Do you consider grain when laying out a project?

[Tom Jones III]

For example, if you were to work on the carving in this picture would you purposefully layout the grain in one direction or another?

I had always thought that the carving has so many curves that there is no "best" direction to align it with the grain, that there will always be places where the grain makes something awkward. The problem is even worse given the subtleties of the grain changing direction throughout a large piece of wood. However, I am too new to carving to be certain, how do you handle this when starting a project?

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[Joe Butler]

Tom, I don't even put myself in a class with some of the people that submit.

With that said, with your carving if I would have been laying it out:

1. I would have had the grain running vertically.
2. I would have looked at the top of the carving block and place the growth rings facing the front of my carving.
3. Which would have been the top or bottom, looking at the right side of the block, I would have had the grain flowing from
right to the left. carving with the grain
. . .JoeB

[Jim Underwood]

Generally speaking, when doing woodworking of any kind, one will use the narrow dimension as the width, and the longer dimension as the length. This is not so much a grain direction problem as a wood movement problem. The wider the board, the more expansion and contraction going on.
Also a 49 inch wide board that is only 3 inches long will tend to have little strength...
When doing carving, you're correct, it's not always possible to line up the grain "correctly" for each element. You're going to have some cross grain cuts. So you lay out your material in the way it makes sense for the overall strength of the piece, and lay it out so that wood movement is kept to a minimum.

[Tom Jones III]

I guess the rule of thumb that I have been using is as follows (referring to the original picture):


The grain runs long-ways (up and down in the original picture)
I'm not sure how to phrase this part, the growth rings would form a frown shape facing the backer board.

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If possible, looking at the project from the side view, the long grain would run "downhill" from the flower at the top to the last leaf at the bottom although with the basswood that I have been using the grain is very flat looking at the side of the project.


Does that rule of thumb make sense?

[Mark Yundt]

I used to carve floral drops like this by the dozens at one time . The grain does orient vertically and I reversed how you put the growth rings. If there is any tendency to cup I want the edges to remain flat to the surface and not lift. Carving though usually counters this tendency . But on large panels as I'm doing now carving just on one side caused the panels to warp considerably which I countered with saw cuts across the back.