Quick Carving Tip!

Carvings have absolutely nothing to do with the structural integrity of the chair, but they do stand out as the most visually "loud" elements. As such, I am always very sensitive to the role of the carvings because they give a distinct impression of the quality of the rest of the piece.  Here is just one part that I find adds a great deal of interest and beauty to a volute on a comb back ear.

I alway think about a volute in terms of the negative space, that's where I do my work after all. I think of the shape as a long taper that's been bent to a round shape. It helps me to focus on the evenness of the curves if I think of it as a straight taper first. I do the same for the depth of the carving, keeping a close eye on the stop cut/ side wall in the volute so that it tapers evenly as well. The combo of the two make the carving visually flow.

Curtis has been Busy!

Here are a few more installments in the video series that Curtis has been making. Enjoy
You can watch it here or click on the title to go to Youtube to see the hd version.

Riving and Shaping the Comb




Carving the Volutes



Final Shaping the Comb

Mr. Happy

No, I don't mean the hairy guy on the right, although he was pretty cheerful! This is Eli (smooth shaven) and Mike Javidi, they were my hosts, along with Mike's lovely wife Karin, for my weekend trip to Boston. Mike is about to graduate from the North Bennet Street school. While normally I am drawn to the canine and caprine, this little fellow got quite a hold on me.
Thanks for the gracious hospitality.


The students at NBSS are of the highest caliber and their motivation is impressive to say the least. I think that the seminar went well, although I underestimated the effect that 8 hours of talking can have on my throat. It felt as though I had swallowed a rasp.
Below is a photo of us playing in the dark. Each time that I did any carving, we turned out the lights and used a raking light. I know that overhead flourescents work well for machining, but I couldn't see the surface at all with them on.


My steady rest, which was meant to protect me from the embarrassment of screwing up a turning in front of 40 eyeballs, worked marginally well. I still got a bit of vibration and it got me rethinking the design. When I got home, I flipped the V block so that the long side was down and it seemed to work well, although it does interfere with cutting directly across the contact point when the piece gets small. I think that the reason that it might be a better way for smaller pieces is that it more directly opposed the ability for the piece to jump up and over the top of the tool.

Then I had an idea. As long as I am not cutting across the actual contact point, why not use a spring clamp to lock in the V block, Wow, what a difference. Who knows, maybe my prejudice against turning spindles for chairs will even change...probably not.


And finally, here's a photo that I couldn't pass up of the initial carving on one of the fan back crest's ears. Too fun.


Now it's up to Curtis to go up in January and show them how to put it all together. Lately, he's been trying to stick around home, but the call to North Bennet Street is just too strong to resist.

Knuckles Pt.4

I couldn't resist this photo of the intitial paring of the volute. I generally try to carve this step to a uniform depth. Sometimes the stop cuts aren't deep enough to have the chip, or ring in this case, fall free. I never tear the chips out, instead, I carefully retrace the stop cuts until it is cut free.



My goal now becomes refining the over all shape of the volute and carving deeper where the volute begins. The depth gets progressively shallower as the cuts go toward the center.

Below an image of the paring into the curved carving on the outer part of the hand. The curvature creates a few problems worth mentioning. The curve means that the endgrain is exposed which can lead to difficulty in the stop cuts and paring. Striking to hard or deep when establishing the stop cuts can cause short grain failure and lead you to looking for part of your carving on the floor! Be gentle until you understand the weaknesses.

The most glaring trouble comes when you start paring. Because of the exposed endgrain, you can't always carve in from the outside to the inner circle like you can on the "flat" knuckle. The chisel will slide inbetween the fibers and follow or tear them as you try to carve. The image below shows the "safe" direction for paring.



This direction must be followed all the way around, awkward as it may seem, with only a slight range of variation to the left or right. Experimentation, and picking up parts of your carving a couple of times will show the viable direction to carve.

Drawing Volutes

I draw my volute carvings by following a simple sequence of lines and focusing on a few requirements. I begin by drawing a line near the outer perimeter as seen in drawing A. Then I draw a larger radius curve out to the flat area as seen in B. It doesn't matter if it is perfect, it is a reference and can be changed later.



Drawing C shows the beginning of the interior shape. When drawing it, my goal is to have the negative space above the line by decreasing. Another way to put it is to say that the line will be moving closer to the line from drawing A. A small point worth mentioning is that the initial boundary of my volute is a true circle, but the final shape diverges because as the volute wraps around, it's radius decreases. This can be seen in the small space on the bottom right of the carving. I carve this area away later.

Drawing D shows the final wrapping of the line to form the inner circle.

My main focus for a successful drawing is the negative space (shown darkened in drawing E). This shape should be a curved taper. If any part gets thicker as it head towards the center termination, I know that I must adjust something. My goal is to have the eye follow without interruption to the center of the carving.

Below is a photo of the incised line that I make as the stop cuts for my carving. By using gouges of differing sweeps in sequence, I can follow and refine my drawing. I don't make the initial cuts too deep in the oak, a couple of passes is better and helps me to define the depth of the carving.



Designing your carvings can be done around the tools you have available. Play around drawing the shape and then see where your tools might fit, I always prefer a compromise between the tools and the drawing versus buying every useful gouge!

Knuckles Pt.3

Here is the knuckle after I use the V gouge (yes, they are hard to sharpen) to better define the lobes of the carving. Then I use a regular chisel to help refine the shape.



Here I have used a Nicholson rasp (the finer of the two) to further refine the shape. I don't complete the shape now, preferring to carve the volutes and then form the knuckle to them.



Here is the rough drawing of the volute. I do it freehand (years of art school finally pay off). The shape and depth of the volutes is open for interpretation. You can draw them according to strict mathematics or just do what looks good to you. I follow a few simple guidelines. I want the negative space, meaning the part that I'll carve away, to decrease in width evenly as it wraps its way around the center and terminates. I have had a lot of questions about drawing this shape, I will post a step by step next.

Knuckles Pt.2

After the blocks are glued on the underside of the hands, I mark the desired thickness of the knuckles (here 1 1/8th inches). Then I use a drawknife and finally a handplane to bring them to the line. As the picture shows, I draw the circle that represents the outermost part of the volute.



I find that the drawknife and the shavehorse are the fastest way to remove the initial carving. Here is the knuckle after meeting the drawknife.

Knuckles

Now that every gouge in my shop is razor sharp (I wish), it's time to do some knuckle carving. Carved knuckles are a bit of aesthetic flourish, no real point to them but to excite the senses. I recall looking at photos of Sam Maloof working on a chair and envying the fun he seemed to have using hand tools to shape the wood. His work may seem more "form and function" without curlicued volutes and balusters, but to my eye he spends most of his time indulging in shaping wood. It's easy to forget, but making shapes in wood is all a woodworker does, and carving knuckles is a great reminder.

I am going to be doing a photo essay on carving knuckles. Here is where I begin, by gluing on a block of wood with the grain direction the same as the arm to form the bottom of the carvings.

I use handplanes for the flattening of the glue joint and am very picky about it being dead on. A flat plane iron (which can only be honed on flat stones!) is key as well as a willingness to be honest. Does the joint fit without movement? When you press on one side does the other lift? Try again.



Here is where the essay is heading, I'll show the inbetween photos next.