Grapevine Relief Project

[davidinsarasota]

I have not posted a 'Work in Progress' in awhile, so I thought I would start at
the very begining on this one. I went to our local wood store, Robert's hardwoods.

They had a good sized slab of Basswood, but it had a lot of chunks out of it.
Then I saw a couple of big slabs of Mahogany (Honduran I think) and fell in love with them. It happens one had a bad split on one end (pictured next post), so the clerk only charged me for 4.5ft of the 6ft length. The wood is a full 2" thick; Good for high relief
At $8 a board foot it came to $65.

The first pic is the full board along with my Milwaukee buzz saw and a new Milwaukee Router with both fixed and plunge base $120 from Amazon; Free, fast shipping.

The next pic shows the slab ready for cutting with a 1/4" piece of plywood under the cut to allow the cut to open and not pinch on the blade--very important with a large heavy board like this. The plywood is shown in the last pic after two passes; I was pleased to see the depth of the cut was just right.

I use packing tape to secure the guide board temporarily; It holds well is easy to peel off without leaving a lot of gum behind like duct tape.

The third pic (I'm assuming we still only get four per post, even with the neat new viewer, thanks Bob) shows the safety stuff, minus the hated dust mask which I use a lot since I been sneezin' lately.

I wanted to show some techniques of early stage wood management because we don't talk too much about it on the forum. It's boring, but it may help newbies getting started, and If anyone has any tips, please chime in. I'm always learnin.

[davidinsarasota]

I'm skipping the promised 'split' pic; it did'nt come out too good. I used that part of the board for some test passes with gouges, big V tool and the router.

Next are the three 20" section cuts. Much easier to handle.

The third pic is the beautiful Grapes pattern I downloaded from Irish's site. I would prefer to design my own carvings, but with talent like this available, I had to go for it. I may use my own design on future pieces; perhaps I can absorb enough from Lora to do one I like.

Woodcarving Patterns, Classic Carving Patterns Online, Wood Carving Designs & Patterns Online

The final pic is the pattern transferred to the wood via old school carbon paper.

The next post will show the waste removal with the router. If I survive.

[davidinsarasota]

Good news, Router did not kill or maim. Could be it's lurking . . . waiting for me to get complacent. It has a lot of good power and is easy to operate, I recommend this model for anyone interested.

The pics below show the panel almost completely routed (I want to go back and remove material from the empty inside part of the scroll curls), and some early shaping with the carving tools. The router/vac is really loud and I wanted to wait for the neighbors to wake up, or preferably leave before starting it up, so I killed the time by working with the gouge, which is much quieter and less aggressively out to hurt me.

The 'L' bracket supports the router base as it nears the edge and could tip. It is held in place by one of those ratchet web straps. The strap works OK, but tilts the bracket up slightly when tightened.

The other pics just document the slow progression of carving, mostly grapes. The grapes are good to carve because one defines the other, helping with efficiency.

The Mahogany is excellent to carve: Soft and tight enough for details. I think it will finish out better than Basswood since it has more character.

[carver33]

David, looking good so far.

btw: I like your fancy work shop.

[AlArchie]

That's quite a progression, Dave! Should be beautiful in that wood when finished.

Al

[Thor]

I like watching the progress. I always think my rough outs are terribly "rough" compared to other folk's and here with your close up photos is a good example of that. You're keeping it nice and clean.
I hope to get a nice piece of mahogany to try soon. That is really turning into some nice grapes.
Christina

[markken5889]

Nice work David, both the carving and how you've shown each of the steps. Thanks for the nice WIP show!

Mark

[doris]

oh, i am going to folllow this one too, we rarely see long progress wips here, and i so enjoy looking how others approach the tasks at hand. thanks for sharing in much detail of everything around too !! :-)

[davidinsarasota]

Thanks for the comments all. Made good progress on more grapes today, but the leaves are slow to reveal how they want to be carved. If finding out how the wood wants to be worked is a negotiation, then the leaves are the Chinese Government.

[Riverman]

David the grapevine project looks great, I am thinking about trying to do some thing like this, O! I know about the dreaded dusk mask!
Bob