.

Susan

[Irish]

"What the whositis is going on ??????"

I know my knife has a sharp edge, I know the wood is good, I know the pattern paper is down properly, I know I am not choking up on the grip, I know I am doing the pull stroke correctly ... I use this wood, this paper and this knife all the time in my relief carving.


"In My RELIEF carving ... WELL, DUH!, SUSAN! ... "

See the lightbulb going on over my head!

It's the bevel.

I was still working at my relief bevel. When I am sharpening my knife along with my chisels and gouges I tend to pick up that slightly wider angle to the blade's bevel. More bevel equals more steel. I'm trying to pull too much steel through to thin an area ... DUH!

So I laid my chip knive flat down on my fine stone - I mean face down flat - reset the bevel to a paper thin edge and

... Tah Dah!!!!!!

The steel is thin enough now that I am not dragging through the wood and even so thin that my printed paper pattern lines remained on the wood after all three side cuts to the triangle.

OK ... figured that one out so back to practicing.

Susan

[Irish]

So ... after all of that I wanted to say here, loudly and with a very bold voice, that what you carve whether you are a professional or our newest newbie carver is important!

The box that you see is made of 1" x 3" white pine boards that were cut to size to create the box. They were not glued up until after the chip carving was complete.

Those cut pine boards appeared in my family's home when I was 12. It was late fall and my Dad set up a table in the rec room where we had a 9" Television. Everyone would gather around the TV in the evening and watch whatever show was on because at that time as many of us remember TV was not 365/24/7 ...

Dad had the boards, a few clamps, some tools he called chip carving tools and several books by Mr. Tangerman (hope I got this gentleman's name correct as he did much to start and encourage hobby carving). He got out his ruler, a pencil and started making marks across the first board. Then we got to watch as he slowly and carefully began cutting along those lines to make little indented triangles.

He worked for weeks. I still remember the bandaids on his fingers. Not from cuts but from having to work so hard to make the knife go through the pine. Some boards he made with big triangle squares and other boards the triangles were small.

So one evening he brought out a new board and on it was a pattern of two fighting roosters. He works so very carefully to make each cut perfect. Then the boards disappeared, the table was gone, we didn't see the knives any more and all Dad would say is that the project was done.

I did see those boards again ... Christmas morning ... they were now a dowry box that's 8" high, 20" long and 12"wide. It had a key in the keyhole with a ribbon and a tag ... the tag said "To Suzy from Santa".

Dad was not a professional carver or even professional craftsman. His favorite wood carving was working gun stocks. I believe I own the only chip carving piece that he ever created.

It is my most treasured possession. His one chip carving, his gift of his love of carving still affects my life every day!

So do the carvings that you gift to those you love. Your carvings are truly treasures beyond words. We who recieve them don't care about anything but that you made them for us with love.

So after that mushy moment ... out of here to do some more practice.

Susan
(Thanks, Pop!)

[BullRunBear]

Irish,

Thanks for the tutorial (and the amusement) on the many things that can go wrong. As someone just beginnning, I learned a lot. And the story about the hand carved box was touching.

Jeff

[therenow]

Thanks Susan for the humorous experience with your "occasional" chip carving. I have been at it (seriously) every day for about a six weeks. Some improvements but a lot of chip outs, atc. So I feed the fire monster and try again.

The Dowery box your dad made for you goes beyond expression. It is a wonderlul work of art and I really appreicated the uniqueness of the pattern, None of that tiny 4MM squares that make my eyes bleed and cause some "sheep herder language" around here. It has been my hope that I could create some things for my grown kids, grandkids to "leave behind " so to say

Thanks for sharing. now back to the joy and frustration of my addiction..chip carving.

Ed

[Irish]

Ed, what you might try is very lightly scoring the three lines of the triangle before you make your chip cuts. A very light cut first clears the paper and cuts just very top surface of the wood.

Where I am most prone to chip outs is in the tight angled corners. A light scoring, for me, seems to free that corner so that the first cut does not lift the corner so much that the next cut pops out more wood than I want.

Susan