My Chip Carving - 114 Chip Carving Smooth Curves

My Chip Carving 114 How to chip carve smooth, chatter-free curves www.MyChipCarving.com Chip carving this celtic knot Chip carving this celtic knot candle dish with the interlocking hearts is a lot of fun and it comes with a couple of challenges. I guess the main challenge is the carve smooth chatter-free curves in all the interlocking hearts. There is a way to do that with proper technique and practice that I am going to show you in this lesson. I am going to show you how to carve a few of these interlocking hearts because they have plenty of curves that we can practice on. Now we are going to use standard first position with our knife, thumb, knuckle, and knife blade make a tripod as we hold the knife. But in this example I am going to show you how to use the knife that I have modified to make it easier to get smooth chatter-free curves. Here is our standard number one cutting knife that I use for primarily the majority of all my chip carving. In here is a modified knife that I have modified and I have made it available in my chip carving store and notice I have taken off some of the metal along this line of the blade. So as I make curves using this modified knife, there is a less metal to drag around the curves which allows me to make smoother curves in your CLS stand as I use this modified knife and carve some of these interlocking hearts. Let us get started right over here. We will do a little warm up with these chips that are relatively straight. Okay, there is the first part. Now we are going to start on some of these curve chips and show you how to get a smooth chatter-free cut with the curves. I am going to start, remember the technique is to carve away from your previous chips. So my first cut is to be right along there carving away from this previous chip. Now I will carve the inside curve. As I do, I am raising the back of the handle of my knife and coming right around the curve turning the wood as I go trying not to stop the motion of my knife. Now take this cut right there. And the final cut is the outside of the curve. Now right here, as the transition from with the grain to across the grain I am going to slide the blade out of the wood a little bit so I can keep my cut going and make a smooth transition around that corner, trying to keep my knife moving. Okay so there is that curve. I got one slight little mark in here that is from where when I stopped my knife. If you can keep your knife moving smoothly around the curve you will have less chatter mark on the inside. Let us try another one. Cut away from your previous chips. Now take the inside cut first. Again, I will try to keep my knife moving smoothly around this curve to avoid any chatter marks. Now I am going with the grain, cross grain side my knife out a little bit and make the curve. There was a little bit left right there, take that out and down here, most likely it is right across the grain right there. There we have a nice smooth curve and it allow my knife to stop and I raise the handle of the knife, the back of the handle of the knife a little bit and transition from with the grain by slipping the knife out and finishing my curve. Let us try another one. Now we will do the curve cuts. Raise the back of your knife up a little bit and make that transition around the corner. Now we will do the outside. Again, I am going to try to keep it so I can keep the knife moving. There is with the grain, slip the knife out a little bit, come back down and make the transition right around the curve. That was nice, nice and smooth chatter-free cut. Let us do another one. So using the modified knife you can see that it is much easier to get a smooth chatter-free cut around curve surfaces as compared to using a regular number one cutting knife. You can find the modified knife in the my chip carving store and it comes presharpened, if you like I will get it razor sharp for you. You will find that using the modified knife makes it easier to get smooth chatter-free curves and designs like this is interlocking celtic knot heart pattern that is found on the candle dish in the my chip carving free pattern area. It is easier to get smooth curves whether you are working with letters or numbers and it is also quite handy. If you have to take out a series of small square chips with the normal number one cutting knife, the blade is just too big to reach the bottom of the square chip without going over the end of your lines. I will show you, the modified knife allows us to get the point of the knife right down into the bottom of these small chips, just like that, it comes right out. We can do another one just to show you how easy it is. Again, we are going the first position with our knife. See with this knife, you can get right down to the bottom of the small chip right with the point of your knife, right into the bottom just like that. Let us do one more. And there you have it. Using proper technique and using the proper tools, you can get smooth chatter-free cuts as well as delicate square chips as you see right here. Good luck in your chip carving. If you are not a subscriber yet, please go to MyChipCarving.com and get a free subscription to many free lessons, patterns, and give away contents. Sign up now, that is at MyChipCarving.com.