Rod's Green Man - Part 15
Created | Updated Feb 2, 2014
One Man's Woodcraft: Carving.
The Green Man: Part 15
Some more definition of the foliage here and there and a fair amount of digging it out towards what I think it should be.
Towards the finishing process the foliage will be carried onto and over the edges. Those measuring scales are little used now and there's a temptation to fiddle around with depth here & there, unnecessarily playing with symmetry.
I'm finding that the bent gouges I have aren't really suitable past a certain stage.
The very bent one is awkward to use in restricted areas – it's too bent to allow it to be held comfortably like a pen, though the tip is about the right size & shape - and it's awkward to sharpen.
The bent one is good - fairly easy to use and it gets into many places by learning a slicing cut and a slicing / twisting cut. Its problem is that it's too broad for deepening the edges of leaves and the slicing / twisting / turning cut for tighter corners is not satisfactory. The very tight corners - and the undercuts - will need special attention with smaller diameter tools.
I'm looking at my pocket money allocation for 2014 … can I afford two or three new tools of more appropriate depth and diameter ? No but I just might manage one.
The problem is of course overall cost – tools (and many other things) are rather more expensive here and transport costs within the country are quite high, too, as most of the population (and therefore services) are on the North Island, particularly the upper part, towards and around Auckland - more than half a country away and including a sea crossing.
My other problem is getting the tools properly sharp. My hands have forgotten how and are having to be retrained more or less from scratch. Luckily though, all the required equipment was on these shelves, somewhere... having been unpacked and stacked from the UK shipment five years ago and subsequently rummaged through & partly reorganised several times.
