Green Carving, when should I coat it?

[Ubernoob]

I have no idea about green wood but I decided to do some practice carving with some and the piece ended up better than expected.

Now, can I coat it in some wax or should I let it dry and hope that it doesn't crack?

The wood is Sepele, I have no idea of the moisture content.

[Robson Valley]

Had to look up Sapele. Knew the name only.
1. Do you know the age and origin of the wood?
2. Is this a pieces of log or a milled timber?
3. Do you get any sense of whether the wood is damp or not?

I trying to get a sense of whether to do anything or not.
If you don't live where Sapele grows, chances are you got a piece which is aleady air-dried.
In that case = do nothing.

4. If you did coat it, paint it, wax it, got a plan to remove that at some time?

[Ubernoob]

Thanks for the answer.
1. No, local timber yard gives me offcuts for free, it was quite a large piece maybe 200x75mm and I was warned that it was wet or green, can't remember which term he used. They have a pretty large mill up the back and I'm unsure if they usually mill green timber or maybe this offcut just got wet.....

2. Milled timber.

3. The wood was damp, after rougly shaping the animal I left it in a bag for a few days to slow the drying process. It did sand differently to dry timber so the moisture content must be fairly high.

4. No, it was going to be coated in wax Gilly Stephenson's Waxes & Polishes - Restoring & New Timber Polish then Gilly Stephenson's Waxes & Polishes - Cabinet Makers Wax

Thanks.


EDIT- It's power carved because I am lazy and I was leaving the final shaping to be done after working out when to finish it.
R0247720.jpg

[Robson Valley]

Bull-tweet! Power carving is a technique, like buttering toast. Never, ever, let anyone tell you differently.
I do lots of that to rough out carvings to the point that I can fool around with gouges. So what?
Try Tagua Nuts = "Vegetable Ivory" if you want something HARD.

Promise that you are not in love with this. Let it cool in a bag of damp shavings.
What the Hello do you care? If it takes 3 months to settle down, to dry without cracking,
you are not obliged to reveal how you did it. OK?

You have done a marvelous job! I'm happy with what I see. There's a twisted curve to the body that looks real.
Not some simplified, fossilized rendition.

Think about smoothing the surface with cabinet scrapers. Their edges actually cut wood fiber.
Modern BS finishing indicates sanding and shredding wood fiber forever.
With a quality wood carving as you have made, please don't do that.

[Ubernoob]

Thanks RV, thanks for the kinds words on the carving, it still needs a bit trimmed out behind the fin and more off the mouth/muzzle/whatever a dolphin has.

Sadly my garage has no sharp woodworking tools just hammers and power tools, I only really have gear I needed for working MDF and fibreglass for car stereo installs. A couple of injuries has meant no work at the time of year I need money most, so there are no tools in my immediate future. A set of chisels, a decent spokeshave and a basic carving set will be purchased as soon as there is some spare money.

I may have to whip up a new dolphin if the current one will take so long to dry, I'm pretty new to this stuff.

The baby, re-posted from my toy thread-



Ooh, that's large.

[Robson Valley]

Thanks for the close-up picture. Maybe thin the nose a little but I wouldn't do much else.
The carving is "suggestive." You have left the details to the viewer's imagination. Good style.

Don't buy a kit of carving tools. They try to be all things to all people so you wind up with one or more
gouges that you never use. Good carving tools can be bought from open stock, one at a time (eg Pfeil, Stubai, Henry Taylor, Ashley Iles).
I bought a recommended selection many years ago and have added one or two each year as needed.
So, my bench looks pretty flush for tools but they have been a long time in coming.

Keep an eye out for estate sales. Let people know what you're looking for.
I've got a broken Henkle(?) kitchen knife, maybe 25mm blade stump, $0.50 garage sale.
Sharpened and honed for carving, it's pretty good!

For what I see, look at a Flexcut KD-14 for your first knife. Kevlar safety glove, too, if you're in the habit
of holding a carving in one hand and working with knife in the other. My carvings stay on the bench!

I looked at cabinet scrapers. Then I got some of the hard steel banding used with timber bundles.
Cut into 75mm pieces and one edge squared with a chalked-up mill file = done deal for nothing.

Last = by all means, carve more of those. You've got a good sense of body proportions, use it.

[Ubernoob]

Cheers, RV.

Sorry to confuse but this is a baby dolphin to go with the other one, the nose and tail are left thick because it is only Meranti and it will be played with and will chip or snap.

I will look for all the suggested items, I also need to learn how to sharpen chisels properly and need a couple of finer stones to do the job properly. I hate sharpening, the worst part of woodworking by far.

I doubt I will do any more animal carvings, a friend of a friend asked if I could make a dolphin and I said I'd have a go. His daughter has spent a lot of time in hospital so I couldn't say no, functional toys are more my thing. I appreciate other peoples' carvings but I don't like making something that is solely for looking at, I'm a bit crazy.

[Robson Valley]

Carve whatever floats your boat. I'm not too concerned as I carve what I "see" in the wood.
Sometimes, they illustrate points in a story or tell a life story, some are just animals.
I have tried to hammer a design into any old piece of wood and usually end up throwing it away.

I was taught freehand sharpening and honing for wood carving tools. I am competent.
I get edges which are a pleasure to use. There are some unwritten tricks, simple as that.
Essentially, you work parallel to the edge of the bench, standing up, and you sharpen with your legs, not with your arms.

Consider a simplified sandpaper system. Your "Sandpaper Man" has everything. Cereal box card for a strop.
The whole set up might cost you $10.00. I had to do that for the crooked knives and adzes used in Pacific Northwest style work.

If you go away, 'way back in the Carving Forum here, you will find a long thread called "Star's Sharpening Journey."
Pete & I have some history and I wrote most of that thread. I fear that all the pictures are lost.
I can probably dig out some pix to illustrate the concepts.

[Ubernoob]

Cereal box strop, I like it.

Glued this up yesterday and shaped a prop today.
R0247734 (2).jpg

[Xanthorrhoeas]

Wow, not such a noob really. Well done. I love your carving and, as RV says (misquoted sorry) , you have a lovely feeling for flowing lines and style. My carving experience is next to nil, just a few fist-ended paper knives and envelope openers. Maybe, one day ...

[Robson Valley]

There have to be at least 6-8 carving styles, if not more. Chip, relief, kolrossing, flat plane and so on.
Most need very few tools. When you learn to sustain carving sharp edges, you can focus on the work.
I'm trying to say that your choice of tools is as different as the carving styles.
Some people use various sorts of power carving tools, some use nothing less than 3 or 4 different chainsaws.

There's an American carver with a top reputation, Lynn Doughty.
He carves with a box-cutter, the sort with the break-away blades. That's it.

Pick a style, hopefully find a carving club and get started.
I was given a relief carving course as a gift. Hindsight said I had a really good time but it wasn't my interest.
Then I realized that if I did deep relief carving all around the sides and the top, I'd be happy.
Half a dozen gouges to start, added 1 or 2 each year, 15(?) years now?

[Ubernoob]

Wow, not such a noob really. Well done. I love your carving and, as RV says (misquoted sorry) , you have a lovely feeling for flowing lines and style. My carving experience is next to nil, just a few fist-ended paper knives and envelope openers. Maybe, one day ...

A dolphin is a pretty simple creature, not having a bandsaw or a work bench made it harder than it needed to be but it was probably one of the easiest toys(?) I have made.
The prop was harder than I expected because all the lines from the veneer made it difficult to see if the thing was proportionally correct, it is annoying because the top of the prop looks larger than the bottom, if you spin it 180deg the top still looks bigger, hahaha!

Seems I am getting paid for the Dolphins in beef jerky, fixed a Mustang, got bourbon, fixed a bike and got chocolate.
People know me well.

[Ubernoob]

Well, it seems the dolphin is probably doomed as it was actually Blue Gum and it was freshly sawn, the guy said the block I got could take two years to air dry.

So, I bought some Tassie Oak and and I had some Ironbark here so I made the beginnings of a new dolphin. It will look a bit different with a white centre and purple/red sides so hopefully the recipient will like it.
R0247740.jpg

Also did another bit of carving for the owl, wings are similar but not identical.
R0247741.jpg

[Ubernoob]

Attempt 2-
R0247744.jpg

[Robson Valley]

Looking cool. I don't see the body proportions like the first ones.

Owl. It is -25C at night and damn dark except for a nearly full moon.
I have maybe 6-8" snow in the back yard.
This morning, there's a beautifull spread-eagled angel of feather pattern in the snow, maybe a meter across.
Owl came in hard & fast to hit a mouse/vole in the snow. Absolute silence.
OK light in the cold AM. Sun too low for the entire rest of the day to get a clean pic of the imprint.