Are you familiar with the work of Jennifer Shirley, a wood turner from Indianapolis? And do you ever embellish your work? I'm thinking wood burning or inlays.
Trying to let you know where I'm coming from so that my question might make more sense.
Taken several classes on embellishment at MASW (Micheal Fortune, Jennifer Shirley, Steve Latta, Alan Lacer, and Mitch Kohanek) and am striving to but them together. With my bum shoulder I did a lot of wishing and not much doing; since surgery things are looking up and I'm trying to do more doing.
Your carving school is going to be one of my main efforts along with turning.
But, first I have to finish my kitchen remodeling project; and I'm thinking of embellishing the doors with carvings and inlays.
I have not seen Jennifer Shirley's work, but carving into turned pieces seems to be getting very popular. When we remodeled our kitchen, I made a carved floral design cut out with a scroll saw and applied it over colored glass. It turned out great, and the possibilities are endless!
Watching the video, some of the cuts seemed to be against the grain Am I imagining that or was it the best / only way to make the cuts. They where on ends of the leaves, on the top and bottom the carving. Maybe a video on cuts and the considerations one goes through during a carving.
I may appear to be cutting against the grain, but I am pretty confident (especially with butternut), the wood is going to split out if I cut against the grain. Sometimes it's difficult to picture this when watching a video. The ultimate test is to put chisel to wood and give it a go!
I try to mention it on the videos when I switch directions to work with the grain. If I don't mention it, when I switch from hand to hand, or right to left, the grain issue is usually the reason.
Just finished watching the two videos. Thought it would be nice to be able to toggle between the video and a picture of the finished carving to better understand how a particular step helped get to the end results.
Loved how you worked a design in progress. Made me think of Marc's sculptural rocking chair class; where he explained to me that the wood would tell me how to sculpted it. Took me a while to get it; but wow! I can see the same idea in carving; and in turning.
Have you ever carved in figured wood? Such as a flower?
Might be an idea to print out the pdf file of the photo of finished piece (below the video) and have that in front of you while you are carving.
No I have not carved much figured wood if I could help it. I have enough problem with grain in straight wood! That's would be a job for a dremel tool 🙂
On the serious side. High prof booze or rubbing alcohol should work as a release agent. If you are using the release agent; you should be done carving and deserve a treat.
Loving the videos, watching the beginning videos made me think of your classes at MASW. Was telling my doctor about then and that I was felling you were in the room with me as a listening and watching videos.
One feature that would be very useful is the ability to navigation the videos back and forth to review the lesson for us slow learners.
Also I'd like to see your "other hand" during the lessons and not just the tool holding hand; I suspect there is a lot of information on subtle tool control.
Glad you're enjoying the videos. On occasion I back the camera up to show both hands, but more of the cuts are focused on the detail of the actual cuts. I'll keep that in mind. If you drag the blue bar along the bottom of the screen you can scoot the video forward or backward as much as you want.
From Gerald Leonard on Carving a Fleur-De-Lis Appliqué - Episode 1
Go to comment2014/05/08 at 10:06 pm
From Mary May on Carving a Fleur-De-Lis Appliqué - Episode 1
Go to comment2014/05/12 at 9:05 am
From Gerald Leonard on Carving a Fleur-De-Lis Appliqué - Episode 1
Go to comment2014/05/08 at 9:40 pm
From Mary May on Carving a Fleur-De-Lis Appliqué - Episode 1
Go to comment2014/05/08 at 10:12 pm
From Gerald Leonard on Carving a Fleur-De-Lis Appliqué - Episode 1
Go to comment2014/05/07 at 11:52 pm
From Mary May on Carving a Fleur-De-Lis Appliqué - Episode 1
Go to comment2014/05/08 at 7:50 am
From Gerald Leonard on Carving a Fleur-De-Lis Appliqué - Episode 1
Go to comment2014/05/07 at 10:28 pm
From Mary May on Carving a Fleur-De-Lis Appliqué - Episode 1
Go to comment2014/05/08 at 7:46 am
From Gerald Leonard on Carving a Fleur-De-Lis Appliqué - Episode 1
Go to comment2014/05/06 at 5:02 pm
From Mary May on Carving a Fleur-De-Lis Appliqué - Episode 1
Go to comment2014/05/07 at 8:46 pm