I’ve been making wood carvings with varying success for 55 years. Sometimes I have some particular subject matter in mind before I even select a billet to work with. Sometimes I select a billet first and attempt to discover what shape the wood might have to offer.
Many of my carvings have been of humans. Although I’ve used a number of different tree species to make faces or entire figures, it recently occurred to me that I’ve never used walnut to make a human face. My only goal in making Wood Man was to see if I could make a passable face from walnut.
Any sort of source material is better than simply depending on my mind’s eye, so I looked through our own collection of snapshots and selected several taken by my father-in-law of an Army buddy during World War ll plus a profile of a guy I took at A Renaissance fair. I already had a face done and put tung oil on the face to see what the oiled surface would look like when this photo was taken. You can also see me taking the picture.
Having completed a passable face, the next question was “Now what?” The front of the block protruded enough to suggest a bent arm with a hand grasping a collar, but the billet wasn’t wide enough to make a left side to the torso. Solution — glue another block to the left side. Tools for that - files to flatten the surface, carbon paper to check my progress and clamps to hold the extra block in place while the glue dried. I had not considered doing an art process diary early on and did not take a picture with the extra piece clamped in place. The next image shows the nearly completed carving. There is a color change at the seam between the added block and the rest of the torso.
This image shows how I can orient the carving whichever way might be necessary. The underside of the carving is attached with two lag bolts to a holding block. A single large machine bolt connects the holding block to a second holding block, allowing the work to rotate on that holding block. The second holding block is held by a vise that can be both tilted and rotated.
This image shows the first holding block with the lag bolts partially withdrawn and the long machine bolt that swivels on the second holding block.
Here are some of my carving tools — Chisels moved with the help of a wood mallet for major shaping, files for rounding things off and exacto knifes for details.