Learn to Cut and Carve Wooden Gifts Like A Pro
How to use a combination of saws and carving knives to make wooden gifts? This blog post will take you through the detailed cutting process, and we'll use the mushroom wood figurine from the previous post as an example.
Cutting large
Starting with the vise clamped on a smooth tabletop, we're going to start by cutting the excess off the top of the wood block, and then cut the portion underneath that has been marked for shading.
You can do this by holding your thumbnail against the line you want to saw, then placing the blade on it and gently rubbing it back and forth across the block to make a light mark. Once this mark has appeared you can then proceed to cut down harder.
Please note that you should be very careful when finalizing the cut, do not use too much force, just rub gently so that the block separates naturally.
Next, we are going to cut the two sides, in this step it is necessary to pay attention to not cut too much when cutting, please keep the saw vertical and smooth.
Corresponding to the bottom of the mushroom wood figurine, the top view of the mushroom is also a circle, we still use the quadrature method to draw the circle. We put the wood block back on the vise again and cut the four edges vertically with the saw to make the block into an octagon.
Chipping off the edge wood
After we've finished cutting the large with the saw, your wood embers may look a little dismal. But at this point you don't have to worry at all, all we've just done is cut away the excess wood, we haven't started carving our wooden gifts yet. Your real weapon is your carving knife, so please take out your prepared knives with a relaxed mind.
Before you start carving, we highly recommend that you wear gloves and finger cots, especially as a beginner wood carver, it is essential to protect yourself. Some of you may feel that your fingers are more flexible and feel better when carving without gloves, but our experience is that it is very insecure to work without gloves. Making wooden gifts requires a long time to deal with tools, years of experience has taught us to use tools to maintain a sense of reverence, carving knife, although small, but it is still a sharp edge of steel. Our hands should not be injured by it. Wearing gloves may feel uncomfortable at first, but after wearing them for a long time your gloves will take the shape of your hands and will not be inconvenient at all.
It is a first rule that your fingers, especially the thumb of the hand holding the block, should not be within the sure path of the carving knife. We will explain the basic knife techniques used when making wooden gifts in the next post.
