Friday, December 01, 2006

At last

It has been a long time since my Dad and I first thought about carving with pneumatic equipment and today was my first go with something that worked. I was thinking about drawing the chisel yesterday morning and also about how I made that, and in the afternoon I had a whack at reshaping the plain flat chisel on a flux chipper I bought last birthday time into a gouge. The reshaping went fine, but I didn't put much of an edge on the chisel yesterday, so it wasn't much fun to use. Today I decided to give it another chance and reduced the bevel angle and honed it pretty much like I would any other wood chisel. It proved mighty nifty and perhaps my next tool treat will be a few blank tools to work up into different chisel shapes. For now this little devil is the bee's knees for rough work at all sorts of angles. I am kneeling down at the bench here, but as long as I can get a reasonable grip on the body of the chisel I can carve away without needing to put very much force at all behind the chisel.
Compressed charcoal on cartridge 29x42cm