tiller to Brest

Now that the rope-work section only needs tidying up it really is time to move on to the next section.  First of all I developed this pattern on paper cut to the shape of the length of tiller.  The section is going to be ‘interesting’ to lay-out as it tapers, curves and is oval in cross-section. I cut  a sheet to size and trial fitted it before I developed the pattern below:

 

 

Once drawn up the pattern was glued in place but once glued in place the pattern was about 2mm out where it stuck more tightly to the curve than it did when it was dry and relatively stiff , so, nothing for it but to draw it directly on to the timber.  First you need a construction grid – four centre lines, one for each side, then verticals to mark the centre for each diamond.  Next mark out half way between every point the vertical and horizontal lines intersect and join them up to form a diamond grid which were thickened:

 

 

 

The lines were then tidied up to give the final lay-out. The diaper flowers are being trialed at the same time, but as these will be carved away, they will be properly laid out at a later stage. Far left shows a turks-head knot ready for carving.

 

 

 

 

tiller to Brest – update

Things are progressing, slowly, but I am still more-or-less on schedule, having managed to cobble together somewhere near 20 hours carving on the tiller in between and around other work.  I know I felt I would leave the rope-work until the whole thing was roughed out but in the end I have concentrated on getting it done and now the ropework is nearing completion; I think about 5 more hours should see it done.

Hopefully you can see that the work is much deeper and more fully rounded.  You might also see where I have started some fancy ‘whipping’ on the one end: more of that in a later post.  Incidentally the only tool I am using at the moment is a 10mm skew-chisel – the pointed end is essential for getting into the tiny spaces

tiller to Brest

The tiller is coming along, the pictures say it better than my words – about half the length of the knotwork is roughed out, progress is working out at just over an inch an hour – so 12 more hours carving will finish this stage, then I guess about another 15 hours to refine the carving.

The first picture shows the whole length, the spiral roughed out to the left, the pattern marked out and the roughed-out knots in the second, and the third shows the depth of carving the whole length will be carved to eventually. The only tools needed are a small chisel and a v-tool (aka parting tool)

 

How to….carve a simple dog-head finial

 

Carving doodles are both great fun, and a quick way to practice new techniques.  I usually keep a small off-cut of hardwood and a carving tool near to hand for doodling with. A great subject for doodling with is animal heads, in this instance dogs.

As we have seen on previous projects, you will need to generate a side view and a top view.  I learned to draw animals using the sausage and egg (‘breakfast’) method, like this:

fried egg plus sausage (rounded rectangle)  to get proportions for side view

 

 

 

fried egg plus 3 sausages gains the top view

 

 

 

 

Changing the proportions makes a big difference:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once you have decided on a pattern then transfer the pattern to the timber, the circle is very important as it marks the position for the eyes and ears. I have left the drawing construction lines on the wood  – the vertical line and the horizontal one carry right around the block to accurately position the circle for the eye-brow ridge on the top view, and the corner of the eye and the skull circle on the far side of the block thus ensuring the pattern is squarely aligned on all sides.

First rough out the top profile and side profile and make sure you cut in the curves of the circle too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Round over the edges, but try not touch the ears – rounding the corners of the head will leave the ears standing proud. The photo is misleading as the lack of shadow and the drawn-on curves for the ears (I changed the design at a later stage) makes it look like I may have rounded the ear section of the block but in fact it has not been rounded at all.

 

Mark on the eyes, nose and mouth, looks good doesn’t it? You can stop here if you want to but some detailing pays real dividends.

 

 

The muzzle has two components that the carver needs to deal with: the top of the muzzle is long and narrow and the ‘jowls’ flare out from it.  Carving this detail creates a triangular hollow where the nose meets the circle of the skull. This hollow is where the eyeball is carved.  Eyes are spherical so make sure you carve the eye sufficiently curved. While you’re at it cut in the mouth and nose.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just the ears left

 

 

All done. Total number of tools used is one – a nicely sharp knife.

 

view of underside

view from above

 

 

 

Carving a half-hull model

Carving a half-hull model is one of my favourite ways to spend time at the carving bench and  is a great ‘novice’ carving project – I carved several when I first started out, including a powerboat, a table-top sculpture of a broads-yacht with sails carved from lime-wood ’till they were transparent, and a j-class yacht with mahogany below the water line and maple above.

There are several ways to carve a half-hull model, with many carvers stating that the best way is to laminate the hull in stepped laminates that follow the hull shape and which are then ‘faired’ into the final form.  This method, it seems to me, is  somewhat ‘potchy’ – you have to cut out and sand flat all those laminates, then glue them and clamp them and then, finally, get to the good bit and carve them into shape – and hope that the glue lines do not show or the model will have to be filled/sanded/painted. I must admit, I far prefer to just get on and carve the thing, although, I do sometimes like to use different colour timbers above and below the water lines.

lines of Albert Strange design ‘Mist’, image from Google Images, believed copy-right free as in public domain

The first thing you will need is a lines plan like the one above – the lines are the shape of the boat drawn on paper to show the 3-d shape of the boat. As you can see the lines plan is a method used to represent a 3-d shape in a 2-d drawing, what might not be so clear at first glance is that it shows the views of the hull from both the front and the back,but if you take a few moments to look at the lines carefully it all quickly becomes clear.  For our purposes the side view, the deck plan and the outline of the boat as seen from the front and rear (bow and stern) are the most important

The lines plans can be enlarged/shrunk to fit the timber and transferred to the block ready for (band)sawing.  Once the block is cut to shape then it can be carved using very few tools – a medium or shallow gouge is ideal, but a chisel can be made to do this work at a pinch. The tool marks must then be removed with a sanding block or Shinto-rasp.

This half-hull was carved using these tools: quick gouge (top)- gouge number 7,8 or 9, flat gouge-number 3, Shinto rasp

 

 

The quick gouge is called quick because it removes a lot of material very quickly; best used across the grain to avoid splitting off large chunks if timber, unless you want to do so -it is a useful technique if you are totally sure what will be split away.

The model was finished with a scraper, I never use abrasive cloths or paper unless there is absolutely no alternative.

This half-hull has been finished with a clear wax – the wax is applied and then heated gently with a hair drier until it melts into the wood grain, then buffed with  a soft cloth.

 

How to…carve a traditional cat-head part 2

At the end of Part One the carving was pretty much completed, the bulk of this section is, for the most part, a case of refining the work already done, but, the method for carving the mane is worth looking at in a little detail.

Before we get on to the mane, there are a last few little details to sort.  Here the nostrils and the final shape of  the muzzle are marked out.

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The nostrils have been carved with a teeny number 3 gouge.  The muzzle shape has been finalised and that has allowed the small teeth to be carved at the same time as the mouth has been cut back lower than the height of the canines which in turn has allowed them to be roughed out, although the mouth will be made deeper still later.

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Here the lower lip has been rounded and cleaned-up, but also work is starting on the mane.  The flow of the locks has been marked and the area between the pen-lines is being hollowed with a small fairly deep gouge. This technique for carving fur/hair is to work and re-work the lock of hair with progressively deeper and narrower gouges so that the overlapping cuts do not remove the preceeding cuts but rather they accentuate them.

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The last few cuts have been made with a v-tool producing deep cuts that in turn hold onto shadows, further accentuating their depth.  The mouth is now fully cut back and the eyes carved. The iris is carved with three cuts, a vertical stab at the centrewith a staight chisel to allow the waste to fall out cleanly when the two side cuts are made into it. Since the eye is domed these cuts can also be made with a straight edged tool and will still result in the cats-eye shaped iris, although, I did use a shallow gouge.

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All Done!

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How to …carve a traditional cat-head, part 1

On a traditional a Tall-ship there is a beam that sticks out of each side near the bow off which the anchor is hoisted and carried, keeping all that pointy metal away from the soft wooden flanks of the ship. This beam is called the cat-head. As the beam is very exposed to damage, the end of the beam is often capped with an applied sacrificial terminal that has a decorative piece with a lion mask either carved (if the cap is wood) or cast (if the cap is metal) into it.

Here is a pinboard to illustrate:

http://www.pinterest.com/avenuew/ships-cat-heads-and-lion-head-carving/

The lion mask is surprisingly easy to carve and is a most satisying weekend project.  The cat-head is generally about 9 inches in height if carved full size, but the one in this guide is only 4 inches square.  Most medium density timber will suffice for this project, mine is in oak but any timber that does not have distracting figuring will be fine.

Here is the first step after squaring off the block, the pattern is drawn on.  No side view for this pattern as the carving is a form of deep relief carving – the surface is cut back but the carving is an illusion of 3 dimensions that relies on the brain interpreting the shapes to read the carving as a lion.

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 carve the mane back as much as you dare – this is dropped back about 15mm (1/2 inch) but the deeper you cut this back, the more convincing the final carving will be.  Note, do not cut the juction between the background  (mane) and the face with a sharp edge, the hair will flow off the face and a shapr edge is the last thing you want.  Also do not clean off the gouge marks as they will help give the hair more life.

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With a v-tool cut around the nose, muzzle, cheeks and eye-ridge.  Do this in several passes and cut the line as deep as you dare.

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Round over the outside of the whole face and round over the edges of the v-tool cuts.

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The lower jaw is set back in height below the muzzle and so this has been done here.

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The mouth as been re-drawn, as has the centre-line and the top edge of the cheeks has been cut in with a v-tool.  The muzzle has been rounded over right back to the mane.

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OK, quite a bit of modelling has gone on. The mouth has been cut back to the depth of the big canine teeth – at this scale the carving is tricky for the smaller details and so I am not putting in the lower jaw canine teeth but you can if you want to. The chin has been rounded as have the cheeks and the eye balls have been relieved ready for rounding . The fore-head has also been rounded and the eye-brows started.

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Cleaned up with the centre-line removed, however the centre-line position has been marked on the back so I can re-draw it if need-be.

Part 2- a smidge more detail and then the mane

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how to….carve a lion-head

Hi All,

having looked through my posts it is clear that there is very little ‘boaty’ carving in there, so over the next few months I will try to address this issue but hopefully the posts will be equally of interest to carvers not interested in things maritime.
On board ship, lions were called cats and cat-heads were very widely used as decoration on European vessels. This is the first in a series of posts on carving lion-heads and we are going to start simply, as usual the point of the posts is to encourage you to have a go, and so the photos will not be perfect and the carving is on-the-fly not posed for the camera.
Apologies over, time to start carving

Pattern first, the side view is the most important in this project, and so is the most worked-up.

First step is to draw the side profile onto the block and rough it out.  The triangular shape of the head means a hand-saw is all that is needed.

The semi circle drawn is the arc of the skull.

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front view marked for roughing out, the semi circle at the top is the arc of the skull, the centre line is clearly visible – the centre-line is ABSOLUTLEY ESSENTIAL !!!!!!!!! You will not get the carving symmeterical without a centre-line as it tis the datum line and everything is marked away from it.

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Cut across the curves of the skull to rough out the face-muzzle. Cut straight across the mane until you reach the arc of the fore-head then follow the arc till it reaches the muzzle

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Two steps on here.  The ‘nose’ has been rounded over and the eye socket has been roughed out.  This is done by cutting a triangle from the side of the nose to the curve of the fore-head ending with a vertical ‘wall’ where the eye is to be carved.

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You would be forgiven for thinking I have skipped a few steps but I haven’t.  All the planes of the muzzle heve been rounded over and the lower jaw cut in just a little.  Most importantly the eyes have been carved.  Basically, the face is now carved and it is a matter of refining things from here on.

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 One of the single most important features of a lion’ face is the eyebrow, it is really mportant that they are carved – it is the eyebrows that give him an expression/personality.  The width of the muzzle also is important for this – wide and content or lean and hungry….

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 Pretty much all there now except for the dots and dashes of the whiskers

Whiskers and several coats of bees-wax, all finfished.

Carve Dragon-head finial, part two

I’ve finished playing with the dragon-head that was carved in the first part of this article.  I wasn’t going to go any further with it but couldn’t resist the opportunity to do some snake-scale carving.

Carving the snake-scales is well underway in the picture (above).  Two base-lines were used for the lay-out, one just visible behind the fringe of ‘spikes’ at the beginning of the neck, the other a line marking the junction between the snakey-scales and the long and thin scales that cross the underside of the neck.

The snake scales were carved with a deep gouge (a number 6,7, or 8 will do) to set in the pattern, BUT a gouge of half the depth and half the width was used as well to do the half-cut where the scales meet the base line, and where they meet the horns.

After the pattern is laid-out the carving was done with a SHARP, long, thin, blade – the long thin point is needed to reach into the junction between scales.

 

 

 

 

The snake-scale carving is completed here, and the carving under the neck is underway.  These scales were very simple to carve.  First a deep line is scored with a knife (known as a ‘stop-cut’ – because the blade will reach this and stop moving and any timber that splits away will not split past this cut).

Next the same blade is used to cut a champfer into the stop-cut, first one way, as shown in this image; then the other as shown in the next image.

 

 

 

 When the three cuts meet the waste should fall away as shown here.

 I try to never sand a carving, and the rough edges were tidied up by gently pulling the sharp blade across the carved surfaces, with the blade held vertically so that it acts as a scraper.  Scraped surfaces and carved surfaces will not rise when wetted by a water-based finish such as the acryllic paints used in the next phase, which is…

 

 

 

PAINTING

 

The paint was simple to apply. 

First a white base-coat was applied and allowed to dry; next a top coat of blue was applied over the white and then wiped off straight away leaving the blue filling the low points and exposing the white over the high points and surface. 

Finally a wax (or varnish, if you prefer) was applied to give a pleasant sheen

iPod box project

small lidded box, yew

A lot of my time seems to be spent waiting in the car and I spend much of this time working on small projects; lovespoons,carving- doodles, technical exercises and the like, so having recently completed a brace of complicated lovespoons I thought I would spend a few hours preparing a car-carving project. Car-carving (also known as  tv-carving) projects are defined (by me) as small projects to be carved while waiting in the car for one’s nearest and dearest as they shop/go to youth club/etc).

My IPod (other devices are available) is starting to show some signs of a hard life and this car-carving was to be a gratifyingly complex carry-case.  Now, it’s funny how a project can take on a life all of its own sometimes. This little box was meant to be carved and hinged in a plain piece of timber, lime ideally.  A small off-cut of timber was dragged out of a dark corner of the workshop and found to be exactly the right size, result!  The timber was heavily oxidised and impossible to identify but this is a few hours fun project (I thought) and the timber was the right size!!

The first order of business was to split the block into two halves and when seperated the timber was shown to be a rather lovely piece of yew, heavily split (shakes) but very pretty nonetheless. OK, now to hollow out the centre of each block to match the IPod, then round-over the outsides to get a pleasing shape.

Now, the original plan was to carve decoration all over the outside  but the box is oh-so-pretty, so we have to find a new plan.   I have always believed that if there is a choice between doing things simply or finding a way of complicating matters then complicated is always best, so, I thought,if the outside has to be simple then lets try the hinge as a means of complicating matters.  I tried a number of approaches,from tiny swivels to a carved bird with the wings forming the arms of the hinge, but ultimately decided the box was best left as pure and simple – the ipod is a friction fit and holds the box together (it is in a silicone cover and so is thicker than standard, and the silicone is quite ‘grippy’).

A wax finish was all that was needed to round things off – it took about two hours to make the box, a few more to perfect the fit and about ten minutes to apply the wax finish. Simple.   It took about 15 hours to make and test the hinges!! Oh well, these boxes are so satisfying to make I rather think I’ll be making quite a few of over the next few months.

 Tools Used

I used a panel saw to split the block;  a number 2 gouge, a number 8 gouge, and a firmer chisel for the hollowing; a number 2 gouge and a shinto rasp for the outside shaping.  However, the entire carving could easily be accomplished with a  firmer chisel and sand-paper.

A piece of  blackboard-chalk was used as a tell-tale for refining the box for fit to the ipod. Rub the chalk on one half of the box, press the other components to it and where the chalk rubs off is a high-spot to be smoothed away – when the chalk rubs off uniformly over the whole surface then it is ready.