wood carving - the technique

The wood for carving must be chosen with no knots or cracks, and preferably compact it to work well.

The tools for wood carving are details specific to this type of work. The blades are usually of mild steel and new are not sharpened, so that another task of carving and to sharpen the tools before starting the job. Generally, the wood is hard and must be less than the bevel of the blade. I take this opportunity to emphasize that with these tools very sharp and easy to get hurt, it is essential to pay close attention during the process and make sure to carve the pieces are perfectly still. It is also necessary that the workplace is well lit.

The tools are basically gouges and chisels with different templates to be used depending on the circumstances. There are indeed large gouges for curves, others to reach the most difficult corners, and others to round, so as to cut the sides straight or thin and precise cuts.

The upright position of the slot must be possible to have more control. With the piece firmly in the arm usually rests on the work surface and is careful not to ever get in front of the trajectory of work. If the carving is very hard work can help with a wooden mallet. This fact is used to beat on carving tools. The time now is characterized by an iron head that requires less effort.

The punches are metal instruments that are used for backgrounds, to give them a pleasing design and a movement. There are different types capable of producing small crosses or stars, or rings.

Other tools are the rasps and files. The first should be used with caution for large pieces, since it removes the wood very quickly. For sanding grooves smaller routinely used the file. This too can take different forms: flat, round, semicircular, square, oval, triangular.

For the realization of carving patterns you can use carbon paper with which to transfer the essential features of the design, rub with a pencil on the wood. Or we can make a drawing on paper hard to remove the main points with a knife or cutter and make a stencil that will be fixed to the timber. With a color brush through the holes (stencil technique) and reproduce the design.

The simplest method for carving is the "flakes" of cutting off a "reverse pyramid". Using the same technique may affect the characters, the letters form a word or phrase. The carving called "daisy chain" is used for moldings and is a natural evolution of the "flakes". In the "relief" the piece is carved to a uniform depth and the wood background is reduced in thickness to the line set for the survey, after which the design is ready to be carved and shaped. The ’relief’ is a deep relief, in which the depth increases by increasing the number of floors on which the drawing must be carved. Dell’altorilievo techniques require skills abilities. The technique of cutting from the bottom is to dig beyond the perpendicular to the interior, to improve the shape of each element and increase the effect of creating three-dimensional shadows.