Inspired

[Aubrey]

So a while back, well over a year ago, I ordered a small wood carving chisel set from Wish. It was one of those "free" items but you pay shipping. I don't know why I bought it, I've never carved anything in my life. Anyway, I've been inspired to make use of it. As an homage to Aquarium Co-Op, I've decided to try to replicate the Enjoy Nature Daily carving(put that on some merch please). Although it will much smaller and more crude with this being my first foray into wooden relief carving. So far I've sketched it out and tested some of the chisels. If I don't post an update just assume it resulted in a failure.

[Cory]

Nice, the original one was done with an electric chisel. 

[TheDukeAnumber1]

GL Aubrey, should be a fun learing experience whichever way it turns out.

[Jdogtrainer]

Neat project!😄

[Aubrey]

What I've learned so far is that cheap tools give cheap results. I was almost finished doing what I thought would be a first pass on removing the surrounding wood when the chisels stopped cutting and started chipping the wood. This left a deep pit in one area. So after seeing that Cory said the original was made with an electric chisel, I decided that a dremel was fair to use. Plus the sizes of the tips of the chisels I have could not fit the size of some of the letters or spacing. Anyway, this is what it looked like after about two hours and before I dremeled anything. Notice the pit.

[Andy's Fish Den]

When I was going through some boxes a couple weeks ago, I found a couple knives that I had been given for wood carving when I was a young lad about 10. I packed them back up, but I see things that people carve all the time and I think I want to try it again, and especially with the Dremel tool and attachments, which I have a couple of now. I just might have to pull them out and give carving another go ahead soon.

[StephenP2003]

I come from a family of wood carvers on my father's side, but I haven't tried my hand at it. I'm interested to see the results. I did get a set of clamps and cheap router bits from Wish that have served me well, but most Wish tools have been a disappointment.

What kind of wood is that? Something really soft I assume.

[Aubrey]

On 10/12/2020 at 3:41 PM, StephenP2003 said:

What kind of wood is that? Something really soft I assume.

I don't know what kind of wood it is. It is soft and light. It came from Hobby Lobby. I initially bought it to transfer a photograph onto. I found that using the Dremel is much easier and more precise. I have seen that Dremel does have some router like attachments, and am curious about the applications for it. I have never used my Dremel for carving or shaping wood, mostly I use it for light sanding and polishing.

[Aubrey]

Well, while by no means do I think it is perfect, I am considering this project finished. I learned that, just like with aquariums, smaller is not easier and often presents it's own challenges and larger could be much more forgiving. I ended up using a dremel to get the depth and precision, hard to be precise considering the size of what I traced out and the size of the dremel bit, around the lettering and then chisel out away from them. I wanted to make the lettering stand out even more from the background, so I decided to lightly scorch the surface of them. As it turns out the small size of the letters and the softness of the wood allowed it to burn significantly with one pass of the torch, resulting in a rounded edge after sanding. I then applied two coats of spar urethane. I look at this and see all the mistakes I made, but that's ok because mistakes are just lessons. I can always say it's supposed to look imperfect because it's folk art or that it represents imperfect perfection of nature.

[TheDukeAnumber1]

Looks quite nice, I don't see mistakes when I see it. Well done.