PREPARING TO BEGIN THE CARVING
SETTING UP THE WORK AREA — THE CARVING STAND
The carving table or carving stand should be placed so that you can work on it from any direction, and it should be placed a comfortable distance away from anybody else's stand. The stand should be placed firm and level. If the stand wobbles, the leg or legs should be wedged in a stable position so that the tabletop is level.
Your carving stone should be placed on the stand so that it does not wobble or roll. This may mean wedging it with scraps of wood and stone, or supporting it with a sandbag.
A couple of designs for making simple carving stands are illustrated HERE.
If your piece of lumber or log is relatively massive, then it should be placed on the stand so that it does not wobble or roll. This may mean wedging it with scraps of wood screwed to the benchtop, or supporting it with a sandbag. Small or lightweight workpieces need to be clamped or screwed down.
SAFETY & CLOTHING
Using handtools, there are only a few points to remember about safety. Protect your eyes with safety glasses or goggles, either of which can be worn over contact lenses. Goggles probably will give the best protection and can be worn over your regular glasses, but they tend to fog up easily. Safety glasses are usually more comfortable, don't fog up, and give all the protection you should need for carving stone.
Work gloves will prevent blisters and scrapes on your hands, and will also soften the blow when you miss the chisel with the hammer. Thinner styles of gloves made of canvas, jersey, or smooth leather will allow you to feel what you are doing with the tools better, but they are not as durable as unlined rough leather gloves that are relatively inexpensive.
General work clothes might consist of a long-sleeved work shirt, jeans, either sneakers or work boots, and a cap. During hot weather a pair of shorts and a short sleeve shirt are OK, but open-toed shoes are not recommended. A student wearing sandals dropped a chisel point-first on her toe — this resulted in a trip to the emergency room and stitches.
If you are going to be using power tools, which create a lot of noise and dust, then a pair of hearing protectors (or earplugs) and a dust mask or respirator should be used. When working outside in an open area, both noise and dust are dissipated quickly and should not be a problem for neighboring students, but be considerate of the person who might be downwind of your dust when sawing or sanding.
CLEANING THE WORK AREA
As you work you should place the larger pieces of waste under the carving stand to prevent turned ankles. At the end of your daily carving session the work area should be cleaned of all debris, and the tools you have been using should be placed back in the storage boxes where you got them.
CHOOSING A PIECE OF WOOD TO CARVE
Wood suitable for carving is often much easier to obtain than stone, but there are also several things you should try to determine before carving. Perhaps the most important thing to determine is whether or not the wood has any existing checks or cracks, and whether or not is is kiln-dried, seasoned or green. Each type of wood will require somewhat different working methods and degree of care or maintenance between the carving sessions. This is discussed elsewhere, but suffice to say that though working green wood generally works easier it also requires a good bit more care to prevent it from warping, and developing splits or checks.
THE BASIC CARVING PROCESS
Before you actually begin the carving, study the wood, look for the areas where you want to keep the mass, and the areas which will be waste. You might find it helpful to mark the places you want to keep (the high points) with a crayon, and then mark the places to carve away with a different color crayon.
One reason to mark the carving block is so you can keep track of the design - the block of wood changes shape as you carve material away. You also need to keep track of the high points. In carving wood, you must work the tools in relation to the high points and to the grain of the wood. You want to carve down and away from the high point; otherwise, you risk inadvertently splitting the wood along the grain.
To illustrate this, suppose you were carving a human head out of a proportional piece of wood. First, because a head has bilateral symmetry, you might want to mark a vertical centerline around the carving block or section of log. The design is such that the vertical axis of the head runs the same direction as the grain of the wood.
The tip of the nose, the ears, and the chin would be the first high points you have to consider, and the centerline will help you to determine symmetrical placement of these and other features. Mark these areas with a crayon, and then you can begin carving away the areas in between them. The nose is usually the feature of the head protruding the most; therefore, it would be the highest point on your carving. Begin placing the carving block face-up on the bench, and standing behind the ‘top’ of the head and start the carving by firmly placing a large gouge (such as a 1½” fishtail) on the far side of the nose area, down and away from you at about a 45-degree angle.
Begin carving with a series of strong blows, keeping the cutting edge firmly pressed into the surface of the wood. With each blow the cutting edge will cut deeper through the grain, and with each blow you should tilt the gouge to a shallower angle so the chip of wood will be freed from the main mass. It you do not continually adjust your angle of attack, the gouge will simply wedge itself in the wood. When the chip is freed, move the gouge to either side slightly, and repeat the process until all the waste below the nose is removed to a uniform depth.
Work your way back on either side of the nose to reveal the cheek areas, removing the waste on the lower part of the cheeks (the areas farthest from you since you are still working from behind the ‘top’ of the head) and moving your way up to the eyes and the brows. Continue doing this until a uniform layer on each side of the nose has been removed about halfway to the ear.
Either go around to the other side of the stand or rotate the carving so that you will stand below the ‘chin’. From this position you can work on removing the material on the upper forehead to follow the shape of the skull, or the hair, as necessary. After obtaining the general contour of your design you can turn the carving block on its side and work on the area above the ear. Then flip the block and work on the area above the other ear, and then rotate and work on the area below the ears — first on one side and then the other.
By following a procedure that works the waste to a uniform contour on both sides, and then on both the front and back of the head more-or-less simultaneously, you keep the proportions under control.
If you try to work just from one side the proportions have a tendency to end up lopsided. Notice that in all these operations you are carving with the grain, and ‘downhill’ off the end of the grain as you work near the end grain at the top of the head or the bottom of the chin in the carving block. You never cut into the grain, and only slightly across it on the sides of the nose.
Next, after the rough contours are laid out the lips can be marked as a pair of slightly lower high points, and worked the same way, followed by the eyelids, cheekbones, jawbone, etc.
That is what carving away from the high points means.
