Friends,
After Sean (Samson) did his excellent writeup on making a panel door with hand tools, I promised to do a writeup on the next project I was going to do – to carve Gothic tracery. My writeup is less a stepwise “how to”, and much more of a “hints on carving”.
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In the last month, I did three Gothic Tracery carvings. I had long wanted to try this style because it intrigued me. I grew up with it in Catholic churches. I didn’t want to do the carvings for religious reasons, but to figure out how to make some of the shapes that define tracery. Although I have been carving since the late 1960s, I have never done tracery because I could never find any books on the subject. Then I found two articles in December, 2008. The first, by the great <!—-><!—-> <!—->Virginia<!—-><!—-> carver, Fred Wilbur, showed how to carve two tracery designs that he used as trivets. The second was a web article by the prolific author and carver, Chris Pye, which gave instructions for carving a piece of tracery that he was commissioned to carve for a local church.
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Here is a photo of my three carvings. The two carvings from the Wilbur article are on the right and left, and the carving from the Pye article is in the middle.
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Before doing any carving, two important things have to be taken care of. The first is the height of the carving bench. It really needs to be at elbow height, not on your workbench, which is much too low. It is easy to make a “box” that raises your carving up above your workbench. The following photo shows my setup.
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The second issue is lighting. Carving is all about shadows. If you have flat, direct, overhead lighting, there are no shadows and you really can not see what you are carving very well. The simple way to fix that is to put up two lights, one on each side of your workbench, aimed at your work. The following photo shows my cheap, simple lighting.
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Now lets begin with my first Gothic Tracery carving which is in the next photo. This is from the article by Fred Wilbur in a special edition of Woodcarving Illustrated magazine, called “Hand Carved Holiday Gifts”. (Fox Chapel Publishing, 2008). If you are interested in getting a copy but can’t find one, you should call the folks at Fox Chapel publishers, who can be found at http://www.foxchapelpublishing.com
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The photo gives you a feel for what constitutes Gothic Tracery. It has long concave curved paths that meet in corners. It contains three-petal stylized flowers called Trefoils. You can see these in the four corners of the carving. There are two in each corner, in almost a mirror image manner. There is a four round-leaved quatrefoil which dominates the design, and there is a Gothic style set of four leaves in the center. These Gothic leaves are highly stylized.
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Wilbur suggested that white oak is a good traditional wood for carving Gothic Tracery. I didn’t have any handy, so I used some red oak that I had lying around. I had never carved red oak, and I found out why it is not as popular as white oak. The dark sections of it have weak grain structure, and tend to crush. This caused me a little more work than white oak would have, but I got through it. I really like the way the final carving looks in red oak.
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Gothic tracery, as you have seen, is filled with piercings, some of which are very small. I drilled a hole in each portion to be pierced, and then I reached for my trusty coping saw. Have you ever tried to cut ¾” oak with a coping saw? I dropped that idea in favor of a saber saw. The problem was that even the smallest blade was difficult to use to cut the smallest piercings. So I went down to Woodcraft and I used one of their scroll saws. From now on I will use a scroll saw to cut the pierced holes. The cuts were precise and delicate and gave the most precise cutting of the small openings
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Then the carving began. Wilbur said to start with the corner trefoils. He said to make stop cuts in the middle of each of the three leaves, and suggested specific gouges to do the carving of the trefoils. I really couldn’t figure out what he was trying to say in his brief instructions on this. THIS HAPPENS OFTEN WHEN READING CARVING “HOW TO” ARTICLES!!!!! So I went at it with the tools he recommended, and quickly switched to others that I thought would work better. They did. I found that the whole trick was to make “V-groove cuts from the outside top of each leaf to the bottom center of each leaf, and then to keep expanding the V-groove until it covers the entire leaf.
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At this point, I learned the most valuable lesson that I got in my adventure. Fred suggested that you take a single bevel chisel and grind a round front of it, so that it has a cutting edge which is a half circle. Here is a photo of the rounded chisel. This tool made it easy to clean up the trefoils. It especially made it easy to carve the concave center line of each leaf of the trefoil. No unmodified gouge could have done it. Fred Wilbur’s invention did the trick. I will use that rounded chisel in lots of places in the future. I used it all over all three tracery carvings. This special tool made it easy to carve the quatrefoil, especially the concave curved paths and the places in which those paths met. Take a look at the photo of the carving and note the concave line in which each two paths meet. The nose on the rounded chisel was perfect for carving them.
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Then came the difficult part – carving the Gothic leaves in the center of the design. The hard part was that even after studying all of the photos, I really couldn’t get a 3-D model in my head of what I had to carve. Without a 3-D model in your mind, you just can’t make a carving. I developed that model little by little, by trying to carve the first of the four leaves. As I progressed, I figured it out. It would have been much easier to have a 3-D model in front of me. The photos have big limitations in letting you translate a 2-D image into a 3-D carving.
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If you followed Fred’s steps, you would have finished each section of the carving before starting the next. That doesn’t work for me. I roughed out the entire carving. Then I went over the entire carving with increased detail. I did this in at least four passes. The reason I like to do this is that it lets you be consistent with your angles, and you lines and your degree of smoothness from section to section, and it gives the overall carving a more unified look.
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The last step in the carving before putting on some finish is the final smoothing. This is where you stand back, and try to finalize all of the curved planes of the carving. You try to get them “smooth enough”. So how smooth is smooth enough? The books say that if you do too much smoothing, the carving looks “fussy” and overwrought. Well, the only way to find out how much smoothing is enough, is to give it a try, and see when you are happy with it.
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I put three coats of Watco Danish Oil on this carving, as I did for the other two Tracery carvings that I will describe tomorrow.
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I hope you enjoyed that, and hopefully found something of interest in it. In the next few days, I will show the second two carvings.
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Have fun.
Mel
Measure your output in smiles per board foot.
Replies
Mel,
Well done article.
As regards the rounded chisel, Mr Wilbur is not the inventor, in fact you will find an article about rounding chisels for carving in FWW magazine, and reprinted in the "on hand tools" book. The article was called: "A Carver's Tricks" by Eric Schramm. The really interesting thing about that article is that the chisels used were plastic handled craftsman chisels (!!!) That's probably why few remember the article, people saw the pic of the craftsman chisels and moved on (grin).
Still, very well done. Now you need to do a garden/backyard gate with your new skills.
Mike
Mike,
Enjoyed your response. I have seen round nosed chisels before, but I didn't know about Mr. Schramm's article. I just looked it up. Short but sweet. I too am going to make a few more of the round nosed chisels. Also, I am going to make one of his spinning strops. I have seen them before and they are ingeniously simple. You just have to keep them spining at less than Mach 1. :-)
Have fun.
MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
Finally!
Great work.. But lost a bit on how that chisel is profiled. Old eyes?
I would think they would make great doors for a cabinet or in front of a mirror or just setting on the fireplace mantel.
Thanks for posting!
And as usual.. Your message ...[Message truncated] :>)
Mel,
I'm sorry everyone wants to talk about that goofy chisel, and not your beautiful carved tracery.
But, that's what I'm going to do too. I have a very shallow sweep "fishtail" gouge, that I would reach for to do what I'm supposing you need your round chisel for. Do you have such a fishtail, and if so, did it not do the job?
Also, as to the height of the bench for carving. Do you feel that you do better at carving while standing, or do you sit while you carve? Does it depend on the nature of the carving itself, whether you sit or stand?
Ray
ps Now that you have mastered the trefoil and quatrefoil, what's next? How about the aluminum foil. When you can carve that successfully, you'll be a modern master.
R
MM Ray,
Thank you for the nice words. I do have some shallow fishtails, and I did use them on the tracery. The round nosed chisel was better, IMHO, for the places where the convex paths meet, BUT as I pointed out, there are lots of ways of doing everything in carving. There is a video on FWW in which the carver recommends a starter set of gouges which consist of three or four #11s, a few V tools and a knife. EHAH! You asked what comes after quatrefoils. Soon I will be doing wings (air foils). ((engineers are going to hurt themselves laughing at that one. Yuk Yuk))You asked if I carve standing up. It depends on whether I did my last dovetails tails-first or pins-first. Actually, I only carve standing up, although, I whittle while sitting if I am wearing a thick leather apron.You won't learn anything from my little writeups on carving, but you may get a smile at seeing me discover things that you figured out a while back. Thanks for writing,
MM Mel
PS "We are all MMs."Measure your output in smiles per board foot.
Great post and I look forward to the next in the series. I am only just getting started in carving but pics like those keep me inspired.
Thanks much.
Chris
Chris,
Glad you liked the first installment. Next one in a few days. Glad to meet someone else interested in carving. To me it is the best part of woodworking. If I can ever answer any questions, let me know.
Have fun.
MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
Mel,
As I recall you have responded to the questions on carving that I have posted and I very much appreciate the advice. Not sure if I ever posted the finished picture but you and the others here recently helped me through the attached. It ain't perfect but it looks better than it would have without all the help I got here. Thanks again.
Chris
Chris,
Very nice carving in your photo.
Did you also make the moldings?
MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
Mel,
Yes, I made the moldings as well. They are built up from three pieces, two router profiles and a large cove I cut on the table saw. Pic attached. It was a lot of fun to see all the pieces of this project come together and I added several new tools to the quiver. Hopefully I can find an excuse soon to try the gothic tracery carving you have aptly demonstrated.
Chris
Chris,
NICE PHOTO! Thanks for posting that. I am about to get into making moldings. I just bought a half set of hollows and rounds and will make moldings in appropriate shapes for carving. I have two books with chapters on carving moldings, and am anxious to try it out. Your photo is just what I needed to see -- there are others out there making moldings. Do you have any good references on designing moldings (books, articles, websites, etc.)? or on making up moldings from multiple pieces as you did? I wish I lived closed to Chicago. I'll bet we could help each other out with some good hints in this area. Oh well, we'll have to do it on Knots. :-) The two books that I have which include chapters on how to carve moldings are:Frederick Wilbur - Carving Architectural Detail in WoodDick Onians - Essential Woodcarving TechniquesBoth are available on Amazon. Neither is for the beginner. Both treat you as a carver, and give you immense freedom in how you do what they suggest. In the chapters on carving moldings, neither provides exact shapes or sizes of moldings to carve. They kind of hint at it. I wish they would give a single specific and then say "Go experiment", but they seem to start with the latter. That is fine. Once you "get it", you are quite proud of yourself. Both are real carvers who do carving full time. Others like Chris Pye, try to break everything down into steps and be very prescriptive on each step. Chris tries hard, but I believe he gets too prescriptive at the step level. On the other hand, he does give you one specific way that works, and you can experiment from there. So in a way, Chris Pye's approach, as I see it, is the polar opposite of the approaches of Wilbur and Onians. Books are cheap so I have books by all three of them (and more). It is interesting to see the differences in how the authors approach explanations. My guess is that Onians and Wilbur taught their kids to swim by throwing them in the deep end of the pool and offering encouragement, while Pye sent his kids to a "dry swimming camp" for six weeks before he let thim in the water. Yuk yuk yuk. Nothing like taking things to extremes to make a point, is there.Have fun. I really appreciate your posting the photo.
MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
Mel,
Glad the photo was useful and I am envious that you have the planes to make these things up by hand. It is more satisfying, I think, than enduring the loud noise and dust of the router. Although the router is fast, that can be both good and bad.I have been planning on carving some moldings too and I have the Wilbur book - it is GREAT. I will look up the other one you suggested. One useful article on building up moldings in this manner by Alan Charney can be found on the FWW web site
http://www.taunton.com/finewoodworking/SkillsAndTechniques/SkillsAndTechniquesPDF.aspx?id=24091Another good one on carving moldings by Lee Grinder (a frequent contributor here):
http://www.taunton.com/finewoodworking/SkillsAndTechniques/SkillsAndTechniquesPDF.aspx?id=2655If I think of any others I will let you know. It would be nice to have more woodworkers to commiserate with in person. I live in downtown Chicago where they are few and far between. Knotts has been great for me.
Chris
Chris,
Thanks for the quick and good response. I am glad you too are interested in making your own moldings and in carving them. That means there are two people in the entire universe with this interest. The half set of Hollows and Rounds was made in the first half of the 1800s and has never been used (except for one of them). I am in the middle of flattening the backs of the 18 irons. It is a LOT of work. These are not even close to being flat like modern irons. Then I will grind the bevels and then do the honing. This will take a while, but it should be very rewarding when I learn to use them. THat means achieving some skill. I refuse to swear at a tool when it doesn't work. Usually it is my problem, not the tools's. I knew about the Charney article but not the one by Lee Grindinger. I used to exchange messages with Lee before he went away to an island for a year. He has transformed himself from a carver to a dealer on the world's monetary stage. Can you believe that? A guy with his skill in carving wants to become a money trader! I exchanged an email with him a few months ago. He is happy and raring to go. I'll keep you posted on my adventures in moldings and look forward to exchanging info with you.Thank you.
MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
Hi Mel,
My business partner, Don McConnell won't show his stuff but I happen to have some of his photos. He'll probably be ticked but I thought I'd throw a photo of a tetra he carved a few years ago.
Larry,
I won't tell Don you posted a photo of his work. That tracery door is very very nice. And is lettering is beautiful. I am glad to see that there is at least one other person in the world who has an interest in Gothic carving. By the way, last week I found a very nice half set of hollows and rounds here in Virginia. The man bought them in 1975 and let a friend use one of the 18. The other 17 have never been used. They are marked:
Moseley & Son
King St and Bedford St.
Covt Garden LondonI suppose I should have left them as "collectors items", but I was looking for a set of good "users". I am now in the middle of flattening the backs. That is a LOT of work. Then I'll sharpen them and start making some moldings for carving. I am anxious to give them a try. I appreciate the help you have given me in the area of Hollows and Rounds. Thank you very much.MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
Mel..
Sorry that my first post was a bit short but I was in a hurry as usual. I forgot to get back.
I found this for you just in case you need more instruction. (Just pullin' your leg a 'bit') :>:
Chris Pye. http://www.woodworkersinstitute.com/page.asp?p=756
I for one loved the instructions for doing a Tracery. Maybe even I could do it? I have a pattern of a Chinese grill I may use as in Tracery for the beds waiting to be finished.
I was out in the COLD shop today. I now have my drill press on it's back and setting on wooden supports. I am trying to find a way to drill straight 6 inch deep holes in the side runners for the bed bolts. Yes, I know, hold the hand drill straight but that would not be fun for me... Much easier way would be to use my router to carve a slot for the bolts but just no me...
Don't tell anyone. I just received my CarveWright.. I just HAD to do it.... Now all I need is time and warm weather to use it!
I was going to get a new TS from Grizzly but I decided it was not what I really needed. Besides, when I do stupid stuff I like to go all the way....
I did love your carvings. I assume the wood is Oak?
Edited 2/5/2009 8:38 pm by WillGeorge
WillGeorge,
The article you sent me by Chris Pye is the one I used for my third carving. That will show up in a day or to in that thread. Thank you.SO YOU HAVE A CARVERIGHT! Fantastic. Cant wait to see what it does. Hope it warms up soon so you can use it, and post some photos. You are going to be the hit of Knots.
Congratulations.
MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
You are going to be the hit of Knots. I TOLD YOU NOT TO TELL!
I am sometimes but when I am a hit.. Most try to tell FineWorking I was talking about Sex, Hard Whiskies Or pretty women and I must be removed. :>)
God bless them folks. I guess they are right! I do tend to think that way! However I for one love women and whiskies! Woodworking is a side line...
Edited 2/5/2009 9:58 pm by WillGeorge
Friends,
Here is my second and last installment on carving Gothic Tracery. I did two carvings based on the article I listed by Fred Wilbur. My third tracery carving was from a web article by Chris Pye. I'll cover those two carvings in this message. <!----><!----> <!---->
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Above is the second of my Tracery Trivets from the Fred Wilbur article. You will see that it doesn’t have a Gothic flower in the center as did the last one., and that it has a more of a “whorled” design that I find very pleasing. It contains trefoils in each of the four corners, and another in the center. It also features a number of triangular chips of various sizes that have to be in exactly the right place. This carving was much more relaxing than the first, since I had figured out how to do the curved concave paths and the lines where those paths intersect. I had learned to use the round-front chisel. So this was much easier than the first. Here is a photo of the carving after I traced the pattern onto the wood and did the pierced cuts on the scroll saw.
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I have three kids (adults, actually) so I carved three of this design. In each one, I used different gouges, and tried different techniques to keep interest up. An example of this was that I was anxious to try out some of my front-bent gouges that I had gotten over the years to do tracery. I had heard that they were “necessary” for tracery. They are necessary but only for tight curves in small spaces. They handle much differently than other gouges. You hold them in a “straight up” position ( the gouge, not you) when you carve.
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There is one “special” thing about this design when it comes to carving. Almost all of its concave paths have a “grain crossing”. When the path hit a change of direction of the grain in red oak, the stringiness of the red oak became VERY OBVIOUS. I found that the best way to handle it was to have super-sharp tools, and to use slicing cuts which went from high to low -- in other words, across the path rather than along it.
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Now lets get to the final carving, which is from the article by Chris Pye. It can be found at: http://www.woodworkersinstitute.com/page.asp?=756
Here is a photo of my carving which is based on Chris Pye’s article.
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Chris was commissioned to carve a piece of tracery for a church to replace one that had broken. I modified his design a bit by adding a cross piece on the bottom to give it a more finished look. Chris’ was inserted into a large section of tracery. Mine is going to hand on the wall. I was happy with the way my modification turned out. I suggest that when you carve a piece, that you almost always think about how you might want to modify it. That really adds more fun to the project.
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Chris Pye has you download “a full size drawing” of the carving. It seemed very small. Neither his article nor the download provided any dimensions for the thickness, width and length of the carving. I think that I made mine about twice the size of his. The trick was to make the thickness match the height and width so that the curvature of the concave paths is about right.
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Chris had you print out the design and glue it to the board to be carved. That was different than Wilber’s approach. It is very precise. It worked fine. I drilled the holes for the piercings. Some of them were perfect circles, so I used a Forstner bit. Did the Goths have Forstner bits?
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Chris’ design had some areas in which narrow points occur at places in which the grain can easily break. So he suggested you make a “paper sandwich” by gluing the carving blank to thick paper and gluing that to a piece of scrap plywood. This is a old technique in carving. I used white glue, but hide glue works fine too. No need to use much glue. You do need to be gentle when you separate the carving from the plywood backing, and not pry the knife that you are using. You can see the paper sandwich in the following photo.
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The rest of the carving of this tracery went much the same as the last two so there is no sense in repeating those lessons. So that is it. I hope that my thoughts on doing the three Gothic Tracery carvings have been useful to you, or at least fun to read. I had an immense amount of fun doing the three carvings.
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Have fun,
MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
Maybe this is what he wanted to type on this subject?
http://www.woodworkersinstitute.com/page.asp?p=756
Mel typers' really bad
http://www.woodworkersinstitute.com/page.asp?=756
Mel I sure hope you never AIMED rockets for NASA! I think you forgot to pee? :P>)
Edited 2/8/2009 8:54 am by WillGeorge
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