Please wait ...
Apart from common carpentry, there are other forms of wooden works which are far more difficult than carpenter work. If a carpenter’s work takes 2-3 days, an elite wood carving may take 2-3 months. So, what is this work exactly, how it’s being done? Let’s get to know many things and everything about wood craving. If you don’t know about carpentry work which is basic form of wood craft, I suggest you to read that before reading this.
Wood craving uses similar tools as carpentry, same cutting tools as knife, chisel and mallet. Craftsman use knife in one hand for some kind of works, sometimes a chisel by two hands or with one hand chisel and one hand on a mallet for making of a wooden figure or sculptural ornamentation of a wooden object.
As people were fascinated for wood carving from mid-19th century and those techniques were practised by many places through the world, but today survives only in few areas like other carving materials like stone, bronze and terracotta works. The main reason behind low demand of the craft is its vulnerability to decay, insect damage and fire. Interest for wood craft in mid-19th century was developed because of many points. Some of them are; wood is easy to carry that stone; wood is easy to carve and any kind of fine shape can be given to wood which is never possible in stone. Wood crafts are good for making mask and other caring objects, but the vulnerability of rapid damage, in the other hand took the craft to its saturation.
The carving knife is the foremost important tool, without which the work can’t proceed a step. It helps to pare, cut and smooth wood. Then comes the gouge, which is used for inner areas of a sculpture. Making of inner hallows, rounds and curves. The coping saw is used to cut the chunks of wood. Chisels of many sizes are used; whose straight cutting edge is good for making lines and removing large unrequired pieces. V-tool and U-Gauge are used for making v-shaped and u-shaped cutting edges respectively. Mallet is used with the chisel to make the work more efficient. Other secondary tools are used such as sharpening equipment for sharpening the tool edges and screw and glue for fixing the work on the workbench.
Wood Selection
This is the most important feature of carving, mostly experienced and old carver used to select the wood for carving. The grain side of the wood is the strongest side and it may be straight, interlocked or wavy. The most delicate parts of the sculpture are being carved by with this grain. Carving the blanks are also quite difficult and mostly they were assembled after carving separately. The wood selecting and mapping process is most important because if the most attractive area of the sculpture get damaged then the whole effort will go in vein. Basswood and tupelo; both are hardwoods that are relatively easy to work with. Chestnut, butternut, oak, American walnut, mahogany and teak are also very good woods; while for fine work Italian walnut, sycamore maple, apple, pear, box or plum, are usually chosen. The areas which are not too delicate and will be painted later, usually made with inexpensive material like pine and mango wood.
Sculpture
Most carver use drawing, small model before working on comparative bigger size sculpture or sometime digital designs are being made to have an idea, so that they can complete the bigger size model easily. Usually the work starts from cutting the big unrequired pieces. Then the work proceeds with knife, chisel and mallet. If a carver makes a large sculpture, then ideally, it’s being built be pieces and then assembled to give a final look. As before it’s being said, the type of wood is most vital. A bad wood can drop the efficiency to negative percentage where a good wood can hike up the efficiency to a level apart. Sometimes it has been seen that several pieces of wood may be laminated together to create the required size and it’s done before processing. Any wood can be carved, but it’s been chosen according to the requirement, for example if a figure needs very fine and keen detailing, then wood with fine grain are used.
Professional carver uses the term ‘Chisel’ for both gouge and chisel, but correctly a gouge is a tool with a curved cross-section and chisel is a tool with flat edge. Smaller sculptures may require the woodcarver to use knife and larger pieces might require the use of chisel and mallet. But the common rule in wood carving is the carver must work across or with the grain, they should never do it against the grain.
Till here we talked about a simple shape of carving and necessary tools for simple carving. But the carver may use a variety of tools for creating details. For example, a veiner or fluter can be used to make deep gouges on the surface. It all stands on the base of requirements. To give the sculpture a smooth texture, rifflers are used and the final polishing is done with abrasive paper. Firstly, large grain paper is used to remove the hard and thick roughness then fine-grained paper is used to give the sculpture slick to the touch.
After these procedure finish, the artist may seal and colour the wood with a variety of natural oils, as walnut or linseed oil which protects the wood from dirt and moisture. Oil also makes the sculpture more shinny and the sculpture become so shinny that it may reflect light and you can see your reflection too. Sometimes expensive wax is used with fragile and costly carved products. But this is mostly used in products which stays indoor.
Wood carving is a very time consuming and expensive form of sculpture making. But the outcome is mesmerizing and defines the passion of artist in every inch of the sculpture. If you find this article good, please rate us and leave a comment below.
