On Sun, Mar 8, 2009, Laurence Hall <[email protected]> said: > It's actually quite a relief to realize that I have > been approaching things incorrectly,
dont worry about all that, carving is a learned skill. You may need some sharpening equipment, control is impossible if the tools are dull. A slipstone or two can be gotten from high quality hardware stroes, online, or vendors of cutting tools selling to machine shops. Xacto blades are not the best steel, but they will do in a pinch. The chisel blade and the acute knife (#11) are the primary shapes. I reshape mine to have chisel-like edges which are less acutely formed (stronger). I also regrind them as the work requires. I do have more traditional carving tools, but the xacto blades are dirt cheep by comparison, so I find uses for both. Go to the library and seek out some books on carving, chip carving is most relevant, but general 3-D carving is also of interest. Whatever tool you use, the tip of it is a wedge and exerts small but significant splitting force on the wood before, behind, and to the sides of the cut. Small chips minimize the risk of the wood misbehaving from the forces you are applying. Sometimes it is useful to approach your target line using several cuts so that the final cuts are very small, leaving a relativly greater mass than the chip being taken. Lighting is very important, I depend on a lamp which is on long arms and can be swiwled and positioned anywhere on my bench, to light either from above or the side as I feel the need. Roses are intricate, the over-under interleave is challenging to follow. Begin with the piercings, smaller than final size; you will enlarge them later. A small gouge is slower but better than a drill for larger thru-holes, just rotate it in place against wood on a surface that you dont mind scaring when you break thru (pad of newspaper, scrap of wood on the bench, whatever). If you must use a drill, invest in brad-point or auger drills, it used to be that the germans made these in small metric sizes, very few are imported into the US now, so I dont know who to recomend to you for a brand. Once you have it pierced thruout, you can 'set-in' the lines. A narrow chisel stabing vertically on the line, then again from outside the line to form a chip does the job; pay attention to the over-under as you define the intersections. Each and every cut you take must consider the grain of the wood, always into wood fibers, never 'out'. You usualy have at least two choices of direction - from above, or from one side. > it's now much too thick, nearly 4 mm it will be a challenge to pierce, but not imposible, I have done the like with Jatoba, a far harder wood (which in some ways is easier). > I've seen here (at the specialist lumber yard) looks kind of different > to what I see in the photos of completed instruments. It is probably sawn differently. General lumber sold for building is usually flat sawn (annual rings are roughly parallel to the surface). You can recut part of it on the quarter for practice wood, but the width will be about as wide as the board was thick. Also, most comercial building lumber is plantation grown in very different conditions than the wood for tops; building lumber is grown quickly, will have wider spaced rings. You want topwood quarter sawn, sawn at the mill so that the annual rings are perpendicular to the surface; tops on quality pianos, violins, guitars are quarter sawn. Good Luck, and, plan on numerous breaks; no need to torture your brains or your hands. -- Dana Emery To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
