Welcome back to another My Chip Carving Lesson. In the last lesson, I showed you how to layout the design on this number zero goose egg, in this lesson we’re going to carve that design.
First thing you want to be aware of and take notice of is safety when you’re carving a small object like this. You can see that I’m carving it just holding it in my hand and I feel comfortable with this. If you don’t feel comfortable holding the egg like this and carving it, by all means don’t do it, I don’t anyone of you to cut themselves. If you don’t want to hold it in your hand, you have to find some way to clamp the egg so that you can hold it stationary while you make your chips.
Now notice how I can do this safely, I can hold it in my hand, but notice that my knife blade and my thumb never leave the surface of the egg. So I can make these cuts and with my thumb always in contact with the surface of the egg, I’ll never run the risk of cutting myself. As you can see I’m working my way around the egg, chip by chip, and it’s really quiet fun. See the chips I’m making is form a very nice looking pattern. And here’s how it’s done, you watch me do it now, just make a few more so you can see, I start shallow up at the top. There’s the deepest part of the chip and then draw the blade out right to that point. Start here very shallow, there is the deep part and draw your knife on it to the end. Notice that I’m carving away from my previous chips on those first cuts. Shallow, to deep, to shallow, and just the opposite—from shallow to deep and draw the knife on it to the end.
Then I like to take this cut right here next and finish it up by putting my knife point right down in the bottom of the chip, right where they meet, and drawing it out to the end. Repeat that process on this side, this will remove a large portion the chip and then put your point right in the bottom and draw it out to complete that chip. Let’s do one more. These eggs are a lot of fun to carve.
Now with this design, I also want to use a flip flop motion to create a flower-like shape on this inner diamond section. You can review the flip flop but you can see it’s very easy from first position of the knife to second position. I will work my way all the way around the egg, rotate and flip plop and rotate it again and same thing a whole way around for those diamond shapes. I’m just doing a couple here for you, so you can see that I would work my way all around the egg, rotate, and flip flop, rotate it again, and the same thing all way around those diamond shapes. I’m just doing a couple of it here for you so you can see that I would do this all the way around the egg with the same cut time, after time again. For economy of movement and helps me form uniform angles on all those flip plops. And you can see I just repeated the flip plop motion all the way around the outside of the egg, so now those diamonds are dressed up a little bit on the inside, all the flip to carve on the design that I’ve laid out here are the straight lines on the top and the bottom of the design.
To do that, it’s a same procedure for chip carving a straight line. I’m going to carve a way from my previous chips so I'm going to start on the inside of this line right here. And as I work my way around, I’m just going to roll the egg in the palm of my hand, keeping my thumb in contact with the egg so I don’t risk cutting myself.
Notice the angle of my knife remains the same throughout the entire cut. Rotate your egg, and do the other side of the line. Remember to look ahead of your knife blade when you’re cutting straight lines, your eye will direct your hand so that you get a nice straight cut. There is one of the lines carved at the top of the egg, now I’ll rotate my egg then carve the bottom line. Again I’m going to carve away from my previous chips first. Looking ahead of my knife blade at the line allows me to carve nice and straight. Rotate the egg and we’re all set to take off this straight chip. And there you have it, this egg is done chip carving. I could add more design if I want to. But one principle I want follow is not to over carve any object. I think this egg has enough chips taken out of it and I don’t want to over carve it.
We’ll talk about this more in upcoming lessons, but for now this one is done, I’m going around and do any tough carves that needs to be done, lightly erase the lines and put a finish on it. When erasing lines like these that are found on this number zero goose egg, I’m going to design that with this chip carve. I like to start with the tombow ink eraser for the larger sections where you want a quickly remove any of the pencil marks that are leftover. So start with a tombow then I’ll try all of those removed, I would use the ink pencil eraser for these small pencil lines that are left in the diamond flip flop section that we’re carving. So for those pencil lines in there, an ink pencil eraser gets right into the small sections. You don’t have to worry about chipping out any of the sections left on your diamond. So this works really nicely for delicate erasing in small areas.
Once all the lines are erased, lightly sand your object and you’re ready to apply a finish. For the finish on this particular design, I applied first after sanding, two coats of sanding sealer, sanding lightly in between coats. After that, I applied a gel stain to the entire surface of the egg letting it sit for about three or four minutes and then wiping off the surface with a cleaner rag and taking a stiff brush and removing any leftover gel stain in the in bottom of my carving. After that dried overnight, I applied two coats of spray lacquer, that’s a satin spray lacquer, not a glossy, that’s satin so it just fills through the shadows of your carving.
After the last spray coat, just let it sit and you’re all done. And I like the finish that turned out on this egg here. There’s an unlimited possible number of designs you can make in carving eggs, so I encourage you to explore many possibilities and give it a try. It’s really a lot of fun.
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