[Woodcarver] new projects

[Dave_Kratzer at sil.org]

I have been puttering with carving off and on for maybe 10 years. Mostly 
off. I have been lurking on this list for a year or more. I am very 
impressed with the comradery, quality and variety of work shared, concern 
for each other and willingness of the listers to help each other in all 
manner of issues. Your fund raising efforts for Marnie were "over the 
top". From reading your posts I feel like I almost know some of you 
personally. Maybe someday I will attend one of the "gatherings" and put 
faces to the names and get to know some of you better. As I near 
retirement I hope to be able to do more of that sort of thing in the not 
too distant future. I also am pleased that our list owner runs a tight 
ship keeping the list on subject and free of what some of us consider 
unnecessary content. My desire is to participate more but my introvert's 
nature restrains me. Unfortunately when I do open up I get kinda long 
winded as this post demonstrates. 

Unlike Maura I have NOT been artistic all my life. In one of my careers I 
was a draftsman and I can draw most anything with a t-square, triangle and 
compass but curved lines and artistic stuff has always been very difficult 
for me. I have always envied people who could "draw". I am a very left 
brain "craftsman". I know and skillfully use tools of all kinds and have 
done lots of wood and metal working projects from furniture to houses, 
automobiles to airplanes. Give me a set of blueprints and I can probably 
build it. 

I have always desired to find a way to express that small bit of right 
brain artist in me. I would love to do this in wood. I love wood and 
working with it. The joy and satisfaction of the varied smells, the 
textures and the feel of a sharp tool making a cut are hard to describe. 
I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about.  In keeping with my straight 
line mentality I completed a few small chip carvings using a Wayne Barton 
book. My attempts at "in the round" have been complete disasters. I have 
one I call my "pin head duck" because the head is so completely out of 
proportion to the body. I then discovered Bill Judt's books on relief 
carving and said "I want to be able to do that."  I crave to able to 
express myself in wood as he does. Also, I started working on the 
exercises in "Drawing on the Right Side of Your Brain". That has been 
helpful but I have sooooo far to go!

I have completed the  "God Bless Our Home" carving from the "Inspirational 
Relief Carving" book with a fair degree of success. Note this carving is 
mostly straight lines or lettering. So I plunged into his "Wolf" carving 
depicted on the cover of his other book. Well, I'm in trouble. I call it 
"Carver's Block" (pun intended). I put a verse around the border instead 
of the foot prints. That part has gone fairly well but now I'm trying to 
do the wolf and have no confidence at all. I set the levels with the 
router as indicated on the pattern but I am at a loss as to how to get 
from the various routed levels to the finished product. 

Now for my question(s) for Bill or whomever:

Do you model and carve the whole image with regular gouges before defining 
the hair or do you use the hair defining tool to do the shaping? 
If you shape before defining hair do you leave extra thickness to carve 
the hair? 
The ears seem to me that they should be deeper than the plan calls for. Is 
that a misprint?
How can the nose, eyes and forehead be at the same level? The nose needs 
to slope to the eyes and the forehead back to the ears but the photo 
dosen't appear to slope much at all? What am I missing?
How do you start blending all the levels together? 
The picture shows some levels with sharp transition and others blended. 
How do you decide which to do one way which to do the other? 
I'm afraid to remove any wood for fear of removing too much. I am so used 
to measuring and then cutting that working by eye is very difficult. I 
need something concrete to reference to. How do I get past this hang up?
What tool do you use to define the hair? "V" parting tool? "U" veiner? 
What size?
Do you put the jagged edge on the hair before or after you define the 
hair? 

Enough questions. Sorry I rambled on so long.

Bill I wish you had done a "step by step" for this carving. I didn't 
realize how difficult is was going to be compared to the "God Bless Our 
Home" carving. If you weren't so far from Texas I'd be in your classes. 
Maybe after I retire. I always wanted to see Canada. The north side of 
Lake Erie and Niagra Falls is all that I have seen of Canada.

I have a web site but have not posted any carvings yet but you can find 
out a little more about me If you are interested.

Thanks in advance.

/Dave
 
Dave Kratzer 
2421 Oak Tree Lane 
Midlothian TX 76065 
Dave_Kratzer at iname.com 
Phone: 972-723-0623 
Cell: 214-923-3135
FAX: 305-489-0320
http:// www.kratzerkomments.com
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