Wood Carving

Wood carving is not only an ancient form an art, but it also is a type of art that varies from culture to culture. It has also been a way to express your feelings. Many thins such as shelves and other wooden objects do not have intricate designs like before. This scrapbook is about wood carving and will talk about the styles of wood carving, the tools used, the wood used, and the basics of wood carving.

Styles of wood carving

There are many different styles of wood carving. They are sorted into the categories: chip carving, relief carving, carving in the rounds, whittling or knife carving, power carving and bark carving.

Chip carving is carving by removing chips of wood from another piece of wood. This type of wood carving is purely decorative and is usually a geometric design. This style originated from Britain, later to spread to other European countries.

This style of wood carving may just be the most cost efficient style other than whittling. It only needs two knives although originally it needed up to twenty-four different knives. These two knives are called the cutting knife and the stab knife. The cutting knife is used to remove chips by carving them out. This knife has a short, broad blade that is extremely sharp. The second knife, the stab knife, gets its name from the way it is held. It cuts and spreads the fibers of the wood, leaving a permanent wedge shape impression.

Choosing the right type of wood is important to the success of chip carving. Common choices are Basswood, Butternut and Eastern white pine. Basswood is a firm, inexpensive hardwood. It is suitable for most other styles of wood carving as well. Butternut is a coarse textured, moderately lightweight hardwood. It suits this style quite well. Eastern wh...

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...back of the blade. To hold a stab knife, hold it like you are going to stab the wood.

To hold a chisel, gauge or V-tool, you hold the tool diagonally in the palm of one hand, then wrap all your fingers on, leaving only about 2cm between the blade and your hand. This is the back hand grip. The forehand grip is the same except that you are pushing away from yourself to make the cut.

To design a pattern for wood carving, do it on a piece of paper the same size as your piece of wood. Then put a piece of carbon paper under it and place the wood under the carbon paper. Then trace your design. Then pull up the sheets of paper and the design is printed on the wood surface.

If you are designing for carving in the round, it is necessary to design each side and trace it on. Then you use a saw and follow the out line on the sides. When that is finished, you can start carving.