First post---First Relief carving too

[Steven Vaught]

Hello everyone---I've been lurking here for a while and just soaking up knowledge and I figured now that I put that knowledge to good use it was time for me to share.

I recently (this week) finished a medal chest for my Mom for her senior games medals out of maple and walnut and I wanted to do something fancy for the front, so I decided to try my hand at relief carving. I picked the winged foot of Mercury (she is a track and field athlete after all) and put her initials in a square of basswood about 4"x4"x1/4". I used the "beginners carvers set" of Ramelson carving tools from Woodcraft and a nail punch and the massive mallet you see in one of the pictures to create the background. I don't have a tool that will work for smoothing out the background (yet!) so I found this idea on one of the message boards I frequent.

Anyway, after some sanding with a chopped up emery board and some mini-files I had from my model shipbuilding days, I had my first carving complete! I then used a router to cut out a 1/8" slot in the soft maple (soft...right) front panel of the chest and used bench chisels to straighten the lines. The sequence of pictures is pretty self explanatory. I am completely hooked on carving and now can't wait to do some work on my daughter's princess-castle bookcase (to be built lol). I will have all the details and many many pictures of the medal chest on my blog later but I can't risk ruining the surprise for another week.

Thanks for looking (and inspiring me) guys!

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[Paul Saffold]

Steve, welcome to the creek. I'm sure your mom will treasure the chest. Be sure to post some pictures of the completed chest. If you have been here awhile you know we like pictures.
Paul

[Steven Vaught]

Paul, to my never ending shame I just realized I never took a "it's all done" picture...I will be visiting her in a few days so I'll get pictures of it (assuming it survives shipping) then in it's new home. However, I do have a few pictures during construction to give you an idea of what it looks like. It's about 18" long, 12" high (including the arched lid which is 2" high at the peak) and about 9" wide. Sides of the chest and lid are walnut, the front and back and lid is soft maple. I pocket screwed a plywood base and covered it in felt. Also installed rails on the inside of the chest for two little dovetailed aspen boxes (shop made a router to cut grooves for a thin plywood bottom in each) and lined those with felt. Then I lined the inside of the lid in felt. Everything got 6 coats of shellac. I sanded the second to last coat with 400 grit paper, then buffed the final layer with a brown paper bag. It was my first attempt at finishing and I love how the shellac turned out! Really made the walnut grain pop.

The lid was fun---I used a 2.5* angle on the sides of 6 strips of maple 2" wide. I hand planed the angles and glued it all up, the chopped out half the thickness of the walnut arch sides to support the lid and make it look nice. This was also my first project incorporating dovetails---talk about having to learn fast. That's me though, never practice practice practice, just dive head first into the shallow end to learn how to swim lol..
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[Terry Beadle]

Well done !

Mom's are worth it and more.

[Jim Underwood]

Love it! Nice work.

[Don Morris]

Let me be the first to give you the ultimate Creeker compliment. You Suck! That's really nice work. I'm jealous. But as has been said, Mom's are worth your best effort and you certainly gave your best which is beautiful to see. Glad you chose to share. Please share more.