Chip Carving
Techniques for Carving Beautiful Patterns by Hand
The Art Of Chip Carving is an easy to follow, step-by-step guide to one of the world’s most ancient and widely practised forms of woodcarving.
Anyone, from the completely inexperienced beginner to the veteran craftsperson, can learn to use simple, inexpensive tools and techniques to carve striking decorative designs in wood. Chip carving is an especially good introduction to working wood for the inexperienced because of its low cost-of-entry, and because it puts the most essential concepts of woodworking front and centre: safety, precision, and how understanding the nature of the wood itself leads to successful results.
This guide is loaded with the technical information you need to start chip carving — the few tools you need and how to sharpen them, how to select and prepare wood for carving, how to transfer carving patterns, how to carve safely and precisely, and how to read and understand wood grain. Clay also teaches the basics of good carving technique, provides step-by-step guidance through two practice boards to build your skills, and then walks you through ten beginner projects that allow you to put your skills to use.
The Art Of Chip Carving goes beyond any other how-to manual by introducing techniques and projects for learning freehand carving, and how to use the simple shape-vocabulary of chip carving to create your own carving designs in the style of traditional European folk carvings.
Daniel Clay is a woodworker, designer and artist living and working in Knoxville. Daniel's woodworking education began in 2005 with a boat building apprenticeship at The Carptenter's Boatshop, in Pemaquid, ME. His experiences building and restoring traditional wooden boats led him to explore other woodworking and design disciplines including timber-framing, furniture and cabinetry, and various styles of traditional woodcarving. In addition to his full-time woodwork and design practice in Knoxville, Daniel travels the U.S. teaching chip carving. His writing on the subject has been published in Fine Woodworking Magazine.
