INTRODUCTION
A Brief history of wood-carving
Wood is the oldest medium known to man. The craft of carving wood has been practised since the earliest times, from the decoration of crude weapons and utensils to modern shapes and forms created by present day sculptors.
The primitive craftsmen of Africa, Australasia, Mexico and Polynesia carved charms and masks for rituals which remained unchanged for centuries. In ancient Egypt, too, carving held a ritualistic role as wood was used for effigies and tomb statues, as well as being used ornamentally on furniture and friezes. The Greeks were using carved wood inlaid with ivory and gold from about 800 BC and Roman craftsmen decorated their furniture, boats and chariots with elaborate carvings.
In the 11th century, woodcarving appeared in northern Europe, starting in Germany and spreading to the Low Countries and Britain.
The European Gothic style emerged in the early 12th century and flourished under wealthy churches and private patronage into the early 1500s.
Artists and craftsmen were working in Italy at this time in the classical tradition now known as the Italian Renaissance. The impact of the fine carved interiors and furniture of the Renaissance spread rapidly across Europe, particularly influencing carvers in Flanders and England.
Wood carvers today have moved away from their traditional place alongside architects and cabinetmakers. The severity of 20th/21st century design and mass production has much changed their role. Wood carving today is more considered as one of the “fine arts” and the freestanding figures of modern sculptors are considered as works-of-art in their own right.
I should think that most woodcarving done now is just for the love of it.
Tools
There are many tools that may be used to shape wood. Huge chain saws cut down the trees to start, then equally big scale band saws cut the timber into planks to be seasoned. Some sculptors use handheld chainsaws to shape whole tree trunks. This is what I would call “extreme sculpting”.
For this course we will only be using hand-tools, from pre-cut blocks. To learn how to carve wood properly, it is essential to start at the beginning, which means chisels.
There are lots of short cuts in shaping your piece of wood, like routers, band saws, pillar drill and lots of other electrical tools, But that is not what this course is about, [for now] it’s about gaining control of a sharp chisel and a heavy mallet. It’s only with experience and practice with your own hands that you can get the feel of the wood you are working. I don’t mean that in a “hug the tree, feel the wood” way, I mean how physically hard it is, or how the grain weaves. Then you can predict if a particular piece will split or break, just by the feel of the tap of the mallet [plus your ears and eyes]. A power tool will just rip through without mercy, very handy sometimes, but not for us. It would be like taking a person for driving lessons in a Ferrari.
Therefore for this course we will concentrate on the great variety of chisels and hand- tools that our ancestors had access to and start at the beginning. To do things by your own hand is so much more satisfying anyway.
I have selected a six chisel starter set for you to use on this course, along with a carver’s mallet. These were chosen as the most useful and frequently used chisels in small to medium sized hand carving and should be all you need for now. The only other tools we will be using are just the basics of the woodwork shop i.e. the bench and vice, pencil and ruler, various sandpapers and the brush and oil finish.
By learning to craft wood with these most basic and ancient of tools [albeit modern tools of the highest quality steel] I am hoping that you realise how easily this could be done at home, with just the smallest workspace and basic toolset. [The set you are using costs £75 by the way]. Chisels need to be sharpened from time-to-time, the harder the wood you are carving the faster your chisel will blunt. Sharpening is an art in itself, especially with the curved blades of the gouges that we use, methods of sharpening and maintenance will be covered in the course.
The best way to treat a finished carving is to coat with Danish Oil, using a brush or rag to allow this to soak in and dry over 24 hours, repeat this 3 or 4 times. This will bring out the colours at their most vivid, then apply beeswax with a soft cloth, then gently polish the dried wax away, again repeat 3 or 4 times.
This will result in a perfect finish like glass. Using oil and wax will keep the wood looking good for centuries! Varnish or lacquer, which looks nice at first, will discolour and crack in time and would need stripping and re-doing to look at its best. Whereas an occasional rub down and polish with beeswax will keep your sculpture looking permanently perfect. This applies to all the woods I have described, the more coats applied the better the finish.
Choosing Your Wood
Every type of wood on the planet can be carved, the question is how difficult will it be? What will it look like when it’s finished? How long will it last and was it worth it? I have compiled a list of suitable and obtainable species here and given a brief opinion of how they handle, but where do you get them?
The best source is `Tree Surgeons`. These people have enormous sections of timber in many varieties, often more than they know what to do with! They have contracts to maintain council parks and gardens as well as private estates. Most of the spoil is chipped on site, but the large trunks and bows must be taken away, a lot of which [the best stuff] is kept by the tree surgeon and seasoned to be sold. But for our purposes and the size of blocks we would want to carve, he would probably let you have it for nothing [he may even trim the bark off for you]. So if you did wish to carry on with carving after this course I would suggest you look on the Internet or Yellow Pages for local Tree Surgeons [or Arborists] and stock up with a variety of shapes, size and types of timber and keep them somewhere dry. By doing this you can design your sculpture around the piece of wood you have, so faults like knots and so forth can be incorporated into your design. This not only makes life easier, but looks really clever in the finished piece. In fact if you want to take up carving as a hobby, I would suggest you obtain a stock of timber before you bought any tools!
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