Four Wood Carving Techniques You should Know

Hi I'm Kimberly McMillan and I'm with woodworker’s journal. This week I'm at North house Folk School and I've been taking a class on Scandinavian shrink boxes. These boxes are made out of green wood that as they dry they shrink around the bottom that you've carefully fitted by carving it with a knife I'm going to demonstrate now how to do some safe knife carving techniques.

The first technique I'd like to show you involves taking your work piece in your non-dominant hand and bracing it against your leg firmly and holding it still then I'll take the hand with the knife in it with the blade pointing out and I will cut away from my body holding my work piece as still as possible in comparison to that you can brace your  hand that has the knife in it against your leg firmly and using the other shoulder you'll pull your work piece away from the knife keeping the knife very still.

The next technique I'd like to show you could be called the violin cut you take your work in your non-dominant hand and you can either hold it against your chest or you can use a breastplate so that you don't hurt yourself then I take the other three fingers that I'm not holding my work with and I wrap them around the hand that has the knife in it and as I'm cutting the wood I squeeze with my non-dominant hand while I'm pulling with my dominant hand.

In order to make the cut the last carving technique I'd like to show you is like peeling a potato I wrap my thumb around the back of my work and as I squeeze my grip I make nice little shavings this may seem as though it's dangerous because I'm cutting towards my thumb however you'll be surprised at how much muscle control you actually have that won't allow you to injure yourself as with all woodworking techniques knife carving requires practice in order to master it.

I hope today you learned some safe cutting techniques. If you want to buy some best wood carving tools, then click on that link.