Category: + Wood

Glue and Clamp

3/9/2020

Organic Wood Carving
Step 4:

Once I am satisfied with how the wood stacks up, no warpage in the boards where there is big air gaps (ie avoid warped wood). Then it's time to glue!
I lay out the pieces of wood in chronological order on the table as I need to work quickly during the glue up phase. This means I have all the tools I am going to use ready on my work bench. And I like to do a glue up on top of card board as it is a messy process.
I then pour a squiggle line of wood glue across the piece, use a scrap piece of wood or cardboard to spread an even layer of glue across the piece.
Once all the pieces have had glue added to them and they are re stacked up in chronological order I attach a lot of clamps to the piece. If there is a gap of the wood not touching that's a pretty good indicator you should put another clamp there.
What I do not have an image of is using a sponge and clean water to mop up the glue that pours off the side. You want to mop up excess glue off of the wooden piece, clamps, work bench etc...

Tools:

Wood Glue
Variety of Clamps
Scrap scraper
Cardboard
Water and Sponge

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Select and Cut Wood

3/1/2020

Organic Wood Carving
Step 3:

Outline scaled drawing on wood to know how to cut the wood and to see if you can cut more than one piece out of one board.

Now stack up the pieces of cut wood to see if the piece is big enough.

Using my scaled drawings, I select pieces of wood that are big enough. Note: I have chosen to layer multiple pieces of wood to create one larger piece. I literally use my scaled drawing to outline shapes I will cut out. As you can see from the black outlines I am able to cut out multiple pieces from one board. My two favorite tools for cutting out the wood are the ban saw and jig saw.
Finally, I stack up the pieces to see if I have cut out enough pieces.

Tools:

Ban Saw

Ban saw is great for cutting out curved forms rapidly.

Jig Saw

Because my ban saw is small I can not make all the curves and use my jig saw to get those final cuts.

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Scale + Proportion Phase

2/18/2020

Organic Wood Carving
Step 2:

Front View

Side View

Top View

I always play with the proportion and scale of the wooden piece on paper. I guess I could have taken another picture as my pencil lines were all over the place testing out different sizes.
The benefit of paper is that it is quick tool to experiment with the look of different sizes of the wooden piece and it's cheap. I also start to try to imagine how I want the wooden lines to glue up. I usually build up a wooden sculpture by gluing up a lot of smaller wooden pieces.

In addition, I try to draw out the different views I would have of the three-dimensional wood piece: front, side, and top perspectives. I will share more about why this is useful in the next lesson.

Tools:

•Scissors
•Paper
•Pencil
•Sharpie

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Sketch Book Phase

2/11/2020

Organic Wood Carving
Step 1:

I am releasing an entire series on how I make my Ceramics + Wood Combo pieces. All my wood pieces start here...in my sketchbook.
I draw a bunch of different ideas of wooden piece I could make. The drawings vary in scale, proportion, style. Eventually I trust my gut on what one feels right to me.
I picked the largest drawing I drew in sharpie to be my goal for my wooden piece I will make.

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Wood Carving Workshop

11/4/2019

Save the Date!

I will be teaching a wood carving workshop at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts October 18-24, 2020. If you are looking to combine your ceramics with wood this is a perfect workshop for you!

Stay tuned for more information! And follow my events page to see what other events you can come to.

Events

Ceramic Studio Update

7/12/2019

I have a home/studio!

After many months of looking...we finally have a home to call our own in Milwaukee, WI. It's going to take a few more months to water proof my new basement studio, and to install tile flooring.
So, I am making the best of it, and turning my creative energy over to wood working. Finally using these maple boards and black walnut slab that were wedding gifts. I'm looking forward to sharing before and after photos.