My first "Beads of Courage" box

[John K Jordan]

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=331657&d=1455501938

My first try at a Beads of Courage box/lidded bowl. I wanted to carve the words on the outside so I glued up northern basswood between cherry from our farm, all face turned. I used the method Harvey Meyer showed on his videos of partially turning all three blanks before gluing them - saved a lot of deep hollowing!

I laid out the letters on paper then transferred the to the wood with graphite paper. The chip-carved letters were difficult since the words extended into the end grain.

It's over 6" tall without the lid. The walls are thick enough near the bottom to make it bottom-heavy and hard to tip over.

The lip of the bowl is tapered significantly, as is the inside of the lid. This makes it very easy to replace the top since there is over 1/4" of play at the start, reduced to much less when seated. I think this also makes it look reasonably good as a bowl without the lid.

I attached the knob with epoxy and a wood screw, hidden by the surprise BOC ceramic logo bead under the lid.

Now to make some more! The Knoxville cub has committed to making 30. I never heard of this project before it was discussed in a club meeting a few months ago. What a great opportunity to use our abilities and resources!

http://www.woodturner.org/default.asp?page=2015Charitable

JKJ

[Scott Haddix]

Amazing work. It will be cherished by the recipient. I've been thinking about doing one of these for a while, and mine won't be to your level of craftsmanship, but that's ok. Hope your club exceeds the goal.

[Thomas Canfield]

That is a really striking BOC piece with the carved lettering and white center piece. You and the recipient should both be proud. I think that I see a BOC button set under the lid also. Great piece.

[Mark Greenbaum]

Great looking piece, and excellent calligraphy on the basswood. You are generous and talented, sir.

[Steve Schlumpf]

This is really nice! I like the natural colors, the overall form and your great looking carving! Definitely going to make some child very happy! Hope your club does well with the project! Would be nice if you could share a photo or two of your club's finished boxes - just to inspire some of those to get off the fence and get involved!

[John K Jordan]

share a photo or two of your club's finished boxes

Good idea. I'll take a camera to the meeting tomorrow night.

JKJ

[Doug Ladendorf]

That's gorgeous John! Beautiful form and contrast of wood. Your chip carving looks so good it's making me want to give it a try - like I need another vortex!

Doug

[Allan Wright]

Lovely shape and finish and the letter carving is exquisite. Nicely done. I'm sure it will brighten up a child's life who very much deserves it.

[John K Jordan]

Your chip carving looks so good it's making me want to give it a try

Thanks! But, shhh, keep this a secret: chip-carving is really very easy compared to a lot of woodturning and other kinds of carving! The most difficult thing I found AND the most important - sharpen the knife properly. I bought several knives from different sources and NONE of them were anything near useful as received. Not well sharpened. Not well shaped. I suspect many people try chip carving and give it up after the first try with a new knife. I know I did, years ago.

JKJ

[David Delo]

+1 to what everyone else said John but I think it's time to fess up and tell everyone you had the font work done on a CNC router!!!!! You have done a wonderful job and someone is going to be real happy to receive this piece.

[Steve Mellott]

Very nice! We are hoping to get 750 Beads of Courage boxes donated at the AAW symposium in Atlanta this summer.

[Eric Gourieux]

I like the overall shape. The chip carving is very well done (although I don't really know what that is). I like how you made the lip-over lid.

[John K Jordan]

The chip carving is very well done (although I don't really know what that is)

Ok, everything I know about chip carving in 20 words or less. Well, maybe a few more...

Chip carving is apparently a very old craft where one usually triangular chip is removed at a time to form a decorative pattern. Some interesting history: http://www.thewoodcarverscabin.com/library_historychipcarving.html

Chips can also be 2-sided or 4-sided or more, straight cuts or curved. The artwork can be rigidly geometric or free-flowing. Carving letters involves removing both straight and curved chips, usually long chips.

One attraction is the equipment needed is minimal! Nearly all carving can be done with a single knife and can be done almost anywhere. Well, maybe not on horseback.

The knife is held to give a constant angle into the wood and the tip is pressed down to the proper depth as the knife is drawn backwards, then drawn upwards so the knife exits the wood. The wood is turned and a second then third cut is made and a pyramidal chip pops out. If you do it right. Repeat a few hundred times and you are done!

Working on an ornament. Sure is hard to take a photo with both hands occupied!
331780

I am basically a rank beginner at this but I do find it pretty easy. The hardest thing is to make the cut deep enough. The next hardest thing is to not make the cut too deep! (I.e., it has to be just right for best results.) Like anything it gets easier with practice.

A chip-carving knife is available from several sources. The best design has the blade angled down from the line of the handle - this makes cutting and control easier and prevents severe hand fatigue and pain. One thing I found - I bought several different knives and NONE of them are useful out of the box. Every one had a cutting edge with a short bevel that was way too thick to use. It just pushed and pried and distorted the wood without making a clean cut, even when sharpened to a keen edge. Very frustrating. I suspect many people buy a knife and give up after trying to cut the first chip. I know I did - it was almost 10 years until I picked it up again and learned how to rework the knife. (It would have been nice if a knife came with at least a hint that this was needed.)

Almost all chip carving I've seen has been on flat surfaces, very little on turned things. My goal has been to turn cool things and carve chips into them.

I ran into an expert chip carver who gave me some tips. I've since sent him some woodturnings to carve. This guy, Bill Johnson, carves wonderful aquatic sculptures! Check out his web site if interested: http://www.carolinamountainreefs.com/index.html

I first practiced on flat things then started on turnings. I learned a lot quickly! The first thing I learned was carving on flat sure is a lot easier.

The very first turned thing I carved on was a goblet, then some ornaments. Round things are tricky to lay out so the pattern will come out even. I had to use MATH! I started with a rotary table from my milling machine but later got an indexing wheel for the lathe.

331777 331778

Then I practiced some letters and made a sign for my shop. I copied the font from the back of a book on chip carving, traced onto the wood with graphite paper.

331779

The goblet is cherry, walnut, and basswood, glued up with the grain running along the axis. I wanted the weight of the cherry to give a more substantial feel since basswood is extremely light weight. That is also the reason I used the cherry on the Beads of Courage box. Other fine-grained woods besides basswood can be chip carved but basswood is much easier than most! I have tried small chips on bradford pear and I think it's possible. Buckeye is supposed to be good.

Chip carving is best done in pure side grain. End grain is tricky. A close look at my BOC box/bowl will show some letters are not so cleanly cut since face turning leaves a lot of end grain on the side of the bowl. Ack.

Basswood, BTW, is easy to turn but can have some tearout if tools are not sharp. I was afraid that the transitions between the basswood and harder woods would give me trouble but they didn't, possibly because I use cabinet scrapers for smoothing instead of coarse sandpaper. I think I started with 400 grit or 600 on these things.

Just for fun, here are my practice boards. I did most of these during a vacation at the beach this fall. The first little picture shows the knives I use.

331781

There, an introduction to chip carving! Probably WAY more than you wanted to know. Once I get started...

JKJ

[Eric Gourieux]

Very well done. Even your practice boards are amazing. Thanks for the explanation and the inspiration.

[David Delo]

Thanks for posting this John. Just way over the top nice work.




Ok, everything I know about chip carving in 20 words or less. Well, maybe a few more...

Chip carving is apparently a very old craft where one usually triangular chip is removed at a time to form a decorative pattern. Some interesting history: http://www.thewoodcarverscabin.com/library_historychipcarving.html

Chips can also be 2-sided or 4-sided or more, straight cuts or curved. The artwork can be rigidly geometric or free-flowing. Carving letters involves removing both straight and curved chips, usually long chips.

One attraction is the equipment needed is minimal! Nearly all carving can be done with a single knife and can be done almost anywhere. Well, maybe not on horseback.

The knife is held to give a constant angle into the wood and the tip is pressed down to the proper depth as the knife is drawn backwards, then drawn upwards so the knife exits the wood. The wood is turned and a second then third cut is made and a pyramidal chip pops out. If you do it right. Repeat a few hundred times and you are done!

Working on an ornament. Sure is hard to take a photo with both hands occupied!
331780

I am basically a rank beginner at this but I do find it pretty easy. The hardest thing is to make the cut deep enough. The next hardest thing is to not make the cut too deep! (I.e., it has to be just right for best results.) Like anything it gets easier with practice.

A chip-carving knife is available from several sources. The best design has the blade angled down from the line of the handle - this makes cutting and control easier and prevents severe hand fatigue and pain. One thing I found - I bought several different knives and NONE of them are useful out of the box. Every one had a cutting edge with a short bevel that was way too thick to use. It just pushed and pried and distorted the wood without making a clean cut, even when sharpened to a keen edge. Very frustrating. I suspect many people buy a knife and give up after trying to cut the first chip. I know I did - it was almost 10 years until I picked it up again and learned how to rework the knife. (It would have been nice if a knife came with at least a hint that this was needed.)

Almost all chip carving I've seen has been on flat surfaces, very little on turned things. My goal has been to turn cool things and carve chips into them.

I ran into an expert chip carver who gave me some tips. I've since sent him some woodturnings to carve. This guy, Bill Johnson, carves wonderful aquatic sculptures! Check out his web site if interested: http://www.carolinamountainreefs.com/index.html

I first practiced on flat things then started on turnings. I learned a lot quickly! The first thing I learned was carving on flat sure is a lot easier.

The very first turned thing I carved on was a goblet, then some ornaments. Round things are tricky to lay out so the pattern will come out even. I had to use MATH! I started with a rotary table from my milling machine but later got an indexing wheel for the lathe.

331777 331778

Then I practiced some letters and made a sign for my shop. I copied the font from the back of a book on chip carving, traced onto the wood with graphite paper.

331779

The goblet is cherry, walnut, and basswood, glued up with the grain running along the axis. I wanted the weight of the cherry to give a more substantial feel since basswood is extremely light weight. That is also the reason I used the cherry on the Beads of Courage box. Other fine-grained woods besides basswood can be chip carved but basswood is much easier than most! I have tried small chips on bradford pear and I think it's possible. Buckeye is supposed to be good.

Chip carving is best done in pure side grain. End grain is tricky. A close look at my BOC box/bowl will show some letters are not so cleanly cut since face turning leaves a lot of end grain on the side of the bowl. Ack.

Basswood, BTW, is easy to turn but can have some tearout if tools are not sharp. I was afraid that the transitions between the basswood and harder woods would give me trouble but they didn't, possibly because I use cabinet scrapers for smoothing instead of coarse sandpaper. I think I started with 400 grit or 600 on these things.

Just for fun, here are my practice boards. I did most of these during a vacation at the beach this fall. The first little picture shows the knives I use.

331781

There, an introduction to chip carving! Probably WAY more than you wanted to know. Once I get started...

JKJ

[John K Jordan]

Hope your club does well with the project! Would be nice if you could share a photo or two of your club's finished boxes - just to inspire some of those to get off the fence and get involved!

Here are some of the boxes brought to the Knoxville club last night:

331939 331940

JKJ

[Joe Kieve]

Of all those pictured, I like yours best. The shape reminds me of Winnie the Pooh's honey pot. Very well done!

[John K Jordan]

Of all those pictured, I like yours best. The shape reminds me of Winnie the Pooh's honey pot. Very well done!

Thanks! Two others mentioned it looked like a honey pot. One guy at the club said he was getting ready to make an actual honey pot.

I did a small version of this shape earlier from elm as a prototype of sorts before I did the BOC turning. (maybe 3/5-4" across)

I'm thinking of making a sugar bowl from this one.

331950

JKJ

[Doug Ladendorf]

Congrats to the Knoxville club! Those are some beautiful boxes and will make a whole bunch of kids happy.

I do love the shape you got with the full belly. The finish is very nice too. What did you use?

Doug

[John K Jordan]

The finish is very nice too. What did you use?

Thanks! I used thinned shellac overall, needed before penciling in the letters for carving to make cleaning up the lines easier! After the carving and sanding I applied perhaps 4 coats of rattlecan satin lacquer, with a little steel wool between coats. I didn't get insanely obsessive about the finish as I usually do - we were told the function was more important than making a gallery piece. (they said some kids took their boxes home and painted them with their favorite colors!)

One thing I didn't mention about the carving - from what I've read chip carving is usually sanded only very lightly if at all, with extremely fine sand paper to avoid rounding crisp edges and wiping out fine detail. In this case I sanded vigorously and rounded over the edges of all the letters on purpose! I liked the softer look and I thought the crisp edges would not hold up as well to handling by kids.

I've just started on my second box but it might be pretty simple since I'm running out of time - the big goal for this one will be "get it done." :-)

JKJ

[Dinah Becker]

Very nice!!

[John K Jordan]

Thanks, it was fun to make. I'm almost done with my second one. For this one I found a large block of yellow poplar in my stash that has been air drying since 2007, large enough for a big end-grain lidded box without any glue up.

JKJ

[Glenn C Roberts]

John, Are you going to let us know the sharpening secret? I promise - I won't tell anyone!

[John K Jordan]

John, Are you going to let us know the sharpening secret? I promise - I won't tell anyone!

Well, my secret was that the carving was easier than I expected, but the knife shaping/sharpening must be an industry secret since the knives come unusable. I bought knives from three different sources, a Wayne Barton knife from Woodcraft years ago, a "Modified" knife from MyChipCarving.com, and a Hock chip carving knife. The Hock was the closest to usable and needed the least work.

This needs a diagram or two, but basically I had to reshape the both sides of each knife to create one nearly continuous taper from the spine (back) to the edge. As delivered, the knives were fairly thick, tapered down to a ground flat bevel. Unfortunately, the ground bevel was not at a sharp enough angle (too fat, angle too large) and caused a lot of resistance during a cut. The large angle also did not allow a clean cut and the thickness forced the wood away from the cut. It's hard for me to explain without a diagram.

Most of the sharpening instruction I read didn't help much and some was inconsistent. I did find a drawing of a blade cross-section and some advice in one book that helped.

What I did was reground the entire side of the blade, making each side almost flat from the sharp edge to the spine. This took quite a bit of work - I experimented with a coarse stone, a diamond stone, or in one case, on a slow-speed grinder. All methods worked ok. The grinder (a very slow-speed Tormek with a CBN wheel) was the quickest but required the most care. The result was a much thinner blade, a smaller angle if you could view the cross-section of the blade. Of course the small angle can not be perfectly flat all the way to the edge or the metal there would be so thin it would bend or break easily, so there was actually a larger-angled beveled section near the edge. That bevel is not flat but rounded gently from the sharp edge until it blended into the flat side of the blade. There is a big trade-off between the thinness of the blade and the strength. I went for thinness for the ease of the cut.

I polished both sides with finer stones until they were almost mirror finish. The combination of the thinner blade, the sharper angle of the taper, the curved bevel, and the polished sides make the knife glide through the wood MUCH easier. Less forces is needed with the hand which allows more control and less wrist strain. It is far easier for me to make a clean, straight cut which is the basis for a good chip. Since the blade is thinner you have to be careful not to exert any side pressure on the edge, say by trying to pry or lever a chip out of the wood. From my reading, this is a bad practice in any case.

I've prepared four different knives this way so far. I should probably carefully measure the angles and carefully map the cross-sections to compare them. What I have not yet done is to look at a professional chip carver's knife with my own eyes. I plan to do that as soon as I can manage a road trip to visit a carver I know.

JKJ

[Glenn C Roberts]

Thankx John - Think I got it. Except maybe the bevel. Is the bevel similar to hollow grinding, using a wheel say about 3" diameter, on both sides off the blade?

[Doug Ladendorf]

Shoot, I wish I thought of Hock for blades. This weekend I ordered a pair of the Moor chip carving knives from Lee Valley.

Thanks for the info above John. I have always shied away from carving as I don't think I'd be much good at it but this looks doable, at least at some level. I did find some informative videos online, including one that showed the blade cross section. Your results are a wonderful addition to your turning and have gotten me excited to try it out.

Doug

[John K Jordan]

I ordered a pair of the Moor chip carving knives from Lee Valley.

Hard to tell exactly from the Lee Valley picture, but if the blades are angled properly they should be just fine. This is the Wayne Barton knife:

332230

If the blade edge is straighter in line with the axis of the handle the knife is a lot harder to control and is a strain on the hand. With this angle, the knife is a lot easier to keep at the proper angle and easier to direct the downward force in the right direction with a more natural grip.

BTW, I've read where this blade design is attributed to Barton but I found a picture and description indicating it is a traditional Swiss chip carving knife design. The MyChipCarving knives are the same design. BTW, they sell a blade and do-it-yourself custom handle kit. The Hock knife has the same blade edge angle but different blade profile. With less metal it may be easier to shape but might not be as strong. The geometry at the point, the only place that matters, looks identical.

JKJ

[John K Jordan]

Thankx John - Think I got it. Except maybe the bevel. Is the bevel similar to hollow grinding, using a wheel say about 3" diameter, on both sides off the blade?

Opps, I missed your message.

The blade is so thin I imagine a hollow grind could make the metal too thin and weak at the edge. I shaped the sides of the blades so the are almost flat, nearly a long, thin wedge from the back spine down to the edge. A perfect wedge would make the edge too fragile so the last 1/4 or so is tapered to a bigger angle with the transition rounded and polished.

Maybe this might show the bevel a little:
332522

This picture shows a reflection of my thumb on the polished blade:
332523

On this one the blade looks flatter, but it does have a gentle curve in the lower 1/3 or so:
332524

I measured the angles of three of the knives over a fixed distance from the edge (the angle of the light exaggerates the tiny scratches - they normally look polished). I tried to show the bevel near the edge in the drawing but didn't do a very good job:
332528

The thing is, a thick, short ground bevel makes too much resistance in the wood. Rounded and polished to reduce friction is better. The thinner the better, but at the sacrifice of blade strength.

JKJ

[Peter Blair]

Lovely box and a wonderful carving. I have been watching these being made by so many turners over the past few years and just this week our Guild has begun the process to make them as well. I will for sure be on that wagon!