carving & carving

As I said earlier, I have been doing some carving lately. I have several classes this year on carving; but you might remember from an earlier post, I used up some of my carving samples/patterns. https://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/it-was-the-rust-that-got-me/

When I teach, I like to have many examples for students to learn from…

so I started carving some new examples. Here’s one that is featured on almost all of my work, a pattern I call the “S-scroll”. I use it over & over; to the point where the entire 2nd DVD I did with Lie-Nielsen covers only this design, in about 5 versions.  http://www.lie-nielsen.com/catalog.php?grp=1320

This is the basic outline, struck with the curved gouges themselves.

here is the “freehand” part; using the V-tool to connect the circles defined with the small gouge.

V-tool freehand curve

I think the total number of gouges for this pattern was 6; a V-tool, 3 different curved gouges, one very shallow gouge for removing the background and a very tiny one for two little stop cuts in the details at the end.

Now the pattern has been struck with the gouges.

S-scroll defined

now some background removed

background

now some incised details,  chopping out small gouge cuts, brings us to the finished design & its outline.

the finished pattern & its layout

So just when I was really getting going; the museum’s tree person (we call him Hurricane Craig) came by & trimmed a very large sycamore (here in the US it’s a sycamore; in the UK the same tree is a London Plane Tree; and sycamore means something else over there.) the Latin name for this tree is Platanus occidentalis. Anyway, this pile represents about 1/10th of the haul. It’s a lousy splitting wood, but once you get it open, it’s great for wooden ware.

one tenth spoon haul

 

So, I have lots of furniture & shop work to do, but spoons, here I come.

spoon carving