The grain in your piece was oriented so that you had end grain next to the circle / rosette. With wider stock, you could orient the grain to be along the long dimension of the serpentine, about 45 degrees away from what you had. Is there a best practice here for grain orientation? Also, it looks like your material is quarter sawn. Some of these goosenecks, even the on you showed, get to be big enough that finding thick, wide quarter sawn material could be challenging or pricey. Would it be insane to use flat sawn?
Hi Ed,
Because this is not structural, I really doubt the grain direction matters from a strength standpoint. However, if you re-angle the grain direction, you could create some areas on the curve where you are carving directly along the end grain. This just makes it a challenging carve. I think flat sawn would work fine, and probably make it easier to carve, as it is not as tight grain. This was all the wood I had available š
This is a great video and thank you for providing these videos for all of us. I have one question. When you start out with the v-chisel, how deep do you go. I suppose it depends on the carving, but on the starter exercises, how deep should I be going.
I just finished this carving and have a question. How much sanding do you do at the end. The picture looks very smooth and I can't seem to get the inside curves looking like that. I always wonder how much of the tool marks I should leave when completed. The bigger question is "when am I done"?
Thanks for the inspiration and help
Steve Hahn
Hi Steve,
That's always the question. When is it finished? Just take your time with the carving to try and get as smooth of a surface as possible. And if you feel you want a smoother surface, lightly sand it. And then walk away from it, and look at it another day š
I enjoyed carving the owl and now Iām proudly down splaying it in my living room . Everyone smiles when they see it. I also carved a log for him to perch on.
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