Woodcarving

Wood Carved Ice Fishing Decoys

Leave a Comment / Whittling / By

During the  America Depression ice fishing decoys were a major way to put food on the table.  Today they are a fun, delightful carving subject that lends themself to brilliant coloring.  This post will look at a coloring/painting technique called Rouging, as shown on our middle red-orange metallic goldfish.

Below are three samples of ice fishing decoys, all worked off the general body shape of a comet goldfish.  Measuring between 6″ x 4″ to 7 1/2″ x 4″, worked in basswood, the top fish is sprayed with a copper metallic finish.  Our second fish has been roughed using oil paints and linseed oil over the same copper metallic, and the bottom fish is painted using craft acrylics over a lime green spray base.

 

Ice decoys were made from what ever materials the carver had on hand.  A scrap of wood, maybe an old license plate or piece of scrap metal for the fins, and roofing nails for the eye; these decoys are a major part of American folk art.

My carved samples are worked in basswood for the body shape.  The fins are cut from 30 gauge copper sheeting, which can easily be cut using a pair of craft scissors.

To insert the fins into the body I use my shading tip of my wood burning tool on my hottest temperature setting to literally burn a thin trough into the decoy.  While I have my burning unit on the table I can add small details to the body as scales, center lines, and even cross hatch patterns.

Remove any burned dust from your fin troughs then insert and set the copper fins with super glue.  To fill in the small gap between the burned trough and the metal fins I use Liquitex Modeling Paste – an air-dry polymer mixture that dries extremely hard without shrinking.   You can see the white line of modeling paste between the top fin and body, below.

After the decoy was thoroughly dry, sanded and dusted, I gave the fish two light coats of copper metallic spray paint.  Allow that primer layer to dry for several hours. I used t he spray paint as my base to avoid any brush strokes that might come from a hand-brushed primer.

Rouging is worked over a heavily antique project or a metallic base using artist oil paints, boiled linseed oil, and gloss acrylic spray sealer.

Place a small amount of each oil paint on a palette – I am using lemon yellow, cadmium yellow, cadmium orange, and cadmium red.  Oil paints are transparent colors that have no white, black, or gray base.  So as we work the color of the paint will clearly allow the color and sheen of the metallic spray to show through.

1  Lightly dampen your ox-hair brush in boiled linseed oil.  Blot as much of the oil off the brush as you can.  Next, pick up a very small amount of color on your brush tip.  I like to rub the color into the tip on the same area of paper towels as I just blotted the oil from my brush.

2  Gently rub one coat of linseed oil thinned color onto each area of your project.  I use a circular motion where the brush just barely touches the fish … just like applying your make-up rouge.  You should barely be able to see any color application with this first coat.  Let the oil paint dry for about 15 minutes.

3  Now, give your fish a light coat of gloss acrylic spray sealer.  Let the sealer dry for about 1/2 hour.

4  Repeat steps 1 through 3 over, and over, and over again.  And now repeat some more.

With each repeat you add an extremely thin layer of transparent oil color followed by a layer of gloss shine all on top of your metallic base.  The decoy below has about 8 to 10 coats at this stage.

 

The finished technique gives you this deep layering of bright color, sparkle and shine, that also allows the metallic sheen to come through the work.  This is similar to Chinese lacquer ware or enameling, in its effect.

For a little contrast I did add solid acrylic black eyes, black and white dots along the spine, and a little splatter of metallic gold paint to the fin ends.  With one last coat of gloss spray sealer this little bit of folk art is ready to hang.

 

 

 

Wood Carved Ice Fishing Decoys Read More »

Free Chip Carving Wood Carving Pattern

Chip Carving Projects, Woodworking / By

You can add color and paint to your chip carving projects to create a vintage look to your wood carving.  This is especially effective for chip carving projects that developed minor flaws as chip outs, double cuts, and wobbly lines.   Begin by painting a primer coat of acrylic craft paint to your entire project.  Here I am using a loose mix of ochre, mustard, and white to give my primer coat variations in tones.

Chip Carving E-Project at ArtDesignsStudio.com

FREE CHIP CARVING WOOD PROJECTS

removable spray adhesive chip carving patternSharpening Your Chip Knives
Positive and Negative Space in Chip Carving
Chip Carving Seminar
Chip Carving Supplies
Chip Carving Graphed Patterns
Chip Carving Hand Positions and Grips
Chip Carving – Cutting Triangle and Square Chips
Chip Carving – Cutting Straight-Wall, Curve-Wall, Free Forms
Chip Carved Chess and Game Board
Chip Carving – Sampler Layout Pattern
Chip Carving Common Mistakes
Chip Carving Shortbread Cookies

 

Individual motif areas of your chip carving can be painted in complementary colors to emphasis the change in the chip shapes, depth, and design.  Again, note that since we want a vintage look I am not working towards a solid, opaque coloring anywhere on the chip carving plaque.

Allow the base acrylic color to dry thoroughly.  You can at this point give your plaque several very light coats of spray sealer, which limits how much of the oil stain can grab into the wood.  For my project I applied one coat of burnt umber oil paint mixed half and half with boiled linseed oil.

With a clean cloth, wipe off the oil stain working with the grain direction of your wood.  You can dampen your cloth with turpentine to remove any excessively dark stain on the high areas of the chip carving.

 

Let your stain coat dry completely.  This can take several days depending on how thick the oil is in the deep chip cuts.  Using 220-grit sandpaper lightly begin to sand your chip carving.  The sandpaper will clean the high ridges between the chip cuts and distress the large, un-carved areas, creating a wonderful vintage look.

Clean the sanding dust with a tach cloth and apply your favorite finish.

This little chip carved fish decoy is found in our
Whittle Fish Decoy Carving E-Project, and in
Finishing Techniques for Wood Crafters.

 

Free Chip Carving Wood Carving Pattern Read More »

How to Clean Wood Carving -Burning Projects

Pyrography Basics, Wood Carving Basics / By

Antique Road Show may call it patina … but I call it dirt!

A.K.A.  The Joys of Murphy Oil Soap

In wood crafting – wood carving and wood burning – patina is the natural color change that any wood surface goes through with age because of oxidation.  This darkens the wood because the iron in the wood begins to rust over time.  A clean, fresh piece of white pine will turn into a deep golden-orange color as its patina develops.

This morning I have been taking photos for my next book with Fox Chapel Publishing and needing a backdrop I grabbed one of my very first relief carvings – a photograph box.   But even before I got it to the photography table I knew that carving desperately needed a good cleaning.  What I am posting is the same procedure that I use of my wood burnings.

Because we display our carvings, handle our carvings, and use many of them on a daily bases our artwork does begin to pick up an ugly layer of common household dirt that both dulls  the surface finish and begins to fill in that fine detail carving that you worked so hard to achieve.

This project was carved in butternut, circa 1995, and used in my first book Classic Carving published by Taunton Press.  Over the twenty years of being used as either a jewelry box or photo box, the lid had become quite dingy.

Note here, this is not some precious 200 year old antique … at least not yet!

I use Murphy’s Oil Soap.  Murphy’s is a concentrated wood cleaner that is safe to use around children and pets. Not only can it be used on raw wood but also over most of your polyurethane or acrylic sealers.  Remember to do a small test on the bottom of your project before you work the carving.

  1.  Dust your work well before you begin.  Use condensed air to clean what you can out of the deep details.
  2. Mix about 1 cap of soap with 1 1/2 cups of warm water.
  3. With a kitchen dish washing brush, work one coat of soapy water over the surface of your carving.  Let the soap mix sit on the wood for a few moments so that it can loosen the dirt.
  4. Gently scrub over your carving or burning with the kitchen brush to lift the dirt.
  5. With a large ox-hair brush, work the puddles of dirt out of the crevices and corners.
  6. Use a clean, lint-free cloth to rub away the dirty soap.  You do not need to or want to rinse your work after you have wiped the wood.  The oil in Murphy’s will refreshes your wood surface.
  7. Repeat if necessary.


After my jewelry box thoroughly dried it was ready to be returned to my dresser as my family photo box.  The shine you see on the box edges and carving curves directly comes from Murphy’s Oil Soap.

 

How to Clean Wood Carving -Burning Projects Read More »

Free Chip Carving Projects by L S Irish

Chip Carving / By

Let’s take an in-depth look at the chip carving technique by creating several chip carving practice boards, and working a classic needlepoint sampler layout, shown above, that you can use to carve multiple chip carved projects.  The pattern and photo sampler for this  Needlepoint Layout is available in both our  Chip Carving Pattern Package and in the Chip Carving E-Project.

Here is the link list to our Chip Carving Seminar by Lora Irish.

Chip Carving Seminar
Chip Carving Supplies
Chip Carving Graphed Patterns
Chip Carving Hand Positions and Grips
Chip Carving – Triangles and Square Chips
Chip Carving – Straight-Wall Chips
Chip Caved Game and Chess Board
Chip Carving Sampler Pattern Layout
Chip Carving Common Mistakes
Chip Carved Shortbread Cookies

 

We will explore:

free Irish chip carving patternSupplies needed for chip carving
Creating basswood chip carving practice boards
Wood preparations
Knife sharpening
Transferring a chip pattern to your board
Knife angle
Common problems
Positive and negative space
How to cut the different styles of chips
Learn triangles, square, straight-wall, curve-edge, free form, and accent chips
Using chip styles in your patterns
Work a set of chip progressions
How to turn a corner

 

Learn how to prepare your wood board, three methods to transfer your pattern, and how to set up a chip carving practice board.

Please stop by Art Designs Studio, (a.k.a. CarvingPatterns.com) Lora Irish’s wood carving, pyrography, and chip carving pattern website.

Chip Carving Basics E-Project, Everything from this Chip Carving Seminar and more!  Learn how to create a wide variety of chip carving designs using different styles of easy-to-cut chip motifs, by Lora S. Irish.  37 page, PDF file format, easy to print e-project and the full cp015 Chip Carving Pattern package with 110 ready to print chip carving patterns.

On sale through March 31, 2019 at only $7.95

 

Free Chip Carving Projects by L S Irish Read More »

wood carving a simple flower

Wood Carving A Simple Flower

Woodcarving / By

This simple flower wood carving is worked from the practice board project in Relief Wood Carving Workshop by Lora S. Irish.  This practice board, which includes 22 specific techniques for relief wood carving and 3 small flower designs, allows you to learn and explore the cutting strokes each of your wood carving tools creates.

 

PRACTICE CARVING ONE
This super simple flower pattern will walk you through many of the basic techniques learned in this practice board chapter.

wood carving a simple flowerStep 1 Trace your pattern to your practice board using graphite paper.

 

wood carving a simple flower
Step 2 Create a bench knife stop cut along the outer edges of the pattern.  Cut triangular chip cuts in the background corners of the petals.

 

wood carving a simple flower
Step 3 Working with the grain of the wood rough cut the background using a medium round gouge.

 

wood carving a simple flower
Step 4 Rough cut the background to a depth of 3/16”, making straight outer walls on your design elements.

 

wood carving a simple flower
Step 5 Create a stop cut using your v-gouge between the leave elements and the flower petals.

 

wood carving a simple flower
Step 6 Using a straight chisel taper the base of the leaf into the flower petals. Taper the outer leaf point away from the flower. This gives the leaves a convex curve.

 

wood carving a simple flower
Step 7 Taper the long sides of the leaves towards the background using your straight chisel.

 


Step 8 V-gouge stop cut the center circle of the flower.

 


Step 9 Using a medium round gouge or medium u-gouge create a concave indent inside of each petal.

 


Step 10 Separate each petal using your v-gouge and a stop cut.

 


Step 11 Up-end a medium or large round gouge to cut the inner circle of the flower center.

 


Step 12 Using your straight chisel round over the outer edges of the petals.

 

 


Step 13 Smooth the carving by shaving each element – leaves, petals, and flower center. Re-cut the intersection joint lines between the elements and the background.

 

 

wood carving a wood flower
Step 14 with a few more cleaning cuts and a touch of sanding using 220 grit sandpaper this carving will be completed and ready for either the painting steps or the finishing steps.

 

 

Relief Wood Carving Workshop

  • Clear, in-depth instructions
  • Step-by-step exercises
  • How-to photographs
  • 11 original projects for the first time relief carver

 

 

 

 

 

Relief Carving the Wood Spirit

With this book any carver can stand beside the workbench of acclaimed artist Lora S. Irish and learn everything she has to teach about creating an expressive wood spirit. Lora clearly explains the relief carving process from start to finish: every cut, every tool change, and every depth check. The entire craft is here, from preparing the wood to roughing out and detailing the wood spirit to applying a long-lasting finish. No step is left out and no technique is left unexplained. The author shares her tips for creating realistic and detailed facial features like eyelids, windswept hair, beards, and the ever-important mustache. Best of all, when the step-by-step project is complete, Relief Carving Wood Spirits, Revised Edition offers 20 more original patterns to keep any carver busy for seasons to come.

 

Wood Carving A Simple Flower Read More »

Scroll to Top