THE MAGIC OF FACES - KNIVES

As I believe I mentioned earlier these posts are going to be enhanced and made into a book that will be available on Kindle and Nook (assuming I can work out photography) for the low, low price of $2.99. For that reason I'm covering the initial steps prior to carving just like it was a tutorial for a beginner, hence the posts on knives and the one to come on Safety. Be patient, we'll get to the actual carving very soon.

The knife you use to carve is important. It has to fit your hand, not slide around when your hand gets sweaty, and be comfortable to hold for long periods. More important than the knife is how sharp it is. For most of my carving life I used a folding pocket knife (more on this later), and while it was what I considered sharp, I didn't really know what sharp was until I purchased my first fixed-blade, honest-to-goodness carving knife from Del Stubbs at Pinewood Forge. That's the knife I'm talking about there to the left of old Happy, the Wood Spirit. I have since learned to put a carving edge on just about any knife, and I would suggest you do the same. You don't need a lot of expensive equipment (multiple diamond hones, water stones, ceramic stones, etc.) to do the job right. Just google "scary sharp system" and you will find everything you need for not much money. Just don't fall into the trap of over-sharpening. Once you get a good edge on the knife (many knives come with a great edge) all you need to do is strop the edge every half hour or so. Unless you try to carve a nail or something you should almost never touch the knife to a sharpener again.

Another knife I have used is the Flexcut Pelican pictured here.

I consider a sheath of some kind an essential accessory to a carving knife. They take up less room (yeah, even that Flexcut sheath) than the traditional packaging a knife comes in, and they provide protection for the edge. This Flexcut sheath is pretty pricey, about half the cost of the knife itself, but it will save you a lot of worry.

Del Stubs's knives come with traditional Scandinavian birch bark sheaths at no extra cost, so the cost of one of his knives is about the same as the cost of a Pelican and sheath.

I've posted an official photo of the Flexcut Pelican to point out a peculiarity of mine. I can't leave a production knife alone. I've always got to be modifying them to make them fit me better. By comparing the photos of my Pelican above and the factory Pelican here, you can see what I've done.

The first thing I did was take a sander to the handle and remove the factory finish. Straight from the factory Flexcut knives come with a hard, slick (polyurethane, I presume) finish to the handle. As soon as my hand starts sweating, the knife starts trying to slide around. This results in gripping the knife harder and, for me at least, a case of tendinitis (we'll talk about this in the upcoming Safety post).

The next thing I did was very carefully grind the hump off the point of the blade. Flexcut puts that hump there to strengthen the point, but I wanted a point that would allow me to make really tight turns. I knew grinding that hump off would make the point more delicate, but I've broken enough points off blades to know how to avoid that.

This lesson of this is that you can take a factory knife that isn't exactly what you need, and, with some research and experience, modify it to make it truly yours.

Now, this is the one knife that I'm going to use to carve the face in this tutorial. It's the Regular Slojd from Pinewood Forge. It has a 2-1/4" blade, a birch bark sheath, a beautiful wood handle that doesn't slide around in your hand, and costs $38 the last I looked. If you like a shorter blade they have the Short Slojd with a 1-3/4" blade. (Full disclosure, I have always paid for everything I received from Pinewood Forge.) Del and Mary are great people to deal with and will bend over backward to get you what you want. By the way, I haven't modified this knife a whit. It's perfect the way it is.

You may have noticed something about all the knives I've recommended here: they all have a curved edge. I think this is the best blade style for a beginner. I prefer the curved edge because it makes slicing cuts easier. A slicing cut is the easiest, most efficient way to cut wood. It requires less force and thus is safer. Even when you push the blade straight into the wood, the curved edge imparts a natural slicing action. An awful lot of carving knives have a straight edge, some variation of what is called a Wharncliffe blade style. I do use these blades for some things, but I consider them an expert's blade due to the more complex motion that is required to get a slicing cut.

One more caveat, you will need a knife with a relatively thick blade which gives more support to the edge. That's not so important if you are carving in commercially obtained wood, but if you are carving in found wood, and you will probably want to do that sooner or later, you will want that support to deal with whatever foreign objects (dirt, etc.) might be present. Just be careful.

About folding knives: beginners shouldn't use them. Now some may call me an uneducated hypocrite because most kids start whittling with folding knives, and, in fact, my first whittling knife was a folding knife. But today I wouldn't start any child or adult beginner with anything but a fixed blade knife for safety reasons. Until you get good with a knife, practicing the proper ways to make a cut, folding knives have a tendency to fold (go figure!) and cut your fingers. Yep, happened to me on a couple of occasions. So, please, stick to fixed blade knives for a while.

If you have any questions about knives, sharpening or stropping, feel free to leave a comment.

Next time we'll cover Safety. You'll want to pay attention because, trust me, blood will just ruin a good piece of wood.

Until then, let the chips fly!

THE MAGIC OF FACES

Faces are an endless source of fascination for me and for many other carvers. One of the most often heard requests is "Can you teach me to carve faces?" And that's only natural.

Human beings are hardwired to recognize faces. I believe that to be a survival skill from our earliest tribal days a million years ago. At that time our pre-homo sapiens sapiens ancestors lived in small groups that could be called tribes. Inter-tribal warfare was probably more common than not, so it was a decided advantage to be able to distinguish between "us" and "them". "Them" were dangerous!

Facial recognition was also a great help in keeping the nuclear family stable. Imagine the embarrassment if Ugh got caught dragging Eeep's wife off to his cave. "Ooops! Sorry Eeep! I thought she was my wife. You know these females. They all look alike to me."

Research has shown that humans can recognize a face in the most rudimentary of drawings or pictures. Take the Happy Face for example. What is it but a circle, two dots and a curve.

Not only do we see faces in rudimentary drawings, we also see them in nature: clouds, rocks and even pieces of wood. Take The Jester up at the top of the post. Before I took my knife to him, he was just a piece of a tree branch, but I could see him in there just waiting to get out.

It's a lot of fun to carve faces into found wood, but for beginners or moderately advanced carvers it is easier to learn with commercially processed wood. Found wood is, to be polite, variable in quality. The piece that I used to carve The Jester had soft spots, downright rotten spots, and grain that went every which way. It short, it was a challenge, one that required the use of CA glue to stabilize a couple of areas.

That's why, as I show you how I carve faces I'll be using a piece of 1-1/2" birch dowel that I got from my local Woodcraft store. You just buy a 3-foot length for less than $5.00 and cut it up into six 6" pieces. It's cheap, so if you accidentally turn it into firewood, you haven't lost much in the way of materials. The wood is consistent in density and the grain runs all in one direction. That's what I used to carve old Windy there.

In the next post I'll talk about the knife I use. I say knife instead of tools because I'm going to be showing you how to do this with one knife. Once you learn how to carve a face with only a knife, it's easy to bring other tools into the process.

So, until next time, let those chips fly!

I'm Baaaack!!!

Well, here I am again. I know, I know. I've been gone SO long. I was very surprised to see that during my long absence I was still getting people coming by to browse. Not a lot, mind you, but that's only to be expected. I hope that with my restored presence more people will be dropping in.

I have big plans! I am going to start a series of blog posts about carving faces. These posts will eventually be published (if I can keep up and not get discouraged) in expanded form, complete with photos, as a Kindle and Nook book for the low, low price of $2.99. I already have a couple of fiction books for those platforms (Kindle / Nook) (HINT, HINT). If that works out, I may do some more. If you don't own one of the mobile platforms (tablet or smartphone) you can get the reading software for free to install on your computer. That's what I did.

I will also be doing some cross promoting of other carver's websites/blogs. Today I'd like to direct your attention to "The Forest Girl" written by The Ancient Muse. I don't think she's ancient at all! She does many different types of art, but I like her carved wooden jewelry. She has a very distinctive style and is well worth a look.

So, until next time (SOON, really!), let those chips fly.

Lovespoons, Colored and Not

Well, I said I'd do it, and I did it. I painted a lovespoon. Actually, two. The first was the"uff-da" spoon that I painted with multi-colored acrylics just to see what it looked like. The second was the twin of the "uff-da" spoon, without the miscalculation. Looking at the photo above you can see that I painted the sides of the "fountain" the same antique gold that I painted the inside of the bowl. The other spoon I painted with raw sienna to get away from the unrelieved white of bare basswood. Here is a photo from a different angle.

The diamond on the lower spoon was too large. Everything was fine while I was carving it, but when I began to oil the thing, hanging onto the upper part while wiping the bowl with oil, the thing snapped at the diamond cut out. Out came the super glue!

I like both spoons. I think comparing them as to which I like better is a lot like comparing apples and oranges: they are different animals. If you would like to see more on this subject, check out The Woodbee Carver. He put it so much better than I could.

I did do some more work on the spalted maple lovespoon. BTW, pay no attention to that idiot that hijacked my blog last time to say that spalted maple was hard, but not unreasonably so! Maple, even spalted maple, is no wood for the casual carver, unless, of course, they carve with power. In which case it doesn't matter how hard the wood is. If you are doing it with a knife, however, don't expect to take a slice more than a 64th of an inch thick with any regularity.

Actually it isn't unreasonably hard, you just have to change the way you carve, unless maybe you're a rock climber who can lift his entire body weight just by closing his hand. Using a standard paring cut makes my hand cramp within a couple of minutes. To do the piercings I changed from doing a paring cut with a standard sloyd-type knife to using a couple of bent knives. That way I use my forearm muscles instead of my hand muscles.

The blades are double-edged, slow curved, one with an inside bevel and one with an outside bevel. They are made by Mike Komick at Preferred Edge. I made the handles myself (still need a little work). The inside bevel blade is great for the straight cuts inside the piercings, and the outside bevel blade makes those inside curves a cinch.

Gotta go get the meatloaf out of the oven. Until next time, let those chips fly!

A New Spoon And An Old Axe

I have completed the redo of the Art Deco Fountain Spoon without major mishap this time. I haven't finished it yet, dithering about what to do with that lily-white wood. I started coloring the messed-up spoon with colored pencils, but quickly carved that off. My technique needs some (a lot!) of work.

Meanwhile I've started a new spoon using spalted maple.

The design begins with a Maltese cross inscribed in a circle at the top. Below that are two large, pierced hearts, and below that an anchor symbolizing the desire to settle down. The departure from my usual methods and materials are two-fold. This is my first attempt at carving spalted maple. So far, my opinion is, harder than poplar, but not unreasonably hard. This is also the first time I have used nothing but a hatchet (hand axe, whatever) and a knife to rough out a spoon. The only saw cut I made was at the top of the spoon bowl on the back as a stop cut. The hatchet belonged to my paternal grandfather. It's marked Shapleigh Hardware Co. -- Diamond Edge. The claim is not unreasonable.

I not only used the hatchet to rough most of the profile, I used it to thin the handle of the spoon.

 It was actually quicker than sawing, considering what a horrendous sawyer I am.

This is the back of the spoon. Not much worse than if I used a saw and certainly quicker. Maybe one day the old Nordic woodsmen won't laugh and make fun of me.

That's it for today. Gotta go make dinner.

Until next time, let the chips fly!

That's Some Mighty Purty Kindlin'!

This is the newest effort at a lovespoon. I call it the Art Deco Fountain.

Looks pretty good from this angle. I'm especially fond of the Art Deco "Fountain of Life" with the diamond in it. I originally wasn't so sure about the heart-piercing on the handles of the keys, but having looked at it a while, it's starting to grow on me. On top is the eternal flame.

More on the fountain later.

Since this was carved out of a 1"x3"x12" piece of basswood, I have thought about painting it with a very dilute wash: the fountain with blue and gold along the edges, the hearts as red (of course), the keys with gold, and the flame with a blue fading to a yellow at the top. I don't know though. What do you guys think? It's not traditional, but . . . .

This is my new basswood rough-out knife. It started out life as an Analon kitchen paring knife with a 3.5" blade. Since I almost never use a saw to rough out the shape, I wanted a larger knife with a thin blade so I could remove great gouts of wood quickly. A thin blade in soft wood does that so much better than a typical sloyd-type knife. So I liberated the knife (along with its own sheath) and reground the edge. It works great! On harder woods I'll stay with the sloyd.

This is the knife I used to hollow out the bowl. The blade is by Mike Komick at Preferred Edge, an outside-bevel hook. I carved and mounted the handle. I prefer to think of the handle as a sperm whale even though the flukes are turned the wrong way.

These are the knives I used to relieve the keys into low relief and make the piercings. The piercings were done with the top knife made by my friend Carl Johnson which has a 3/4" tiny blade making tight curves easy. I did the relief with another knife from Preferred Edge, an inside-bevel high curve bent knife. I feel like I have more control doing relief with a bent knife, and Mike Komick makes some of the best out there.

Now that you've seen the good, here comes the bad.

And here's a close up.

I started off not going to carve the back of the spoon. However, while working on the hearts, the knife slipped and took a corner off the back of one of the "leaves" of the fountain. I tried super-gluing a piece of off-cut into the gap and carving it down to match. Unfortunately I didn't like the way it looked, so I decided to carve the back to take off the "uff-da." With a little clean-up, I think it would have worked fine.
Unfortunately . . . .

. . . while doing the other side of the fountain I got in a hurry, got lost, and carved from the wrong direction. I don't think this can be fixed. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd sure be interested in hearing them. In any case, here are some more pictures of the back of the spoon.

I really like the way the heart piercings came out on the back. So I'm going to have to try this pattern again and pay attention this time. I hope. Since I've already screwed this one up, I think I'll do the painting and see how it looks before I try it on a real spoon.

Until next time, let those chips fly!

Happy New Year!

I wish all who visit this site a happy and healthy new year. And health, especially among us carvers, should be near the top of the must do list. Carvers, and especially me, are particularly at risk for tendinitis and carpal tunnel syndrome.

I don't, typically, use a carving glove for a couple of reasons. One is that I started carving before there was such a thing as a carving glove, and did it so long I couldn't get used to using a glove. The other reason is that once upon a time I became determined that I was going to learn to use a carving glove no matter what. So I got a glove and used it exclusively for a couple of months, whereupon I developed tendinitis. Carving gloves, at least the ones I had access to, were slipperier than my bare hand, so I was gripping the pieces I was working on so hard that tendinitis was a sure thing. I wasn't able to carve for almost three months.

Then I ran across the following video. I did the exercises several times a day for two weeks, and I was pain free again. Since that time I continue to do the exercises every couple of weeks or if I find my hands starting to tingle. I have had no more problems. So if you are having problems, or if you want to avoid having problems, give the exercises a try. They can all be done inside a couple of minutes, and they've saved me a lot of pain.



So have a happy and health new year!