New to relief carving and need advice

[Deathman1897]

I have just started two relief carving projects. For one of the projects I had to glue two boards together to get the right thickness. My question is will this provide a problem carving it? Is there a certain glue that should be used? I happened to use gorilla glue. The most detailed part is the feathers on an eagle, but I used cedar for the wood. It feels really soft, but hasn't given any problems yet. Will the cedar hold up, and should cedar be used for relief projects?

[kielyjw]

I would have most likely used carpenter's or white glue. I tried Gorilla glue years ago for some repairs and didn't care for the foamy type gap it left. Hopefully they have improved it. More important than the glue, might be the grain transition from one layer to the other. If you sort of "book-match" them by layer it may help. The biggest worry with cedar is splitting and tear-out. it tends to be dry and brittle. Traditionally, most relief carving is done in close grained wood like Basswood or Lime. I have had good luck also with Black Walnut and Cherry from upper parts of Michigan. The grain is tighter than southern hardwoods due to the cold winters. Good luck and let us know how it goes. The only real mistake you can make is not trying something. We may screw up a lot of tries, but we learn from each one.

[Ron Davidson]

I would have also used carpenters glue. I myself use Spanish Cedar for my reliefs. It is a tighter grain and holds detail better than basswood or lime wood. My opinion.

[Gulf Coast Handyman]

Deathman, a good website that helped me was www.mychipcarving.com. Have fun.

Dave

[Gulf Coast Handyman]

I signed up for the news letter, he sends free videos.

Dave

[tonyr]

A good book is Relief Carving in Wood by Chris Pye. You can get it from Amazon. It is a great book on the basics of relief carving plus has two guided projects in it to shoe the difference between low and high relief. Chris also has a web site full of info. Just Google Chris Pye.

TonyR