Carving wax again

Things in Korea are going well.  This year is much like my first year where I am busy enough with other things that I don't think much about creating new work.  That's why I've made only one post in this blog since I came back to Korea.  

I finally started doing some wax carving in July.  I started on a ring, it was nothing special, I just wanted to start on something.  This is my work area:

 

The hardest things about working at a kitchen table in a tiny apartment are that the table is too low, it's not sturdy, its not easy to attach a bench pin, I get wax all over my living area, and there isn't enough light even with the desk light.  So a lot of things suck about it.  That's why I don't try to do anything except wax carving.  

I wasn't too interested in the ring I had started carving so I decided to carve a doodle I did during free time at school.  I didn't want to destroy the original drawing transferring it to wax so I traced it.  My "tracing paper" is actually the paper for blotting oil from your face.  I don't know what they are called in English. 

 

I attached my tracing to the wax by melting little spots of wax with my wax pen.

Then I poked holes along the lines of the drawing using a scribe.  After I took the paper off I rubbed baby powder on the wax to make the holes more visible and cut out the shape and filed the edges smooth. 

Next I deepened the lines using a wax carving tool and started to remove some of the material in the areas that will be carved the most deeply.  

In the picture below was the last time I worked on the wax with the drawing out.  The next time I worked on it I didn't have my notebook with the drawing there.  If I really want to copy the drawing accurately I should always have the drawing out, but it's not that important to me that I copy the drawing accurately. 

This is where I'm at now, there's still a lot of work to do.  I'm not carving the eyes, I'll put them in at the end by adding small drops of wax.  The piece is coming along very slowly cause I don't work very often.  

Below are two similar pieces.  The first one I carved in wax and cast around 2003.  The second one was carved in aluminum in 2006. 

new tools and new wood

Recently I have been making some small wood carving knives. The blades are made of either drill rod or old burs.



In the photo below, the top knife I made over a year ago. The blade is really good, I think it's probably my favorite, but the handle is not that nice looking. I am going to make a new handle for it later. The one below it is snakewood, I made it recently. The ferrules on both of them are sterling. The handle at the bottom with no blade is ebony with ivory at both ends. I really like that one, I just haven't decided which blade to put in it yet.



I would like to make a handle completely out of ivory, but it's a little expensive for me right now, and I might get in trouble with customs if they find me trying to bring it into Korea.

I received some new wood today. Some I got to make lockpicks, and some I got to make more tool handles. I got more ebony, snakewood, and boxwood. I am not sure what I was thinking when I ordered the boxwood in that size. I could have ordered cheaper thinner pieces, since I'm going to end up cutting most of it away.

I also got some lignum vitae (two light brown pieces on the right), which I used once before in a hammer handle, and two woods I have never used before, pyinma and buckeye burl. The longest piece is the pyinma, I sanded and oiled the right half of it so I could get an idea how it will look when it's finished. The buckeye burl is the black and white piece below it.



I ordered it all from Griffin Exotic Wood. I have ordered from them several times now and have always been happy with them. I ordered from another company a couple times that wasn't very good. They didn't have their wood graded. They just had "ebony", they don't say anything about the quality, if it's black, or brownish or has brown streaks in it. I don't want ebony with brown in it. If I wanted brown I would buy some other kind of wood. Griffin has most of their wood priced and sold according to a grade they give it. Since I am just buying these little pieces I usually buy the best quality. There may be other companies better than them but I don't order wood very often so I just stick with one I like.

Below are all the picks I am working on right now. The types of wood are, from the top down:
ebony
holly
zircote
micarta + wood handle scales x2 (I can't remember what type at the moment)
ebony
cocobolo x2
boxwood
snakewood
boxwood



The two picks at the top I probably won't finish. They both require a lot of detailed carving, and I don't even like them that much, so I think there's better things I could spend my time on right now.

In the low quality photo below are a pair of picks I am keeping for myself. I just finished the ebony one last night. It was almost finished before I went to Korea last year, but I never epoxied it together for some reason. The white pick is holly, I need to find something to seal the wood so it doesn't get dirt worked into the grain of the wood from being handled.

I cannot remember if I mentioned it before, but some Chinese or Korean company is making plastic copies of this design.

dye and ebony

It's been a week since I got the new dyes, but I haven't done more than one test piece of each of them. I want to test a couple of them again, but I think most of them are pretty good. I'll post photos sometime.

My carved ebony piece is coming out ok. I took this photo last week, the front still looks about the same, most of the work I have been doing lately has been on the back. The edges are kind of chipped , but that's not hard to fix. The problem I have been having is smoothing the wood. I'm trying some different things, but I'm not really sure what the best way is.

current work

This is another brooch I started last year that was in the drawer with the other unfinished pieces I had forgotten about. I worked on it some more, and I think its ready to anodize. I am getting a little sick of the colors I have so I ordered some more the other day. I am going to wait till I get those and test them before I decide what color to anodize this piece.



Since I got some wood for the stands for my brooches and hammer handles I have wanted to work with it more. So when someone asked me if I could make them lock picks with wood handles I was happy to give it a try. This is the second one I made for that person. The handle is zircote.


I know I shouldn't be starting new pieces with all the unfinished ones I have laying around, but I have been really wanting to try carving wood. So a couple days ago I started carving a brooch in ebony. The design is similar to my aluminum work with a scale pattern on it. So far it is going ok. I haven't taken any photos. I have never really carved wood before so I was kind of worried how it would go and I thought it might be a total failure that I would rather just forget about. I think it will be ok, so I will take some pictures next time I work on it.

2007 scale brooch - finished

This carved brooch was one of the pieces I found in my drawer that was very close to being finished. I started it in 2007. It's the kind of piece I could work on forever trying to make it perfect and never get it exactly the way I want it. I decided to just finish it up and move on.

I thought it would be cool to polish several random scales. I was worried they wouldn't look much different from the matte finish scales after the piece was anodized, but decided to try it anyway. I wouldn't have cared if they were indistinguishable from the matte scales, but what I didn't want was for them to look only slightly different.


I anodized the piece and got exactly the result I didn't want. The polished scales look only slightly different, but different enough that they don't fit in. I thought it made the piece look like I did a poor job finishing it.

But that wasn't the only problem, I had lots of little spots in my anodizing. I also wanted the color to fade from dark at the bottom to light at the top, which didn't work out very well, and I didn't like the color I used (fast blue).


So I decided to reanodize it. It was a lot of extra work cause I had pits open up when I etched the color off. I don't know why. I had to burnish them closed. I also put a different finish on the piece. I used scotch brite in one direction. For the previous matte finish I had used pumice. The color is blue 4A, and I got the color fade looking better. I had no significant spots in the anodizing, I think because I neutralized the acid a little differently this time. I am working on some posts showing how to set up an anodizing tank and how to anodize, so I will write about that later.

The finished piece is ok. It's not as good as I wanted, I don't think it ever could be, but it's good enough and I just want the thing to be finished so I can move on to something else.

back of the brooch

I started carving the back of this brooch the other day. The flat spots at the top and bottom are where the pin back will go.


The copper vase is almost finished, I am just waiting on a patina ingredient to arrive.

earrings part 2

I still have a few things to finish for the show at Taboo Studio. These are the earrings in my July 11th post. I am mostly finished shaping them. It's difficult to inspect them when they are shiny so I sand blasted them to make it easier to see any unevenness. I need to finish working on the areas where the shapes come together. Those areas always take the most time. I will probably use knife edge graver to clean up the deepest areas where the shapes meet, but mostly I will be using files.

some earrings

I am currently working on several pairs of earrings for the show next month. The first photo shows one of them very early in the carving process. The finished piece will be the same sort of thing as the photo of the pendant below it, but I will put a texture on the earrings.

I start out with gravers cutting the deep areas. At that stage I am not too worried about making it smooth, I am just removing metal. I will work on smoothing things out a bit as I get ready to file. The files will finish smoothing things out and make the contours of the outside edges. I will go back to using gravers at the end to clean up the places I can't get to with files.




Here is another earring I am working on. This one will be sort of flat, like the blue earrings below it.

new brooch

After the lines were marked and deepened with a file I started carving metal with a graver. I use mostly flat gravers for this kind of work.


This is about as deep as I am going to carve, it didn't take long to get to this point, but there is a lot of polishing and refining left to do. Most of the time I spend on the piece will be doing that sort of thing. The piece is held with Jett Sett.


This is the back of the piece. I am going to engrave something on the back, but I have not decided on the pattern yet. I will probably carve the same pattern that is on the front, but not as deep.


Looks finished in this photo, but there is still more refining to do around the edges of the scales.

brooch

After the grinding I sand the whole piece with a small belt sander that attaches to my NSK E-max micromotor.


I use tape sort of like a ruler to help mark where the lines will be. I use a scribe and lightly trace along the edge of the tape, then remove the tape and put on a new piece to mark the next line.


All the lines have been marked. Without the layout fluid the lines would be much harder to see while I am working, and I doubt they would even show up in the photo.


I filed along the lines tomake them deeper. I could have used a graver, but I think I am better with a file than a graver.

more of the new brooch in progress

After I finished the outline of the piece I started grinding it to make it sort of domed. I use a rotary tool with 1/2" cylinder bur.



The blue stuff that is on the piece in almost every photo is layout fluid. It makes scribed lines show up better, and afer I have done a lot of grinding it makes it easier to see what I am doing.


I like to scribe lines around the piece and grind away one area at a time. The layout fluid makes it easier to see that I am staying the the area I designated to grind.



In this photo I am almost finished. The next step is to lightly grind the piece all over and make sure is has a smooth contour.

new brooch in progress

I started on a new brooch yesterday. Currently I have at least 5 brooches in progress, including this new one.

I started with 1/2" thick aluminum, and milled it down to about 3/8".


After I milled the metal to the right thickness I cut out the shape on the bandsaw and refined the shape with a belt grinder.
This is the pattern I will carve after I have the overall shape finished.


The piece will be sort of domed. Here I am about to start grinding it.
This is where I am at right now. I will post more pics as I work on it.

I worked on my new piece yesterday, and I decided what I would do with the little parts I made. Its almost done. I have been taking pics of it, but I am not ready to post any yet. I don't like showing my work at such early stages because it doesnt look like much. I'll post the pics when I can also show a finished or almost finished piece.

I also worked on this brooch for about an hour and a half:

This is an old picture of it, but it doesnt really look much different. I am just working on little things. Thats what takes so much time. Right now I am almost finished polishing each scale. After that is done I will refine the edges of the scales with a graver. And after that is done, hopefully I will be satisfied and I can anodize it, finish the pinback and be done.


This is how it looked when I was first making the shape.


I dont have any pictures of it between this step and the previous photo because I often forget to take pictures. I have a lot of photos of work in progress, but very few that show a piece from start to finish. I usually just have random stages of the piece when I would think to take a picture. But I am getting better with taking regular photos, because now I have a camera I can keep next to my bench .