[Woodcarver] Black Forest definition...

[maricha]

thank you for a great informative email.

cheers
maricha


> 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...

>