A simple jig for carving the border

When carving the bevel on the border it is easy to determine the 15* angle where the border meets the creek bottom due to the guide I used when routing out the creek. For the areas that do not go the full 1" depth of the creek and are not adjacent to the creek getting the correct angle can be difficult. To solve that problem I use the little block of wood in the above picture as a guide for my chisel in establishing the correct angle and the correct width of the border. It is remarkably accurate and simple to use.



credit card protection in the shop

I started saving those little fake credit cards that banks include in junk mail applications to use in the shop as glue spreaders. I have found a few other uses in the shop for the thin sheets of plastic and for this project I have been using them as a guard to protect the bottom of the creek as I carve the very bottom edge of the banks of the creek. In some of the other pictures on this blog you will see a patchwork of thin boards in the bottom of the creek. These were used to protect the creek bottom while roughing out the carving and even for carving the bank of the creek down to that point. Because the creek is the lowest part of the carving it seems to be a sort of catch all for tools which could also mar the flat surface.

The thin plastic cards work very well for protecting an area from accidental scaring with a gouge. They are thin enough to allow me to carve very close but hard enough to protect the area I don't want carved from and accidental mark from the very sharp corners of the gouge. The cards are thin enough to be easily cut to fit in any odd crevices or corners. I would have to say these little cards are the best junk mail I have ever received.

Robin



ergonomics

The picture above is of a good balanced stance for carving. Unfortunately it is not the stance I used for the first week of carving on my current project, and it has cost me a bit of an injury. In a proper stance the wrist is straight and the tool is in line with the forearm. In use the elbow is held close to the body and the feet are placed with the offhand foot in front but with the weight centered over both feet. The cut is initiated by slightly bending the knee of the leading foot and shifting the weight of the body. The fingers of the offhand guide the placement of the gouge and help steer it in the cut. The force or energy required to make the cut is not generated by the hands or arms but by the weight of the entire body.  This motion is easily repeated with little effort, and this way of carving sets up a rhythm that is very meditative and allows for extended periods of time at the bench.  It is not the only technique I use but it is the way I carve the cross grain texture and refine the shape of the rolling hills

I have an extremely small shop and I tend to use my table saw more as a work bench than as a table saw. This is usually not a problem even though it is a tad tall for a proper work bench height.  Add the 2" thickness of the wood I am carving and my table saw/work bench became a problem that lead to a repetitive stress injury.

This may at first look like the same picture but there are some very subtle, and very important differences. In the first picture I am standing on a 2 1/4" tall platform and the work is at the proper height for me to have an ergonomically correct stance, and in the above pic I am standing on the concrete floor which puts the work at too tall of a height. In both pictures I am holding the same gouge and it must be held at the same angle to the wood to make a cut. With the work too tall like in this picture it causes me to hold the handle with my wrist bent at an angle. Rather than transferring the force directly to my forearm like in the first picture, bending my wrist put all the force of the cut on my wrist. This would not have been a problem for a few cuts but after a significant time of carving with poor ergonomic form over several days my wrist became painfully sore.

I have plenty of patience while working but where I fall short is when I am not working. Once my wrist feels a bit better I can't help but pick up a gouge and try carving. I did finally take a week off from even going out to the shop to let my wrist heal and as I get back to carving I am trying to go slow so I don't over work whatever it was that I injured. It has been a good lesson in not forgetting some of the most basic techniques when working- good ergonomics. 

One of the things I like to repeat about safety is that with a router mistakes happen at 20,000 rpm,  a nod to how quickly things can go wrong when using power tools.  Mistakes like working with injury inducing ergonomics can be just as serious if less dramatic. 

Work safe

Robin

Carving an area from start to finish

I thought I would try something a little different for today’s post.  I have a nice series of pictures taken from roughly the same vantage point and showing how the carving develops.  In the picture above I have roughed out the area where one of the creek banks joins the border detail.  Up to this point I have only used my favorite gouge, my 1" wide #6 sweep Addis. All the carving up to this point was done without a mallet and by pushing the gouge from the top to the bottom. You might notice a small blowout in the middle, this was an indication that the grain had changed and I needed to change the direction I was pushing the gouge.

In this picture I have changed directions and I am now carving from the bottom to the top, the marks left by the gouge look the same. I continued to refine the overall shape of the bank. In order to shape the bank where it meets the creek I had to push the gouge from the right to the left, this produced a noticeable ridge

In order to get rid of the change in the direction of the carving marks where the bank joins the creek I switched to a #29 Barton spoon bent gouge.  A spoon bent gouge is pretty much exactly what the name implies, the end is shaped like a spoon with a razor sharp edge.  Spoon bent gouges are somewhat limited in the ways they can be used, they are not very useful for roughing out or for making long delicate cuts.  But where they excel is in removing stock in difficult to access places.

I next used a 1/2" wide front bent #5 sweep Buck bros. gouge to refine the area between where I had used the spoon bent gouge and the #6 Addis.  I would have used the #6 Addis but I needed the bend to be able to reach lower on the bank and still be able to carve in the same direction.  This also helped to blend the marks left by the different gouges so that the carving has a more cohesive uniform look.

I next focused my attention to the border detail and switched to a 1/2" wide #5 sweep Addis fish tail gouge. The difference between a standard gouge and a fish tail gouge is that on a standard gouge the width of the gouge is the same over the entire length of the blade and the width of the cutting edge stays the same as you sharpen it. With a fish tail gouge the width of the gouge tapers from the cutting edge to the handle and as you sharpen it the cutting edge slowly gets narrower.

The template I used with the router left a straight edge where the creek meets the border, It also allows for me to carve a 15* bevel in the inside edge of the border. I used a marking gauge to make a mark at the top and then used my 1/2" wide #5 sweep Addis to remove all but about 1/32" of the waste that will ultimately be the beveled border.

I then used a 1" wide E. A. Berg paring chisel to finish the surface of the bevel. I have written about being partial to Addis carving tools and I have to say I am equally partial to the paring chisels made by Erik Anton Berg of Eskilstuna Sweden. They hold an edge incredibly well even when sharpened to a rather low angle and are used in tough hard woods.

A little clean up where the flat of the bevel meets the carved bank and this area is finished.

Robin

A switch back

In this picture each arrow represents a chisel cut and the direction of each arrow is the direction the chisel was pushed to make the cut. If you look at all the arrows you will notice that near the center bottom of the carved area the arrows make a 270* change of direction. This is called a switch back or in an older vernacular it is referred to as rowey grain. Ideally all the arrows should be parallel to each other.

From looking at the grain on the edges of the board I have a very good idea of which direction to push the gouge to make the cleanest cut. Often I will need to adjust this a bit and in the above pic if you look closely the predominant direction of the arrows is slightly different than the direction of the grain. This slight variance from the true direction of the grain is not uncommon and it is also not uncommon for this to change slightly across the board and as you carve deeper into the board. It is not regarded as a problem and reading these slight changes is something that comes with experience and is learned relatively quickly. The radical change in direction seen in the picture is not something that you can learn to read, it is more akin to something you react to like a boulder falling into your path on a road. And just like with a boulder in the road if you are not paying attention you will also have an accident when carving rowey grain.

Everything I have written so far pertains to carving with the grain. When carving I actually want the drain to have a slight direction to the fibers from the bottom of the board to the top so that I can sheer them cleanly with the gouge from the beginning of the cut through to the finish of the cut. This slight direction of the fibers is essential to having control of the cut, to being able to control the depth and direction. In this style of carving it is possible to make chips so thin that you can read a newspaper through them if the gouge is sharp or up to 1/4" thick. Without this slight direction of the fibers I lose control and rather than being able to control the depth and direction the chip will split out at a random depth and direction, often opposite of what I want. This is what often happens when carving rowey grain wood.

An alternative style of carving is across the grain. When making cuts across the grain the fibers are shared but not quite as cleanly. There are a few tricks to improving the surface when carving across the grain such s holding the gouge at a slight angle to the direction that it is being pushed so the edge shears the fibers at an angle. The angle you hold the gouge at will be slightly in the direction the grain runs if you were carving with the grain. Another technique is to twist the gouge as it is making the cut; this accomplishes the same thing as skewing the cutting edge. Both of these techniques are best done when free hand carving without a mallet and are more physically demanding. The one advantage of carving across the grain is the blowouts due to rowey grain are fewer.

Some of the carving on this project will be done with the grain but the majority will be across the grain. I chose to do cross grain carving primarily for the visual texture created by the carving marks left by the gouge contrasting with the grain. This visual texture is very subtle but it is something I find myself drawn to in many of my projects.


Robin

transitions

I decided to start carving at this corner and the transition between the creek banks and the border. The transition line between the field and the border needs to be a sharp crisp line almost like the border is a separate applied board. In some ways it might have been easier to just glue a board on the edge after all the carving is done, but this would have had its own problems.

A board will expand and contract with seasonal changes in humidity. The rate of movement varies according to the grain and the species of wood, but the curious thing is that this movement will only happen in the width and thickness of the board and not along its length. I expect the width of the headboard to change by approximately 3/16" between summer and winter. If I glued a board on the edge to form the border the boards on the ends would not change in length and the joints in the corners where those boards joined the boards on the sides would open up and form a noticeable and unsightly gap.

When making a cabinet door a similar problem is solved by designing the large panel so it can float in the frame and the amount of distance it can float must equal or exceed the amount of expected movement. I could have designed the headboard with a similar frame and floating panel but it would require a gap around the perimeter which would show as a dark shadow line and I wanted something much more subtle. I felt a shadow line would have become too strong of a focal point and drawn too much attention from the field.

I wasn't sure what I was going to say about this picture, in some ways it is just a picture of the process of making. In another way it is a documentation of the work yet to be done.

Robin

The carving begins

I own a nice selection of really good vintage carving tools that fill up two drawers in my large Gerstner tool chests. I don't know why I bother buying additional gouges because I always seem to end up using the same one for 99% of the carving that I do. My favorite carving tool is J B Addis 1" #6 sweep gouge. The 1" refers to the width and it is a standard way of denoting chisels and gouges. The # 6 sweep refers to the shape of the curve and that is less uniform. Addis tools are what are commonly referred to London pattern. And there is some evidence that James Bacon's (the J B of J B Addis) brother, Samuel James Addis, created the London Improved Pattern of carving tools. In the London pattern the # of sweep refers to the number of repetitions of the width of the tool that are required to make a complete circle. So this means that my favorite gouge is 1/6 of a circle. The confusing part of this way of denoting the sweep is that a 1/2" wide #6 sweep will have a completely different curve to it than my 1" wide #6. The way the sweep of gouges on most modern tools are denoted the same # sweep in different widths will have the same curve, just shorter segments of that curve. The problem with this very logical approach is that not all modern makers use the same standard curves in their numbering of the sweeps. With the London pattern a circle is always a circle and 1/6 of a circle is always 1/6 of a circle regardless of the radius of that circle.

It can be difficult to determine the date of manufacture for J B Addis tools but I do know that some of mine date back to the mid 1850's. All of the Addis tools I own are beautifully made and a pleasure to use, but being individually hand made there are a few that are just a little bit better than the others. The remarkable thing about the Addis tools is that in that period Sheffield is widely regarded as the steel making center of England and the edge tool makers there were widely regarded as making the best quality tools. At the time the trade unions and guilds were very strong and tool steel from Sheffield would never have been sold to a tool maker in London. Yet the Addis brothers made some of if not the finest carving tools ever made.

I might seem to go on a bit about my preference for the tools I use but part of what makes my tools so special to me is the handles. It took me several attempts before I found the shape and size of handle that worked best for me, but once I did it is a handle that is custom tailored to the size of my hand and where I pace my thumb and fingers. As much as I like the shape of my handles part of what makes them so successful is the chinese elm they are made from. Chinese elm is so hard and tough that it allows me to push the handles of my tools with the palm of my hand as well as strike them with a mallet. This may not seem like a big deal but most combinations of handle design and wood will end up with a mushroomed or deformed end when struck with a mallet and this will in turn cause a blister when trying to subsequently push the tool with your palm.

As important as my chisels and gouges are a synergistic relationship exists with the mallet they are used with. You can see my mallet in the picture and it is not terribly unique in its design. It is something I made out of chinese elm about 15 years ago, remarkable when you consider the tens of thousands of strikes it has made and still looks as if it has rarely been used.  It may seem like any mallet would do the job and to some extent I suppose that is true. Still it is important that the handle fit well and the weight be enough to drive the tool in the wood yet not so heavy that it is tiring to use. When carving with a mallet I make rapid strokes and the focus of my eye and all my attention is at the working edge of the gouge. I do not think about the angle I am holding the handle of the gouge at, and I am not looking at the handle when I strike it with the mallet. The mallet in essence becomes an extension of my hand and the striking action is one that becomes intuitive. It takes a bit of practice to be able to carve this way but it is practice well spent.

I prefer a strong low raking light when carving in addition to the overhead lights in my shop. The light is the pictures is easily adjusted to highlight the shadows created by each chip removed and makes it easier to see what I am doing.

Robin



almost carving

After hogging out the waste to define the dry creek pencil lines were drawn to indicate the ridge lines. A grinder with a coarse sanding disc was used to remove a bit of stock to indicate where the valleys are located, perhaps more importantly where the lowest part of the valleys are and which way they are sloped. As you can see the grinder is not capable of getting close the edges or corners with any degree of accuracy. I have smaller sanders that are more accurate but I am faster with a chisel and mallet so I only do a limited amount of roughing out with power tools.

Robin

Hogging out waste

Like most woodworkers I have more than one router. A good router can be a joy to use and the tasks they can perform in a few minutes can save hours. That all said I am not fond of routers. They are hideously noisy, and make a huge mess. When using a router mistakes happen at 20,000 rpm, which can ruin a pieces of wood in a blink of an eye. Even with my dislike of routers sometimes there is just no getting around the fact that it is the best tool for the job at hand, the picture above illustrates just such a task.

Once I had prepared the board and was ready to start working on the front the first thing I did was make a drawing in pencil directly on the wood. I don't use a grid or any other drawing aids but prefer to draw free hand. I want to reproduce the model as exactly as I can but sometimes things don't 'translate' exactly when enlarging. This was the case with the current project. On the scale model the perimeter border measured 3/4" but when I scaled this up it looked too small. What looked right was a perimeter border of a hair under 7/8". This doesn’t seem like a big deal but it is to me and it is one of the reasons why I prefer to free hand draw the enlarged design, so that it feels right rather than mathematically working out on a grid.

Once the drawing is on the board I covered it with a piece of tracing paper so I could transfer the drawing of the dry creek portion of the design to a piece of 3/4" particle board that is the same size as the headboard. I then cut out the dry creek out of the particle board and clamped it to the headboard. The edge of the cut out area serves as a guide for a bussing attached to the bottom of the router to guide the router in cutting out the dry creek in the head board.

Monterey cypress is not a particularly hard wood but it pulls a lot of silica from the soil it grows in and encapsulates it in the wood. The encapsulated silica in monterey cypress is murder on edged tools and router bits are no exception. I could only remove 1/4" of material during each pass and after 3 passes I had to stop and remove the bit for sharpening. The final pass left a nice clean cut so I didn't need to make a clean up cut of 1/32". I will still need to use a scrapper and/or sandpaper to clean up the bottom. But now I have a flat bottomed dry creek and I can start carving the banks.

Like most woodworkers I have more than one router. A good router can be a joy to use and the tasks they can perform in a few minutes can save hours. That all said I am not fond of routers. They are hideously noisy, and make a huge mess. When using a router mistakes happen at 20,000 rpm, which can ruin a pieces of wood in a blink of an eye. Even with my dislike of routers sometimes there is just no getting around the fact that it is the best tool for the job at hand, the picture above illustrates just such a task.

Once had prepared my board and was ready to start working on the front the first thing I did was make a drawing in pencil directly on the wood. I don't use a grid or any other drawing aids but prefer to draw fee hand. I want to reproduce the model as exactly as I can but sometimes things don't 'translate' exactly when enlarging. This was the case with the current project. On the scale model the perimeter border measured 3/4" but when I scaled this up it looked too small. What looked right was a perimeter border of a hair under 7/8". This doesn’t seem like a big deal but it is to me and it is one of the reasons why I prefer to free hand draw the enlarged design, so that it feels right rather than mathematically working out on a grid.

Once the drawing is on the board I cover it with a piece of tracing paper so I can transfer the drawing of the dry creek portion of the design to a piece of 3/4" particle board that is the same size as the headboard. I then cut out the dry creek out of the particle board and clamped it to the headboard. The edge of the cut out area serves as a guide for a bushing attached to the base of the router to guide it in cutting out the dry creek in the head board.

Monterey cypress is not a particularly hard wood but it pulls a lot of silica from the soil as it grows in and encapsulates it in the wood. The encapsulated silica in monterey cypress is murder on edged tools and router bits are no exception. I could only remove 1/4" of material during each pass and after 3 passes I had to stop and remove the bit for sharpening. The final pass left a nice clean cut but I will still need to use a scrapper and/or sandpaper to clean up the bottom. I now have a flat bottomed dry creek and can start carving the banks.

* Note: A larger sub base was added to the router to increase the stability while making the cut.  Regretabley the picture was taken before the larger sub base was added.

The design

This seemed like a good place to back up and talk about the design of this project. The picture is of a scale model used in lieu of a drawing when presenting the proposal to the client. I prefer making models to drawing for a variety of reasons. In this case the shadows highlight the carved texture and become an integral part of the design and this would have been a difficult thing to accurately depict in a drawing. More importantly the shadows change as the natural light in the room changes throughout the day and this gives the design a dynamic quality that would not be communicated in a drawing.

The inspiration for the carved design comes from the rolling hills around the client’s home. It is a topographical view of a dry creek bed and some rolling hills and swales. It is not an accurate depiction of any actual place but one made up of several places I have encountered while hiking in different parts of the state. There is also a landscape quality to the composition with the dry creek becoming the sky separating the rolling hills from the billowing clouds, the composition also has a very subtle figurative reference in the same way clouds become trees or galloping horses.

The actual time for me to make a model like the one pictured is about the same, or maybe even a bit less than the time it takes to make a set of working drawings. Because I make my models to scale they become my blue print when it comes time to build the actual project. I rarely make any additional drawings, but occasionally I will make a full size layout for any complicated joinery.

Robin

Choices

Wood working often involves choices and decisions that the end user is never aware of. When choosing boards for a project I always keep in mind how they will be used. In the case of the project at had the glued up boards will be carved and the panel will not be used as part of a traditional frame and panel assembly. Because I will be carving the panel I need the direction of the grain runout in both boards to be the same so I can carve the seam. In real terms what this means is that I cannot turn the boards end for end or flip them over in any orientation I like, but rather I have to pay attention to the way the grain is running in the edge of the board as well as the face that is visible.

My best option for the boards I had on hand left me with one board having a large crack on one face. The choice I had to make about that crack was whether to cut it out and have another glue seam in the face or to use that board with the crack oriented on the back. The crack was almost 1//32" wide at its widest but I had no way of knowing how deep it went. It was not visible from the front but there are parts of the front that will have 1" removed in the carving process.

I opted to use the board and to stabilize the cracks from the back with butterflies. Butterflies are a traditional way of stabilizing a crack, to keep it from growing in the future as the board expands and contracts with the changes in seasonal humidity. I usually make my butterflies the full thickness of the board to give them as much strength as possible but in this case I could only go 1" deep or I would risk carving into them from the front. Luck was on my side because when I routed out the recess for the butterflies the crack was only 3/4" deep at the deepest and much less for most of its length.

The butterflies are oriented so the crack is at the narrowest part of the butterfly so that if the board tries to open up along the crack the butterfly acts like two wedge shaped anchors to keep it where it is. For this to work the wood used to for the butterfly has to be strong and the grain should be oriented with the long grain running along the length of the butterfly. I could have used any hard wood for the butterflies or even the same wood as the panel. I chose walnut because it has interlocking grain which means it won’t split as I hammer it into place. I also happen to have a lifetime supply of walnut due to my access to a defunct orchard.

It has become very fashionable to intentionally use boards with large cracks in them when making custom furniture. It is a great way of using an other wise un-usable piece of wood as well as showing that a human hand made the object rather than a machine in a factory. In this instance this is the back of a headboard, it will be against a wall and never be seen.

Robin

A simple thing

It seems like it should be such a simple thing to glue two boards together. With regard to the two boards pictured the resulting panel is rather large and heavy (20"x56"x2" and about 60 lbs), so large and heavy that it exceeds the capacity to accurately cut to size with finish quality cuts with any of the equipment in my shop. The solution seems simple and obvious, cut the boards to size before they are glued together. The problem with this solution is that in the moments before wet glue becomes tacky it performs like a top quality lubricant. In case the problem is not obvious let me elaborate.

Glue has an "open time" this is the time after which it is applied to both surfaces that it is possible to position the two pieces being glued together, The working time if you will. Because the working time is limited the glue up process tends to be a well choreographed dance involving application and spreading of glue placement of clamps and pads to prevent the clamps from marring the work. It has steps just like any ballroom dance, apply, spread, position, clamp-position-clamp-position-clamp, curse. If you look again at the picture above you will see a small crock pot in the foreground that is my glue pot, uh oh, a fly in the ointment. The crock pot is necessary because I use hot hide glue, the same type of glue that was in use worldwide prior to the 1920's. Hide glue is also the glue of choice for many luthiers due to it being the only type of wood glue that is 100% reversible which facilitates making repairs.

I decided to use hot hide glue for the same reason that luthiers use it, so that in the future my work will be easier to repair. It’s not that I doubt my craftsmanship. It is that I make functional objects things that are meant to be used and that means they are prone to wear and tear and accidents. My work is not expensive when considering the time and effort required to make it, but it is still a substantial investment and I would expect furniture of that quality to be able to be repaired when necessary, hence my decision to use hot hide glue.

Hot hide glue has many advantages over the more commonly used yellow wood glue, increased "open time" is NOT one of them. On the contrary, while gluing up an assembly is usually a well choreographed dance, when using hot hide glue that dance is performed with the speed of a 50 yard dash.

Combine the necessary speed with the slipperiness of wet glue just before it sticks and the idea of gluing two boards together with their ends perfectly aligned becomes more problematic than it first seemed. My solution is to drill precisely located holes for a dowel near each end. The dowel is not so much for strength but to accurately position the two boards so that during the glue up process I don't have to think about aligning the boards other than positioning the tapered ends of the dowels in the corresponding holes.

Once everything is ready and all the clamps are preset and placed where they need to be I place my glue pot close so that the 140* glue will have less time to cool before it reaches the boards. I slather one surface with little regard to if I am making a mess. Quickly slather the second surface and then hit the first surface again with hot glue just to warm it up. From this point I have about 10 seconds to get the boards together and start clamping. With a glue surface of 2"x 56" this is about at the limits of what I can glue up without an assistant, and this is if the shop is warm.

Robin

Two boards

It doesn’t look like much but these two boards represent a great deal of effort and anguish. On the surface they look like a couple of nice clear boards that have been planed and dimensioned with some rather simple joinery cut into one edge. This is an accurate description of the boards and what most people, including other wood workers would see these boards as being.

If I ordered my wood from the kind of commercial lumber yard that most wood oriented business do it would be delivered to me in very consistent sizes and shapes with a narrow range of quality variance. Sometimes I think that this is the way I too should purchase the raw materials I work with. It would definitely be faster and easier and if you add the value of my time it would also be much cheaper.

Instead I made a decision over 15 years ago to use lumber from local urban salvage, or put another way I mill my wood from trees that grow in the urban landscape and have been removed for a variety of reasons. For some of my clients this is not important, but for some it is one of the reasons they decide to work with me. For me it just feels like the right thing to do.

There are times when working with salvaged lumber can limit the choices for a project and the project at hand is an example of that. I simply did not have enough high quality wood in the species selected to complete the project. Fortunately there is a sawyer near me that specializes in milling the same kind of wood that I mill and he also has a kiln to dry the wood. Things seemed to fall into place as I ordered twice the amount of wood I needed and Don milled a bit more than that and loaded it into his kiln in mid December if 2010. The wood was some of the nicest looking Macrocarpa that I have seen and I unloaded the kiln and brought the wood home in late February 2011. All that was left was to let the wood rest for a month or two so it could equalize in moisture content with the humidity of my shop. Things were looking good.

As I began selecting the wood there were 8 boards that were sequentially sawn from one log and the straight grain looked nice for carving so I decided to start with those. The first thing I always do is to cut a few inches off each end of every board to get rid of the splits that happen during drying. I cut 4" off and the cracks were nearly gone another 4" should do it but instead more cracks appeared. Another 4" and the cracks grew in size and number. The boards from that log all had internal checking and the lumber was unusable. All the time spent loading and unloading, stacking and stickering, and selecting was wasted. I have yet to talk to my sawyer but I anticipate he will replace the wood because that is the kind of guy he is and why I buy wood from him.

However, now instead of having more than twice the wood needed for the project I was looking at just enough with a bit left over.  Looking at the boards I had there were three promising looking boards that looked like they could be used for the large panel of a head board. I only hoped they were not riddled with internal checking like the other boards. I cut the end off one and it looked great so I began the tedious process of flattening the 11" wide boards and after flattening and planning to thickness I was able to trim off the defects and two of the boards looked to be best, the third had a large dark discoloration that I could not be sure would not show up as I started carving from the other side.

So while the above picture looks like two simple boards it represents a great deal more. It represents a bit of dashed hopes of the wood that was unusable as well as the excitement of the project as it begins to take shape. On second thought I don't think I would like working with generic lumber yard wood.

Off to the work bench,

Robin