Neander chest on chest build – carving

[Mike Allen1010]

I have been building a cherry chest-on-chest from Glen Huey's excellent book "Building Early American furniture" or something like that (sorry don't have the book handy).

All the chest components are built and when I priced the Chippendale drawer pulls my Scotch Irish thriftiness came to the fore ($400- yikes -kind of like a heart attack:)) and I decided to eliminate the hardware on the original that surrounds the central drawer locks (which I'm not including), and add some carving as embellishment in there place.

Here's some picture. It's not exactly traditional, but we are beach people and the carving matches other work done in house. I primarily enjoy cabinetmaking and only do a little carving out of necessity. This shell is one of my "go to" carvings that I can usually do in something less than geologic time. Here's the preliminary shaping of the silhouette and the top profile:

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And here's the finished surface carvings. I've only been carving short time and I completely mutilated my first attempts, however the second and third time around is actually much easier than it looks. Having the right carving tools key – and who doesn't want more tools!
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Next is a molding to cover up a big space I last when scaling down the original plans. It's a variation on the "egg and dart". I use a molding plane to create the molding for the carving (oh, so that's what the spring lines are for on the front of the plane – duh!). Here is the initial setting in steps. I started with carbon paper tracing a picture, but after a few iterations it was easier to just freehand the layout.
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more below

[Mike Allen1010]

Here's with the darts mostly done and the flutes set in.

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And here's the finished product with contouring of the flutes complete. This took me 2 full weekends – the shells in the molding are really small and were hard on the eyes, would be a lot easier if they were bigger.
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Here's sawing off the finished molding from the backing board

[Mike Allen1010]

and with the carvings applied:

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I've started the finishing which I hope to mostly complete this weekend. There is 3/16" cock beading 3around the drawers which I've dyed black (note self: make sure gloves don't have any holes when using black dye, hard to explain the black finger at work). I didn't have the right sized hollow plane so used a 3/16" beading router bit. One minor problem: it said "3/16" right on the bit so I didn't bother to measure (always a mistake – once again my Dad is right!), and after I created mikes beading and cut the rabbits on the drawers I realized the cock beading was 5/16" wide not 3/16" as printed on the router bit – I hate when that happens! Oh well, the beading will end up being a little thicker than I planned.

I'll post some pictures when I'm done. Thanks for looking.

All the best, Mike

[Mike Allen1010]

and with the carvings applied:

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I've started the finishing which I hope to mostly complete this weekend. There is 3/16" cock beading around the drawers which I've dyed black (note self: make sure gloves don't have any holes when using black dye, hard to explain the black finger at work).

I didn't have the right sized hollow plane so used a 3/16" beading router bit. One minor problem: it said "3/16" right on the bit so I didn't bother to measure (always a mistake – once again my Dad is right!), and after I created miles of beading and cutting the rabbits on the drawers, I realized the cock beading was 5/16" wide not 3/16" as printed on the router bit – I hate when that happens! Oh well, the beading will end up being a little thicker than I planned.

I'll post some pictures when I'm done. Thanks for looking.

All the best, Mike

[Brian Williamson]

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l249/shiut555/praise.gif (http://media.photobucket.com/user/shiut555/media/praise.gif.html)

Amazing.

[Robert Maloney]

That's going to be gorgeous when you're done. Nice work!

[Andrew Hughes]

Marvelous, Mike I was wondering how your were coming on that.Looks great.

[Mike Allen1010]

Thanks guys.

Finish is done this weekend - my least favorite part of every project. always takes longer than anticipated and potential for me to hose up in many ways!

. Dye to darken the cherry a little, BOLO which I think brings out the figure and lots of shellac. I used rottenstone and felt block to level next to last coat of shellac- worked well.

Shellac is my favorite surface finish - Still not sure if I get better results w/ brush or pad? Razor blade for scraping nibs out of moulding corners was aqood tip from the finishing forum.

I dyed the cockbeading for around the drawers black. Could either be decent or epic mistake. We'll see...

Cheers, Mike

[Michael Peet]

Mike, looks great. I am jealous of people who can carve. That is going to be an awesome piece when you're done. Thanks for sharing!

Mike

[Christopher Charles]

Carvings look great. Can't wait to see the finished piece. Thanks for sharing!

C

[Brett Robson]

Wow what an amazing piece! Even more amazing is you've built it sans electricity!

Looking forward to seeing it finished!

[Pat Barry]

Mike, First off - very very nice work. I really like it. The carvings are a great touch to this piece. I particularly love the grain selection for the drawer fronts and side panels and I like how you continued the grain from the lower unit to the upper unit on the sides as well. To me that shows a great deal of professionalism, thinking ahead and craftsmanship.

[Malcolm Schweizer]

Looks great, and the carvings are top notch. I am inspired to do a shell carving.

[Mike Allen1010]

[QUOTE=Michael Peet;2260179]Mike, looks great. I am jealous of people who can carve. That is going to be an awesome piece when you're done. Thanks for sharing!

Mike

hi Mike,

I would certainly not describe myself as a "carver"; much more of a technician with pretty much zero creativity/artistic ability.

FWIW, I just photocopied pictures of carvings I like and use carbon paper to trace the outline on the stock. After that, it was pretty much set in the outlines of the design and remove the waste. Having the right tools to fit the carving was my biggest hurdle, and the learning curve for the very few basic carvings I do was faster than I expected.

I avoided carving for a long time because it looked way too intimidating (and the work of real carvers certainly still is intimidating for me), but I enjoy the small flare it adds to my projects and I would encourage you to give it a try if you have some interest – it's probably easier than you think.

All the best, Mike

[Michael Peet]

I would certainly not describe myself as a "carver"; much more of a technician with pretty much zero creativity/artistic ability.

Funny, I think of myself very much the same way. I struggle with the artistic stuff, and consider my strengths more in the execution than conception.


I avoided carving for a long time because it looked way too intimidating (and the work of real carvers certainly still is intimidating for me), but I enjoy the small flare it adds to my projects and I would encourage you to give it a try if you have some interest – it's probably easier than you think.

Oh, but I have tried, a while back. I will have to give it another shot sometime. Your results are inspiring. :)

Take care,

Mike