BIRD CARVING BASICS
"What kind of wood is that?" This is the most frequently asked question that I hear when I am at a show displaying my work. The wood is Tilia Americana - American linden or basswood as it is commonly known. This tree grows in the northeast quadrant of the US and up into Canada.
It is a fast growing tree and there are records showing that it has grown as high as one hundred forty feet high and four feet in diameter. It is considered a hardwood but falls on the softer side of the scale. The wood is a bit harder than pine but has an even texture and density all the way through. It is soft enough to carve fairly easily but just hard enough to hold fine detail without chipping away.
Basswood is not a wood that you can go to Home Depot or Lowe's and purchase any time that you want to start a carving project, although you might find it at a lumber yard that still does millwork.
I am very particular about the wood that I use for my carvings. Second growth trees (trees grown in a wooded setting) grow straight and true in order to reach the sun through the forest canopy. On these trees there aren't very many lateral branches, so you don't have many knots to contend with.
Once the trees are found, a sawmill is contacted to cut and haul them to be sawed.
Then for me, the work begins. I usually work with the sawyer so that the boards are sawed to my exact specifications. One of the most important rules is to stay at least one inch away from the heart or core of the tree. This area is unstable and will cause undue checking and splitting as the wood dries. All pieces are cut four and a quarter inches thick and at least six inches wide. Here is what I mean when I say
this is where the work begins. Since green basswood weighs forty two pounds per cubic foot, a board four inches thick, twelve inches wide and eight feet long weighs roughly one hundred twenty pounds. After sawing, the boards are loaded into the truck and brought home to be stacked for drying. Three quarter inch slats are used between each layer so that air can circulate throughout the pile. The ends are coated with roofing pitch so that they don't dry too fast and split. In about a year, the moisture content drops down to around fifteen percent. It is then taken indoors and stacked in an unheated room where the moisture level drops another five percent within a month or so. It is now ready to use.
Just about all of the tools that I use for carving are hand tools except for a six inch sanding disc on a slow speed motor that is used for smoothing the rough carving marks. When I started carving forty years ago,
no motorized tools were being used for carving. I've tried them but could never get used to them. No matter, one of the things that I enjoy the most about carving is taking a big hunk of basswood and attacking it with a nice sharp gouge - this is real carving. There is nothing else like running a razor sharp tool through a piece of air dried basswood. Nearly all of the tools that I use have come from Woodcraft Supply. They are on the net at www.woodcraft.com. Even though the tool cabinet on the left shows hundreds of tools, the favorites that I use the most are shown in the close up.
Some tools come sharp from the factory. If not, they are sharpened initially on a slow speed grinder with a one hundred twenty grit stone wheel very carefully so as to not overheat the tip of the tool and ruin the temper of the steel. The edge of the tool is then run over a hard felt buffing wheel (also on a slow speed grinder )with a stainless steel polishing compound on it. This wheel is pictured on the left. It is basically a motorized hone and brings up a razor sharp edge with ease.
Now that the wood is dry and the tools are sharp, you might think that it is time to start carving. Well, not quite yet. First of all, a pattern needs to be drawn. To do this you need enough reference material to give you all of the detail that you will need for the carving. Photographs from bird books and magazines are helpful but professional photographers don't publish photos of the undersides or backs of birds and these two are very important so that you can determine the individual feather patterns.
I
enjoy photography so any time that there is a chance to take pictures of an
unusual bird I will jump at it. By taking photos yourself, you can get a full
three hundred sixty degree view of your subject. This way, you are sure to have
all of the reference material that you need.
After the reference material is assembled and the drawing is completed, a pattern is made from the drawing. It is then traced onto a basswood plank, cut out on a band saw, then roughed with the above mentioned hand tools.
This is when I usually head for the woodpile to find a piece of driftwood to mount the bird on. After the driftwood is chosen, the size of the base is determined and it is turned on the lathe in either walnut or white oak.
The final positioning on the base is done and then the detail is carved into the bird. After the bird is
sanded smooth, the feather detail is put in with a wood burning tool. The front part of the bird along with the underside is burnt with small straight lines and the stiffer feathers, towards the back of the bird are burnt showing all the quills and barbs. This texturing provides an excellent surface to accept the paint. There are many brands of acrylic paints on the market so you can choose the kind that suits you best. Some have more pigment than others and some are more matte than glossy.
Gesso, tinted with a bit of raw umber is used for an undercoat and then the color is built up in thin coats until the desired hue is achieved. The last step is to build up the detail so the finished bird looks more realistic.
I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on any of the stages here in the basics. We'll save that for the How it is done section where we will show the entire process in detail from start to finish.