Chip Carving

In today’s Chip Carving Free Online Seminar by Lora Irish we will discuss how to prepare your wood board, how to transfer your pattern, and how to set up a chip carving practice board.

Chip Carving Seminar by Lora Irish

Chip Carving Seminar
Chip Carving Supplies
Chip Carving Graphed Patterns
Chip Carving Hand Positions and Grips
Chip Carving – Triangles and Square Chips
Chip Carving – Straight-Wall Chips
Chip Caved Game and Chess Board
Chip Carving Sampler Pattern Layout
Chip Carving Common Mistakes
Chip Carved Shortbread Cookies

Wood Preparation

Any wood surface will require a light sanding using 320-grit sandpaper.  Rough surfaces can cause your chip knife to grab or hesitate as you make the cutting stroke.
Sand in the direction of the wood grain to avoid adding fine scratch lines from the paper.  Wipe the board well with a lint-free dry cloth to remove the sanding dust.

Pattern tracing using graphite paper

If the pattern is small and you have a printed copy of the design you can use graphite paper to trace the image to the wood.  Center the printed pattern to the wood and tape it into place along one edge.  Slide the graphite paper under the pattern.  Using a ruler, compass, or straight edge and a hard pencil, mark along each line.  After the cutting is complete the tracing lines can be erased.

Advantages – Tracing has the advantage when you are transferring your pattern to curved surface or when you want your chips in one oddly shaped area on the wood.  In the photo sample the carving board is oval and the pattern has that same oval.  Tracing with graphite paper made it easy to cut the pattern along the oval shape and align it properly with the board.

Disadvantages – Hand tracing, even when you use a ruler and compass, does not always give you perfectly matched chip sizes or perfectly straight cutting lines.  Take time to double-check your line accuracy before you begin cutting.  After the chip carving is complete you will need to remove any remaining tracing lines using a white eraser.  For stubborn lines a light sanding with 320-grit sandpaper may be necessary.

Graphing directly to the wood

Because most chip carving patterns are geometric they can easily be graphed direct onto the board.

Using a small t-square, a ruler, and hard pencil mark the grid to your board.    The size of each unit determines the final size of the chip motif – a 1/3” space will create larger chip motifs than a 1/4” spacing.  With a soft pencil, to mark darker lines, pencil in your motif using the grid guidelines.

Advantages – Creating the pencil graph directly to the wood means that your knife is cutting directly into each chip wall.  There is no graphite paper that might slide as you create the chip lines and there is no pattern paper between you and the wood as you work.

Disadvantages – Your final chip carving will only be as accurate as your pencil grid.  Use a small t-square to mark all of your grid lines, sliding the square across one edge of the board.  After the chip carving is complete use a white eraser to remove the pencil grid.  A light sanding using 320-grit sandpaper will remove any stubborn lines.

Applying a graphed pattern with removable spray adhesive

Spray adhesives allow you to temporarily glue the printed pattern directly to your wood board.  You can cut your chips following the printed paper lines.  After the chip carving is complete the remaining pattern paper can be lifted from the wood, leaving a clean, unblemished background.

Read and follow the directions of the label for the best results when using spray adhesives.  After the pattern has been affixed to the wood allow the paper to dry completely before you begin your cutting steps.

Advantages – By using a printed, adhered pattern you know that each chip cutting line is absolutely accurate.  The bright white of the paper and the black chip outlines makes it easy to know where you have cut and where you still need to work.  When the pattern is removed the background wood is clean, there will be no tracing or pencil lines to remove.

Disadvantages – Spray adhesives can become permanently affixed to your wood.  Do a test sample on a practice board before you use this method on your larger project.  Be sure to clean the nozzle of your spray adhesive can before you coat your pattern paper, a clogged nozzle can cause your spray to become uneven in coverage and it can leave small clumps of adhesive that are hard to cut.  Spray adhesive patterns can come loose during the cutting steps.

This often happens where one chip lies against another.  The loose side of paper can both block your view of your next cut as well as get in the way of the knife blade.  If this happens lightly score the pattern paper along the outer lines of the chip you are cutting.  This releases just the paper chip so that you can remove it.  Now cut along the score lines.

Simplifying the Pattern

As you view the free chip carving patterns that are being offered with this seminar you will note that the outer lines of each chip is marked with a black line.  The inner cuts that make the well of the chip are marked with blue lines.  If you are tracing or graphing your pattern the inner lines do not need to be transferred to your board.  Instead, after the outer lines have been graphed with a #4 soft pencil or a fine point marker, place one small dot inside the chip to note where the center point of the chip well will be.  One dot, centered in the chip well will note a three or four-sided chip cut.  One dot placed in one corner of the chip well will note a straight-wall cut where the third chip wall slopes into the corner.

Chip Carving Graph Paper

The two square girds below are 100 dpi for accuracy.  Please click on each image to view the full-sized pattern.  Save to your computer.  You can Click and Print as many copies as you need.  As we work through the practice board grids over the next few days I will be using a blank grid and pencil marking the chip motifs.

1/4″ chip grid	1/3″ chip grid

Today’s Free Chip Carving Pattern

Next we will look at hand positions for cutting your chips, common problems, and positive and negative space in chip carving.  We are getting very close to cutting a few chips.  Thank you for reading!

In this free online Chip Carving Seminar session, by Lora S. Irish, we will first take a look at the basic supplies that you will need.

Chip Carving Seminar by Lora Irish

Chip Carving Seminar
Chip Carving Supplies
Chip Carving Graphed Patterns
Chip Carving Hand Positions and Grips
Chip Carving – Triangles and Square Chips
Chip Carving – Straight-Wall Chips
Chip Caved Game and Chess Board
Chip Carving Sampler Pattern Layout
Chip Carving Common Mistakes
Chip Carved Shortbread Cookies

For more about Chip Carving please visit Chip Carving.

basswood practice boards – 3″ to 4″ wide x 18″ long, 1/4″
basswood is available at most hardware stores
11″ x 14″ basswood plaque – needlepoint sampler pattern
14″ x 14″ basswood plaque – chess game board pattern
large chip carving knife
stab chip carving knife
detail wood carving bench knife
sharpening stones and leather strop
graph paper
removable spray adhesive
pencil
320-grit sandpaper
white artist eraser
linseed oil
turpentine
paste wax finish

Chip Knives

For more about wood carving tools, please visit Basic Wood Carving Tool Kit.

For this seminar you will need a chip knife, stab knife, and detail bench knife.

Chip Carving Knives

The chip carving knife is your primary cutting tool.  It has a short blade as compared to wood carving bench and detail knives, or whittling pocket knives, which places your carving hand closer to the actual cuts in the wood.  The blade is angled slightly from the handle, placing the point and cutting edge in the correct position for the push cut used to angle the inner walls of the chip.

Chip knives are available in large and small sizes, with wooden or ergonomic resin handles.  My personal preference is the large, wood handled knife which can also be used as a bench knife in my relief carving.

Stab Chip Carving Knife

The stab knife also comes in two varieties.  This is a straight-edged blade made to be pushed into the wood that makes thin, straight line accent cuts in the negative space of the chip pattern.  If the tip of the stab knife is sharpened along with the straight edge of the blade and at the point, this knife can be used to cut the walls of your chips.

Detail Bench Knife

Detail bench knives, used in wood carving, are excellent for your chip carving.  The long, narrow blade can be used to cut the walls of the chip and can reach deeply into the sloped floor of a straight-wall chip.  For chip carving you want a detail bench knife with a short blade to keep your cutting hand close to the wood.

 Utility, Craft, and Pocket Knives

Although utility and craft knives are readily available and very inexpensive but I do not recommend them for either wood carving or chip carving.  The steel in the blades are very thin and not the high quality found in specific wood carving knives.  The tips of these blades can snap easily, creating the potential for you to end up cut.  Please also avoid using straight-edged razor blades for the same reasons.

There are some excellent quality steel pocket knives available today that are perfect for whittling wood carving projects.  I do not, however, recommend them for chip carving.  The thickness of a pocket knife blade can cause problems when you are cutting small-sized chips.  Thick blades tend to push against the wood as it cuts, compressing the wood outside the chip.  That compressed area then causes cutting problems as you cut an adjacent chip.

Sharpening Tools

For more about sharpening, please visit Sharpening Your Wood Carving Tools, and Sharpening Your Chip Knives.

For this seminar you will need a coarse sharpening stone, a fine sharpening stone, a leather strop and rouging compound, emery cloth 1500-grit sandpaper, and several sheets of newspaper.  My personal preference, especially for new carvers, are ceramic stones.  These are reasonably prices, small enough to keep right in my carving kit, do not require either water or oil, and last a life time.

Coarse 1000-grit Sharpening Stones

The coarse sharpening stone creates the angle of the knife blade bevel.  If you are wood carving hardwoods and using a mallet you want a wide bevel on the edge of your cutting tool, up to 25 degrees.  If you are relief carving you want to drop the bevel angle, bringing the bevel down to around 20 degrees.  For chip carving you want a very narrow bevel, below the 20 degrees.

A sharpening jig that allows you to set the exact degree of the bevel takes the guess-work out of knife sharpening.  If like most carvers you sharpen by eye, place the blade of your knife flat against the coarse stone.  Raise the back – blunt – edge of the blade slightly, just high enough to slide 3 to 4 sheets of paper under the back edge.  This sets the knife blade at a very shallow angle to the stone, perfect for chip carving.

Pull your knife across the stone to create the cutting edge bevel.  Work both sides of your knife.

Fine 6000-grit Sharpening Stones

Fine stones have a high grit number, ranging from 6000- to 8000-grits.  This stone sharpens the cutting edge.  Place your knife onto the stone as the same bevel angle or ever so slightly higher.  Pull the knife blade across the stone until you have developed a bright edge.

The fine stone work will create a very thin strip of steel along the cutting edge of the blade.  You can not see this strip, but if you run your finger from the back of the knife towards the edge you will be able to feel a thin, rough tin edge.

Emery Cloth Sandpaper

There is a wonderful version of sandpaper, called emery cloth, that is specifically made use with metal.  Emery cloth comes in many grades, I use 500-, 1000-, and 15oo-grit.  I use my finest grit emery cloth before I move to my strop to insecure that I have established and then released the tin edge.  Many carvers use emery cloth exclusively for sharpening.
In relief carving you can wrap emery cloth around a dowel for sharpening the inside cutting edges of your round gouges.

Leather Strop and Rouge

Stropping, pulling a carving knife across a leather strop, removes the tin edge developed on the fine sharpening stone and brightens the cutting edge. The leather strop has two sides – one raw leather and one tanned leather.  A rouging compound or sharpening compound is rubbed over the raw leather side of your strop.  Place the blade, at the same bevel angle that you have been working, against the strop and pull the knife in long strokes across the compound.  Work both sides of your knife.

There are several stropping or rouging compounds available, and each wood carver seems to have their favorite.  I use red oxide in a stick form and aluminum oxide power.

Newspaper

Select several sheets of newspaper that are heavily printed.  You can also print a sheet of condensed text using your computer printer for this step.  Paper has a very fine grit and the printing ink acts as a rouging compound.  Fold the paper into quarters and place it at the edge of your work table.  Lay you knife blade flat against the paper and pull the knife across the paper several times.

This final paper stropping will polish the cutting edge.

Measuring Tools

Chip carving patterns can be printed and then glued to your wood using removable spray adhesive, which for this seminar I will refer to as gluing, or they can be graphed directly to the wood.  Printing and gluing the pattern insures that you are working from a pattern that has perfectly straight cutting lines, but unless you have a graphic image editing program you are constrained to working the pattern at the size of the printed paper.

You can, using a small t-square, compass, and straight edge, create a pencil graph directly onto the wood.  I use a #2 soft pencil to create the grid and use light pressure on the pencil to avoid leaving thin, indented lines in the basswood.  You can also use a pale brown colored watercolor pencil for this step.  When the chip carving is finished, using a white artist eraser the pencil graph and chip outlines can be removed.  With watercolor pencil the board is wiped with a slightly damp cloth.

Basswood Practice and Project Boards

For this seminar I would strongly suggest that you begin with basswood practice boards.  Chip carving needs precise, strong cuts to create the wonderfully intricate geometric chips.  Precision comes with practice!

You can find 3″ to 4″ wide by 1/4″ thick by 18″ to 24″ long basswood craft boards at most local hardware stores which are perfect for your practice work.  Check each board carefully to insecure that it has even, straight grain, and a clear unblemished coloring.  These basswood boards are not the high quality found in the finished project plaques that are available through Walnut Hollow and other companies, but quite fine enough to use for learning, experimenting, and practice motifs.

Tomorrow we will look at how to prepare the wood for your chip carving.  Thank you for reading!