Carving on turned vessels/bowls

[Dan Mosley]

I have an old foredom that my son has been playing around with and he would like to carve on some of the projects I have made . In particular he wants to carve the wood spirit on some wood turnings I have. I do alot of wood turnings (vessels and bowls) so he would like to carve the wood spirit on them in different areas. He has seen a couple people that use electric carving tooling like the foredom,NSK,master carver etc... with burrs to accomplish this instead of the hand held gouges etc.
So, after some reading and watching U-Tube videos I have become a bit confused over what to buy and what DVD's are good ones to learn the technique from............

1). Anybody suggest some good videos on instruction for the wood spirit ?
2). Suggestions on what type of electric carver to buy and bits ??
3). Hands on for him would be great and we live in So. California (Desert
cities area)

Thanks in advance..........................Dan

 

[Ronald D. Black]

Try contacting Jim Scarsella. He is a member of AAW and one of his carved bowls was features on the home page. He is a fantastic carver on bowls.
Ron

 

[Mark Warden]

Check these out

I would recommend these to start.
http://www.mhcrafters.com/servlet/the-2404/Teach-Yourself-to-Carve/Detail
http://www.mhcrafters.com/servlet/the-2400/Relief-Carving-Wood-Spirits-cln-/Detail
If you have a foredom all you need is a good all around bur set. The same site has many sets the only limit is your wallet.

 

[Donna Banfield]

Dan, if I recall, wood spirits (faces) are most often carved in cotton wood bark. I've never carved either of these, but I'm guessing that bark carves easy when compared with the hard woods that we woodturners carve.

That said, there are plenty of powered tools that will remove wood. The higher rpm's you have, the less likely the burr or bit will want to follow the grain -- never an issue with cottonwood bark, but always a problem with our hardwoods. For this reason, Dremels and the like can be used, but can be frustrating if you're attempting to carve any details.

I started my power carving with the WeCheer, which had both reciprocating and rotary handpieces. The WeCheer is more expensive than the big box Dremel's but less expensive than the Foredom. The single downside to using these types of carvers is the mechanism that makes the burrs spin runs through the cable into the handpiece. This makes it rigid, and works best if you keep that cable as straight as possible.

I used my WeCheer for about 5 years, when it finally burned up because of heavy use. I replaced it with 3 separate specific use or heavy duty carvers: the Automach for reciprocating carvings; NSK Evolution for rotary carvings, which runs up to 40K rpm, and the NSK Presto air driven carver for fine detail and piercing. None of these machines are cheap; the Automach the least expense around $250-300. But for every piece that I turn on the lathe that gets carved, the ratio is about 1 to 10; for every 1 hour that is spent turning, roughly 10 hours is spent on the carving details.

While power removes a lot of wood quickly, I still enjoy the pleasure of using a hand-held non-powered carving gouge. It's simple, quiet and very satisfying.

 

[Dan Mosley]

Thanks for the replys ---- Donna thanks for the names of the tools you are using - For carving on turned vessels and bowls I would perfer for him to use the power carvers and not the hand tools. I suppose because I am thinking we would better off with the power carving machines because it would be more useful for carving and other uses. I also think carving would be with a lighter touch this way on thinner walled turnings than to do it with hand tools.
I have no probelm buying him the power carvers and burrs that are necessary but before I do I want to find a good instructional video on the wood spirit carving using power carvers. After that ill look into the correct burrs and tool to purchase.................but thanks to all for the help here