[Woodcarver] Black Forest definition...

[Ivan Whillock]

Hi Sally,
There are various degrees of roughout.  The American roughout is typically
rougher than those used by the professional carvers in Austria, Germany, and
Switzerland.  Many are machined down so close to the original that only a
thin surface carving is needed to "clean them up."   Other carvings on sale
in tourist shops, and even carving shops, are completely machine carved.
The burr cuts are so fine a person who is not familiar with the
characteristics of hand carving might not detect that it was machine carved.
Some manufacturers have workers  who make a few cuts in their machine
carvings so that they can be called "hand carved,"  but many others sell
them as they come off the machine.  (A carver I know went to Germany and
brought back a figure carving. When she proudly  showed it to me,  I didn't
have the heart to tell her it wasn't even wood!  The staining was done well
enough to fool even a carver!) The vast majority of "affordable" carvings I
saw were made from roughouts.  One manufacturer of "collectibles" that are
popular in America has workers who carve a bit on their otherwise machine
carved pieces.

If you have a question as to whether it is hand done or machine done, put on
your magnifiers and look at the hard-to-reach areas.  You often can see
areas the cleaning up didn't reach.  Also, in hand carving, stop cuts are
generally sharp or they vary in width.  On a machine carving the finest
burr, the one used to do the detail, leaves a tell-tale groove in the
narrowest areas of the carving.

 If it is a sanded figurine, it is likely machine made, as the master
carvers seldom sand their work.  I've visited shops in Germany and Austria
with hand carved, machine carved, and cast pieces displayed side by side.  A
carver in Italy told me they did have a round seal that they put on the
bottom of their hand carved pieces, that is, those that are carved from a
block.  The roughout carvings and the machine carvings have no such seal.

Don't recall that they had such a seal in the other countries I visited,
however.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "sally nye" <sarolyn at accn.org>
To: "[Woodcarver]" <woodcarver at six.pairlist.net>
Sent: Friday, July 22, 2005 8:08 PM
Subject: Re: [Woodcarver] Black Forest definition...



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> Tom, would they label a roughout as hand carved?  I think of roughouts

> as having the detail carved in by hand.  So if they said "hand carved"

> they could be partially correct.  Do they identify these types of

> things?

> Thanks

> Sally

> http://www.fancarversworld.com

>

> On Jul 22, 2005, at 7:43 PM, Tom Pierce wrote:

>   Make sure they are HAND carved.  Many of the shops sell what appear to

> be hand carved items, but the really are extremely well done roughouts

> as we would call them in this country.

>

> Tom "Old Age Is Not For Sissies" Pierce

> Bellevue, Nebraska

> mailto:tompierce at cox.net

> My Web Page http://www.carvertools.com/tpierce

>

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