Letters

[David Ragan]

Hi,

Am an occasional carver.

Making a desk tray in Cherry. Want to carve letters about 1/2" and then others about 2" high. Just a few-initials, and "in/out"

(Was going to inlay....Experiment did not go well)

I carved some larger letters for a sign a while back....a sign that would only be seen by a buncha drunks from a distance (true).

Any advise as to style/technique?

Thanks much.

[Ted Reischl]

No idea as to "style" since you did not say what the tray was for other than "desk tray". If it is a business type of thing, that would pretty much dictate a business like font. Simple, to the point.

Carving them is a lot like chip carving, in fact you can use chip carving knives to do it.

I have done them with a full size straight skew chisel. Takes a bit of practice so you get the idea where the tip is without seeing it though. Of course, that is the same challenge with chip carving.

If you are doing a lot of them, you might think about having someone vcarve them with a cnc machine. Fast, accurate and consistent.

One of Wayne Barton's book has a good section on doing lettering.

Oh yea, about the style, you could head over to dafont.com. They have thousands of style that are free to download.

[William Adams]

Wonderful book on this, Michael Harvey's Creative Lettering Today

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3648817-creative-lettering-today