Carving my Leg Vise Chop (I know...crazy!)

[Steven Vaught]

Here's the leg vise chop I'm carving to replace the original on my bench. It's a piece of 2x6 sandwiched between two 3/4" planks of poplar. I'm finding poplar to carve very much like a denser basswood. I like it! The lighter (heartwood?) is definitely harder, but takes a cut better. Plus that green color is just great when you burnish it on subsequent passes of the carving chisels. It's like wood laced with emeralds.

I'm carving my first banner and so far have the shape set where I want it, I just need to round over the edges and get the numbers in there for the year. I'm also starting in the three headed dragon symbol (gotta love me some Game of Thrones...). Most ambitious carving project I've ever done (only my second, lol) so we'll see how it turns out but I'm having a blast.

Really happy with the curves on the banner so far. I learned a lot from the recent article by Mary May in Popular Woodworking on carving linen folds in wood. Now I need to work on my lighting and photography :D

Thanks for looking and if you want you can see the blog I'm writing about the progess here (http://vaughtwoodworks.wordpress.com/2013/08/30/leg-vise-chop-starting-carving/).
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[mike holden]

Nicely done! You will enjoy looking at that many times in the future.
Mike

[Steven Vaught]

And here's the completed carving....

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[Steve Bistritz]

Really nice Steve, what did you use to make the design on the dragon?

[Ryan Mooney]

Nicely done.

I like the Dragon on the left best he has some nice character.

[Steven Vaught]

Thanks Steve! Well, I saw a tattoo on a webpage that had a very stylized version of a dragon with three simple lines interconnecting heads. That gave me the initial inspiration. I decided to model my dragons off more of a dinosaur shape (think T-Rex) and then made the necks into a Celtic weave pattern...sort of. As far as the actual design, I just freehand sketched it and transferred it to tracing paper before putting it on the wood.

[Steven Vaught]

Thanks! That was the first one I carved, and when I did, I chopped the teeth off the lower jaw by accident...had to go back and carve new teeth, which made the jaw thinner so I tried to compensate by scooping more out of his head to give it shape....