Sorry to stir the pot.
There is a translator so I can write in English and paste in German
but I have not figured out how to do it. A French wood carver friend might know.
Translation is such a challenge when I read what Google Translate is telling me.
I guess at so many of the meanings!
I think that the heat gun did a softer job darkening the wood than a gas torch would do.
That's going to be quite an elegant log home. As much as I like the appearances of them,
the wood makes the interior very dark and gloomy without a lot of powerful light.
Many flat white walls will brighten up rainy mornings.
Thankyou. I want to upgrade the lighting in my carving shop. My old eyes need more and more light.
Do you have just the one light to illuminate the carving?
Thank you very much. I have always wondered what the oil penetration would look like.
Since it is done above 100C, I expect the wooden utensils to last a very long time without discoloring.
I have some power saws. Jig saw, band saw and scroll saw. Anything bigger and I have a variety of hand saws, an electric chain saw and a petrol power saw. I select the ones that do the job. Yes, it takes a little care to follow the instructions for the alignment of the band saw.
Not difficult to do correctly.
My little band saw has a 12 cm wide pass. In the last 10 years, I have wanted a 30cm saw maybe 3 or 4 times.
All the other saws I use instead of a big band saw. I only ever have to do the rough cutting of a carving once.
I would start a thread in the Showcase and keep adding progress pictures until it is finished.
No. Not for carving tools. Wood carving tools need to have extremely sharp edges.
T would be damaged if they were stored in such a bag.
See in my pictures how the edges are protected? I do not need extra sharpening work.
Here are the two different ways that I store my carving tool.
1. The box holds no more than 1/2 of all the crooked knives that I use now.
The newer ones each have a cover for the blades so that they are in a pile in a box.
2. I had the denim cloth tool rolls made when I was carving with a mallet and gouges.
I have 4 of these tool rolls, all full of gouges.
The material is all different so I can keep the gouges in different groups and tell them apart.
Welcome. This is a very good group with many skills.
I live in the Rockies of Canada at 120W x 53N.
What style of carving would you like to do? The tool sets are different as you might expect.
You can see many of my tool in the Showcase. Pacific Northwest First Nations style.
I buy the blades and build the handles and haft the blades.
Years ago, I carved with a mallet and gouges. That was very satisfying, too.
Some wood is just too twisted to carve well. Fuzzy fiber everywhere, no matter how sharp your tools are.
You did very well with this piece of wood.
This is good news! Please explain your experimental results.
I made myself a very big birch pasta fork (30mm x 330mm). Used maybe 2X per week for 5-8 years.
With the Charles Law finishing method, it has looked like new all these years.
The baked oil treatment uses Charles' Law of gas physics.
165C for 3 minutes and 30seconds was entirely adequate.
This is a finishing method instead of using a varnish or paint.
This is not a method for seasoning fresh, wet wood.
I did 70 spoons and 30 forks meant for kitchen preparation work that way with no damage.
I carved a frog dish, painted it with melted bee's wax and baked it the same way.
Maybe 3 heat treatments to see bubbles in the melted wax. This dish is by my sink and always wet.
It is perfectly preserved.
The oven-baked oil finish.
This uses Charles' Law of Physics: gases expand as they are heated and gases contract when they are cooled.
Preheat your kitchen oven to 325F/165C.
On a mesh pastry rack over a sheet pan, brush your wood carvings wit the vegetable oil of your choice.
I use olive oil as I have many liters of it in my kitchen.
Into the oven for 3 minutes and 30 seconds by the clock.
Take the tray out and look at your wood carvings, the end grain. See all the little wood air bubbles?
Now as the wood cools, the remaining wood air will contract and suck the oil down into the wood .
You can always brush more oil on the wood at this time I did that, some times.
When cold, wipe off the excess oil and you are done forever. That oil cannot be washed out or cooked out
unless you heat the wood to more than 165C again.
You asked about doing this to stained wood. I do not know the answer. You do the experiment and tell the rest of us.
I was cutting and staining wood sections to make microscope slides every day of the week.
Add several odd species to the process each week was the logical thing to do.
This will be the challenge when you do not work in a wood laboratory every day.
Unfortunately, glue-ups to make big wood are more and more common even here with 2m diameter old growth logs.
I use a 180C hot oil/wax baked finish which cannot be damaged. 3 minutes and 30 seconds and it is finished forever.
It cannot be washed off, it cannot be cooked off with boiling water. I did 70 spoons and 30 forks this way.
I made a kitchen dish for wet things at the sink with bees wax over birch. 10 years" Looks like new.
Allow me to make 3 guesses:
1. You used a lot of glue, you covered the entire surfaces. Too much. Just dabs here and there like postage stamps.
2. Your newspaper sheets are much thinner than ours with thicker softer wood pulp. Your paper saturated.
3. All the oaks (Quercus sp.) in the red oak group are very porous. This allows the glue to soak well down into the wood for a very strong bond. The red oaks need a paste sealer to fill the surface of the wood. Then you do the glue-up.
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I have glued western red cedar to spruce with no difficulty separating the two pieces later.
Mallet and gouge carving with the spruce clamped to my bench.
Just a transmitted light microscope. Objectives 4X and 10X and 20X and 40X are all that is needed with 10X ocular lenses.
Very carefully cut and stained radial, transverse and tangential sections. No more than 15 micrometer thickness.
I did the conifers at 20 micrometers to see the whole anatomies of the bordered pits.
The stains don't matter for contrast, just to see the cell anatomy and arrangement patterns..
I was studying the anatomy of the grafts of stock and scion in fruit trees, apple in particular.
It was so easy to slip in a few extra species each week. The university learned what I was doing.
On several occasions, they came to me with archeology wood to be identified.
Make groups of tools which look much the same. Takes pictures. Post them here.
There will be many members who will be able to tell you what the tools are and how they are used.
Many of the waxes and stains could be used to finish carvings, best to ask about them, too.
Wood can be difficult to identify without a microscope. I used to do that but no more.
I have microscope slides of more that 300 species for reference. Good luck.
