Rope carving help needed

[Bob Schmall]

And another set of thank yous goes out to Mr. Hide, with oak leaf clusters.

Bob

[Conan The Librarian]

You're welcome, Bahb. Mike has already given you good info on the tools of choice (especially the idea of using a custom scraper; I wish I had done that early on in the process). I'll just mention how I went about it. I used left and right skew chisels (I re-shaped them from standard yellow-handled Stanleys) to create the V shapes/meet up with the saw cuts on the faces. As Mike said, you *will* wind up going against the grain, but the skews helped minimize chipout (a *real* problem on pine, btw).

Once you get the face grooves cut, you need to make the transitions around the corners. I played around with various chisels and gouges, and had the best success with matched left/right skew spoon gouges. But even that left some rough areas. What I did after that was take some small needle-files to clean up those areas. (In retrospect, a scraper would have been even better.)

This is hard to put into words, but, in general, I found that you will not have much luck at all if you try to approach those wraparounds by going down the center of the groove (unless you are using a scraper, and even then it might be a bit iffy). You will want to approach everything from the face of the work towards the center of the groove; always skewed and alternating working from either side towards the corner.

It's tedious work, but well worth it, IMHO (assuming that's the look you're after). It also taught me more about grain direction change than all of my previous flat projects combined. :-}

BTW, do try to get your hands on that book I mentioned before (A.D. Williams' book). It's got a bunch of nice SW-style projects with pretty detailed drawings, plus some photos, and some excellent descriptions of carving techniques. Sadly, I don't expect it is still in print, but you might be able to get it via ILL.

Chuck Vance

[Bob Schmall]

Thankee, Chuck. I peeked into the book section at Woodcraft yesterday and found nothing on rope carving except a brief mention that duplicated what has been said here. The Williams book wasn't there, of course, but I'll google it. Anything on southwest furniture is welcome here. BTW, if you want some inspiration, get the catalog of Earnest Thompson Furniture out of Albuquerque.Gorgeous stuff, and the finishes are amazing. We stopped there last month while on vacation.

Bob

>

[Conan The Librarian]

I checked out their website, and it does look like great stuff. Certainly a lot more refined than the stuff we find around here advertised as SW-style. (A lot of which looks like someone built the project and then took an ice-pick and chains to it and then dragged it behind their pickup to make it look "distressed". Oh wait ... they probably did.)

I also checked on the book by Williams, and unfortunately, it is out-of-print, and it looks like used copies are going for roughly $70. Yikes, I dunno if it's *that* good. Anyhow, if you need more info on the technique he describes, let me know. I might be able to get you a "personal-use copy". (But it will probably be after Thanksgiving, as we're heading down to Mexico (San Miguel de Allende) for a week. *neener*)

Chuck Vance