Carving tip - June 21, 2005
When carving, it's desirable to securely hold the wood being shaped and hold it in a position that can be acted upon with force and without undue strain. Since each carving presents different problems, there is no one best way to go about this. The picture below shows one positional setup for doing a portion of the work on one particular carving.
The vise labeled 1 rotates in a plane around the axis of the tightening handle above my left hand and also horizontally. One of the two tightening handles for horizontal rotation of the vise is just above the flat wrench labeled 9. To do some smoothing work on the lower surfaces of the carving labeled 4, I have the vise rotated almost 180 degrees from upright to get a better working angle on these surfaces. The vise is mounted on a thick block of wood labeled 2 which can be moved to work tables of different heights. One of several bar clamps holding it in its current position can be seen just to the right of the label 2. In its present location, if I rotated the vise 180 degrees, the carving would be positioned too high up to work on comfortably. For most of the shaping, the vise was not clamped to this high work table. Instead it was in its more usual spot on the lower work table labeled 3, held in place by flanges 3a, 3b and a bolt at 3c. An upright or slightly tilted position of the vise put the carving at a good working spot for most of the shaping when the vise was mounted on the lower table.
Simply rotating the vise often isn't enough to place a carving where it can best be worked on. That's why, if possible, I fasten the wood to be shaped to a holding block (5) with lag bolts. The holding block in turn is fastened to a second block (7) with a single large bolt (8). The tap to bolt (8) can easily be loosened and tightened with a flat wrench (9), allowing rotation in a plane perpendicular to that allowed by the rotation of the vise. [An additional billet of wood fastened to holding block (6) is shown on the far left. See how the lag bolts are recessed into this holding block. The head of bolt 8a is also recessed into the unseen opposite side of holding block 6.] With this set up, I almost never have to twist myself into a knot or stand on my head to do whatever needs to be done to carve some particular block of wood into the shape I want.
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