The problem with having lots of gouges…

Baby blanket chestToolsWoodworking

…is that you have to sharpen lots of gouges.

After noticing all the chipping out I was getting, and some awkwardness with the v-tool work, I took the entire carving toolroll out and took the grinder off the wall.

Then I pushed my luck by squaring the ends of the gouges and v-tools on the side of the stone. Don’t do this, it’s not a great idea for anything stressful and figuring out what qualifies as stressful isn’t clear. In my case I took off less than a half-mm or so of length at most and the thickness was minimal because it was at the edge.
After that, reground the bevel on everything to a more acute angle (around about 25 degrees or so) and even more acute on one of the v-tools for an experiment.… Read the rest

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Mark Dennehy in 3 Comments

Chop, chop, swear, pare, swear more, stamp, stamp…

Baby blanket chestWoodcarvingWoodworking

The title is annoyingly descriptive of the process, but on we go. Unwrapped the boards, and discovered silicone will stick to CA glue and oak…

Chopped the last line of the outline with a third gouge (this one was in-canel, so I chipped out waaaaay too many pieces on the back of the box before getting to grips with it).

It looks a bit confused because you have a few lines crossing but those areas are going away so that’s okay. Now out with a shallow gouge to remove the backdrop and I know it’s what Follansbee’s tutorials say is the right tool but it was next to useless for this design for me. I don’t know if it was because the design is small compared to his norm and it’d be better on a larger pattern, but I stopped using it almost immediately and resorted to two smaller gouges with tighter sweeps.… Read the rest

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Mark Dennehy in 12 Comments

Chop chop

Baby blanket chestWoodcarvingWoodworking

So V-tool work done, time for the vertical gouge chops that make up the design on the box. After ten minutes of sharpening and stoning and stropping of course.

Chops one and two. I kindof wanted this to be more pointy at the top, but I didn’t have a gouge of the right curvature and size. Anyway, do this for all the boards...

Yes, you need the Peltors. Small shed, loud echos. On to the next gouge and chops three through six…

Yeah, the size of that central lobe looks a bit off. Well, we’ll see. Why the clamps and greaseproof paper? Because on a few gouge chops, the top later of the oak fractured (I bet Peter Follansbee doesn’t have to put up with this), and out came one of the more used tools in the shed…

How often is it used?… Read the rest

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