Outline For Painting Your Carving

If you are looking for a concise and clear approach to painting
your carvings and projects this page is for YOU!

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Beginning Woodburning!

If you are interested in learning more about pyrography, wood burning CLICK HERE

Carving Books...

Enchanting Illustrations Carved From Old Books

Open the covers to a world of holloways, moonlit leaves, and forest creatures.

by Anika Burgess

April 06, 2018

 

 

 

   What happens to old hardcover books that no one wants any more? There’s donation and recycling, but it seems that as often as not they end up forgotten, in boxes and piles in garages, attics, or basements, where they can grow musty and moldy. But sometimes they can be repurposed, and if they find themselves in the hands of illustrator Isobelle Ouzman, they can be art. Her ongoing project, Altered Books, takes donated or discarded hardcovers and converts them into hidden, three-dimensional landscapes.

 

   “My altered accidentally,” Ouzman says, in an email interview. “I came across a cardboard box full of hardback novels one day, sat outside in the rain. As a lover of books, I brought them home to dry out, and repaired some of the bindings, determined to use them in some way.” Instead of reading them—she wasn’t a fan of the genre—she began to draw on the first page of one of them. “I don’t quite remember what brought me to start carving into the pages, but a few months later I had my first finished altered book. That was back in 2012. Ever since then I have been developing them into what they are now, trying to find the best way to build them.”

 

To read the rest of the story....CLICK HERE

The Whole Process of Doing a Carving Project

       Carving Clyde

By Bill Russo

Things aren’t always what they seem to be. I thought Clyde , a roughout from G.B. Sears woodcarvers and Suppliers whose name was supposed to be Muley would be easier than some I had already done. It isn’t. I renamed him Clyde because I prefer Clyde.

There is a lot of extra wood in this project and a carving knife is slow going. It can be done, of course and maybe if I was on a deserted Island with nothing else to do and  had no other options I think I could get it done.

What Happened to the First Chair Grown From Living Trees?

By Sarah Laskow

SOMETIMES, IF YOU’RE LUCKY, YOU stumble across corner of the world that immediately captures your imagination. Last summer, when I got into the world of tree shaping—the practice of coaxing trees into sculptures and structures, useful and otherwise—I wanted to know everything I could about it. Eventually, I visited and wrote about a small company in England, Full Grown, that is working to grow an entire forest of chairs, tables, and other furniture. But a small mystery remained, one that I couldn’t let go of: What happened to the original “Chair That Grew,” the first chair coaxed from growing trees?

The first person to mention this chair to me was Richard Reames, author of Arborsculpture, who practiced tree shaping for many years. In the first decade of the 20th century, he said, a man named John Krubsack started to grow a chair.

Carving Spoons

Some years ago, my wife broke a cheap wooden spoon in the kitchen. She turned to me and asked, “How hard would it be for you to make a wooden spoon?” I had a few hand tools, and we began to experiment on whatever wood scraps we had on hand. Eventually I found out that traditional wooden spoons are lap-carved from green wood, but I was already well on my way to developing a method that worked well in dry hard- woods. I have since made hundreds of spoons and spatulas in many sizes, from two-foot-long stirring spoons to two-inch tasting spoons. Spoon making is also fast. Once you master the techniques, you can go from stock selection to applying the finish in one hour....

Read the rest of the story and learn about spoon carving   clickhere

Meeting Dates 2018

​​LONG ISLAND WOOD CARVERS ASSOCIATION

​​​​​2018

​​Carving Mtg​​​​​Open Carving

February​​13 Tuesday​  ​​​21 Wednesday

March​​13 Tuesday​​​​21 Wednesday

April​​​10 Tuesday​​​​25 Wednesday

May​​​8 Tuesday​​​​16 Wednesday

June​​​5 Tuesday​​​​20 Tuesday

September​​ 11 Tuesday​​​​19 Wednesday

October​​9 Tuesday​​​​17 Tuesday

November​​ 14 Tuesday​​​           27 Wednesday

December​​11 Tuesday​​​​19 Wednesday

Marjorie Post Community Center

451 Merrick Road Massapequa N.Y.

One-handed Woodcarving

One-handed woodcarving - a few thoughts about tools and techniques that could help people with the use of one hand only

 

By Alistair Park, Bristol, England  Web link for more stories CLICK HERE 

Recently, someone contacted me with a very interesting question. This person had suffered a stroke a year ago and was now confined to a wheelchair, having also lost the use of their left hand. They were previously right-handed. 

The question was simple: did I think that a person with the use of only one hand could carve?

I sent a reply and, after some thought, realised that it may also be of interest to others who are temporarily or permanently in a similar situation. Although I currently have the use of both hands, I have experienced periods when injury has brought such considerations to mind.

The answer that I emailed back is reproduced in this post, with some alterations, extra images and information:

Can someone with the use of only one hand carve? My answer is a very definite yes!

I'd say that the question might be: what would you like to carve and which tools and techniques will enable you to do it?

Mysterious Tree Carvings of America’s Basque Sheepherders

Some Americans, to learn about their ancestors, can dig through documents detailing when they passed through Ellis Island or flew in or got married, or where they lived at the time of a census. But for some Basque families in the United States, the only record they have of their immigrant ancestors is carved into trees in secluded aspen groves throughout the West. Names, dates, hometowns, and other messages and art scar the pale bark of aspens where Basque men watched over herds of hundreds of sheep from the 1850s to the 1930s.

A Beginner’s Guide to Pyrography, aka Woodburning by Jeremy Anderberg (http://www.artofmanliness.com)

Pyrography — derived from the Greek pur (fire) and graphos (writing) — has been around since fire itself. While there isn’t hard evidence, it’s quite likely that cavemen etched the walls of their caves with fire sticks. While today it’s primarily done on wood with a heated pen, it’s been done (and continues to be done) on leather, clay, and even gourds.

Historically, it was used to decorate and brand various tools and musical instruments. Kitchenware or folk guitars were marked with a little bit of art both to convey the owner’s personality, and to distinguish their stuff from other people’s. It wasn’t really until the late Victorian era that the art form was taken up in earnest, and done on blank “canvasses” of wood and other materials rather than being a decorative embellishment.

In the early 20th century, soldering pens were developed, from which today’s woodburning tools were derived. This is a fun project for men, women, and even kids