Carving question

Ted Clausen wrote:There are plenty of videos out there demonstrating the initial block carving of deadwood. Most of the artists caution that a further refinement of the deadwood will take place in coming months as the wood seasons. But I cant seem to locate any videos of this refinement work. Can anyone point me in the right direction? thanks.

Ted Clausen wrote:There are plenty of videos out there demonstrating the initial block carving of deadwood. Most of the artists caution that a further refinement of the deadwood will take place in coming months as the wood seasons. But I cant seem to locate any videos of this refinement work. Can anyone point me in the right direction? thanks.

will baddeley wrote:

Rob Kempinski wrote:An important carving tool is one rarely mentioned, time. If you lay the ground work with carving tools as mentioned above and then let the wood age, it looks best.
The BCI magazine, Bonsai and Stone Appreciation, ran a great article by Masimo Bandera about how he carved and aged a jin on one of his mountain collected trees. I've included a cell phone shot of a portion of the article intro. Amazing carving work. If you're not a BCI member, why not? Also there are a few back issues left of the magazine. It was issue 2011 number 3. (The same issue that featured a photo of Will Baddeley ). See the BCI web page for details.

Didn't know about this Rob. Was it a funny picture of me? They usually are!!

marcus watts wrote:

Ted Clausen wrote:There are plenty of videos out there demonstrating the initial block carving of deadwood. Most of the artists caution that a further refinement of the deadwood will take place in coming months as the wood seasons. But I cant seem to locate any videos of this refinement work. Can anyone point me in the right direction? thanks.

its much harder to find good sources of detail work - personally i think the utubers like to make videos with their power tools, carvers, grinders and chainsaws but then dont have the patience, or even the skill maybe? to do a good finished job with hand tools. There are good pictures of Tony around using sand blasting but this is a technique not freely available to everyone to try (unless you buy a sandblaster to practice with )

If you look up hand peeling wood fibres with jin pliers this will show the most realistic results as the work uses the true grain of the wood - quite often people using machines to carve go across the grain at times, then, when the wood dries and cracks it looks totally wrong, like a checker board.

cheers Marcus

Rob Kempinski wrote:An important carving tool is one rarely mentioned, time. If you lay the ground work with carving tools as mentioned above and then let the wood age, it looks best.
The BCI magazine, Bonsai and Stone Appreciation, ran a great article by Masimo Bandera about how he carved and aged a jin on one of his mountain collected trees. I've included a cell phone shot of a portion of the article intro. Amazing carving work. If you're not a BCI member, why not? Also there are a few back issues left of the magazine. It was issue 2011 number 3. (The same issue that featured a photo of Will Baddeley ). See the BCI web page for details.


Thanks for the input Rob. Much appreciated

will baddeley wrote:Even the Kaizen videos don't show much other than the initial block carving. I would imagine for a commercial enterprize, It is difficult to justify the hours and hours it takes to put in the final details and keep the tree affordable. Videos of block carving are dramatic and relatively instant too. The fine detailing can be boring to watch. Once the weather has warmed slightly, I will try to put together a short vid to show some of the methods I use in the detailing.Tearing techniques as Marcus mentions are all well and good but limited to more fibrous species. The majority of trees that I work on will not tear at all so a mixture of big power tools, small and more precise rotary cutters, blow torch, sanding flaps and scalpels are what I use to get the required result. The area around my thumb is more or less finished work but some detail needs adding in the top section of this Yew.

will baddeley wrote:can you give some more info on the BCI Rob? Maybe in another thread. Unfortunately the work on that Pine at the Best of British, proved too much too soon. :(

Ted Clausen wrote:There are plenty of videos out there demonstrating the initial block carving of deadwood. Most of the artists caution that a further refinement of the deadwood will take place in coming months as the wood seasons. But I cant seem to locate any videos of this refinement work. Can anyone point me in the right direction? thanks.

jrodriguez wrote:

Ted Clausen wrote:There are plenty of videos out there demonstrating the initial block carving of deadwood. Most of the artists caution that a further refinement of the deadwood will take place in coming months as the wood seasons. But I cant seem to locate any videos of this refinement work. Can anyone point me in the right direction? thanks.

Mr. Clausen,

Please visit www.sidiao.com . We have no videos, but our pictorials are quite detailed. It should give you a good perspective on shari/jin carving art.

Kind regards,

Jose Luis

will baddeley wrote:can you give some more info on the BCI Rob? Maybe in another thread. Unfortunately the work on that Pine at the Best of British, proved too much too soon.

will baddeley wrote:Thanks for the link to SiDiao Jose Luis. Some absolutely stunning deadwood creation. With Pine and Juniper, these fibre tearing techniques work extremely well but as I mentioned earlier, many trees will not tear like this. The Premna on the link is a good example of this and the carving looks unrefined in comparison. I will be visiting this link on a regular basis though.