Carving - Jonny & Sarah (04/2008)
I made this carving as a wedding present for my friends Jonny and Sarah. I intertwined the letters of their names to symbolise their joining in marriage, and added a couple of personal touches, such as the axe on the top of the J for their love of heavy metal music, and the heart, not only as a symbol of love, but also for their love of playing cards.
I went to a local cabinetmaker and asked to have a look through his offcuts that he was willing to sell. He had recently made a beautiful oak table and I was able to pick up this offcut for loose change! I gave the stock a quick once over with my smoothing plane to flatten the surface, but didn’t spend too much time on this- I just wanted to take a peek at what the grain was like under the rough-sawn surface. The offcut of flat-sawn oak was defect free and has some very appealing cathedral grain (in the bottom centre by the plane).
I ripped around 15mm off each face of the stock, leaving a good solid base for stability. I could have used a router to thin the stock, but by using my saw I ended up with two pieces of oak that I could reuse. I printed off the design in several pieces and made a stencil out of A3 paper. I then stuck this to the workpiece and traced around it.
After tracing round the stencil, I used a router with a straight cut bit and freehand routed the waste material, being very careful not to take too much off… I then softened the edges of the carving with my chisels and shaped the heart, axe head etc. I used a bent wood gouge (can’t remember what size), and textured the background to make the lettering pop. I finally sanded and polished the lettering.
This was the first project that I documented. Looking back I’m really glad that I took pictures, but I wish I had taken more care over the ones I took. I also wish I had taken more of them.
Looking at the carving from different angles highlighted different characteristics in this truly beautiful piece of timber. From the front there is the carving itself, glistening in the light against the roughly textured background and the similarly polished base showing off the cathedral grain. The left side and top were left untouched; the black iron stains fading up rather conveniently to the red painted top end grain that the saw mill used to colour code that timber species. The back side was polished and showcased the lovely cathedral grain. finally, the right side was planed up to expose a tight, straight grain.
Every part of this project took me way longer than I expected it to- being old oak, the wood was so much harder than what I was used to! With the exception of using a router to remove the waste material around the lettering, this was all done by hand. I was so proud when I finished this present. After all that work I was kind of sad to let it go, but Jonny and Sarah were so pleased with it and that made it worth the effort. They still have it on display in their house today.
