How To Draw Chip Carving Patterns

Fortunately, but a few tools are required to become started on a chip etching project. You need only chip etching knives, sharpening equipment, and a few minor pieces of wood.

In this article, nosotros give you step-by-step instructions for applying the pattern to the wood, making offset cuts, choosing knives, and finishing. All instructions assume the reader is right-handed; continue this in mind equally y'all begin. (Read over the "Full general Cutting Rules" beneath, before yous start.)

Applying a Design

The starting time choice for wood is basswood. It is a straight-grained, unfigured woods that carves beautifully. Later, if you wish, endeavor butternut or walnut.

If yous are going to follow a pattern from a book, first prepare a piece of wood that approximates the size of the pattern given. The wood should be between 1/four" and iii/8" thick. Scrape and sand the surface equally if y'all were finishing it, because you won't exist able to exercise this after etching without dulling the well-baked points and carved details.

Afterwards you lot accept prepared the piece of wood, make a photocopy of the pattern you lot like, and cut it out so information technology fits nicely on your wood. The photocopied design tin be transferred straight past pressing it face down onto the forest with a hot iron. (Set the iron to about a medium rut.) This works well, because photocopier ink is actually a heat-sensitive pulverisation, and reheating it with an iron will cook it, dropping the blueprint onto the wood. (We recommend testing the transfer on a chip piece of wood, equally not all copiers and printers utilise the correct ink. If it does not work, only apply transfer newspaper to trace your pattern onto the wood.)

After pressing with the iron, carefully elevator up one corner to see if the pattern has transferred clearly. If non, fe some more. Practise this at all four corners until you are certain the entire pattern has transferred conspicuously. Remember, be sure you lot have a adept transfer before removing the newspaper, as you lot can never replace the paper accurately enough to re-atomic number 26.

Some other give-and-take of caution: if you iron on a piece of wood that has glue joints, the heat will sometimes expand them. This happened to me, but I was able to salvage the piece by re-clamping immediately and assuasive the wood to cool.

Making The Starting time Cuts

Many books on the subject area of chip carving recommend that you lot hold the knife in a manner that to me seems awkward and uncontrolled. If you are able to cleave that way, go alee. I experience more comfortable holding the pocketknife similar a pen, except peradventure a bit more upright. This feels natural and helps you achieve a consistent angle of cutting.

While cutting at the same angle into the wood, it helps to vary the bract angle forward or astern, depending on the type of cutting you are making. Plainly, you lot tin can't turn corners if the blade is at a shallow angle, so stand it upwardly. On the other hand, with small chips, you tin actually cut confronting the grain by almost laying the knife down and cutting. By belongings the pocketknife this way, the heel of your hand is on the work, equally is your other hand. The first or second finger of your left hand guides the blade.

If the motility of the bract is abroad from you, your right hand holds the knife, while a finger of your left hand actually pushes on the back of the blade. When cut the other manner, your correct paw pulls the blade toward yous, while the finger on the other hand acts as a restraint. Be conscientious to place your finger just above the sharpened portion of the blade when cutting toward you lot. For finer control, utilise your finger as a fulcrum. For example, when y'all near the cease of a cut, stop pushing with your finger, and pin the pocketknife forward, existence aware of the point's location, so y'all don't undercut.

I carve sitting in a swivel-blazon armchair, and place the work on a piece of plywood that extends off my radial arm saw table. The piece of work is about chest high, so no bending is required to encounter details.

Finishing

All traces of the photocopied pattern must exist removed, or they will appear as dirt spots under the stop. Avoid gloss and semi-gloss finishes; they give the design a plastic-coated wait. I recommend a depression-gloss urethane. Sand lightly between coats with wet and dry out paper, beingness careful to not round-over crisp points. If you wish to turn your project into a coaster, simply glue cork onto the bottom, let it dry out, and trim to size.

Removing merely ane fleck is satisfying, just admiring a finished project, which is very cute, is much more gratifying. It is hard to believe that removing simple triangles from a wooden surface can create such lasting beauty.

Choosing a Knife

Information technology is important that a fleck-carving knife have a thin, wedge-shaped blade capable of holding a razor-abrupt edge. One pocketknife is all y'all need to get started; nevertheless, two others would be quite useful.

The most practical knife for a beginner has a blade with a cutting edge that is approximately parallel to the handle (summit knife in photo). If you desire to purchase only one pocketknife to commencement with, this is the one.

The second choice is a knife that has a cutting edge well-nigh right angles to the handle (middle knife in photograph). Information technology is used for stabbing.

The 3rd knife I would recommend to a beginner has a blade with a fine point (bottom knife in photo), which is useful for carving delicate scroll work, such every bit the corner areas of the pinwheel pattern. If possible, buy a knife that has a handle with a round, rather than an oval cross-section; information technology can be turned more hands in the fingers to follow sharply curved lines.

General Cutting Rules for Chip Carving

Cut with the grain, as the long fibers of the wood will tear at the cut line when cut against the grain.

Don't cutting as well deeply. About 1/viii" is the deepest you should get on the biggest fries on these pieces. For smaller fries, cutting less deeply.

Remove large chips in stages, peculiarly if you have already carved out a section nearby. Otherwise, the strength you have to use to remove the whole chip in one cut volition deflect forest. This deflection will occur toward the weakest spot, which volition no dubiousness be the overnice well-baked edge you just cut.

Cut away from a previously carved chip, rather than cutting toward it; the wedging activeness of the bract could pop out a function of the mountain that was to be left in.

If the bit does not take carving adjacent to it, remove the complete line of the pattern. If it does, it is all-time to stay back from the line when removing the first bit, and so cut its adjacent chip, besides staying back of the line. Finally, make your finishing cuts on both sides to split the line. At this signal, watch that straight lines over multiple chips are maintained.

Don't undercut. Endeavor to visualize where the signal of your blade is, and avert leaving a score mark at the base of a cutting. This is another good reason to take out progressively larger chips, rather than trying to remove the entire flake at once. Practice not pry chips out. Instead wriggle them to come across where they are still fastened, then go a petty deeper in that area and wriggle again. Some undercutting volition occur, merely if you have done everything correct upward to this point, it should be a almost microscopic line.

To remove undercuts, turn your pocketknife over, and with the dull side of the blade at the aforementioned angle equally your cut, gently draw it the length of your cut, and then rotate the work 180°, and exercise information technology going the other mode. The operative word hither is gently. You are not trying to create pressed wood decorations. The undercut must be a very fine 1. This is not a method of erasing an unintended skid.

Earlier making marks with the stabbing knife, remove the line of the blueprint with the chief pocketknife, then printing the stabbing knife into that cutting line. Pressing into a line of the pattern will leave black ink in the bottom of the depression.

(This bulletin is taken from an article by Robert Dunn and Alex Vincent, both of Calgary, Alberta, originally printed in Issue 8 (3/94) of WoodCuts.)

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