woodcarving
Mastering Tool Sharpening Techniques
Sharpening sharpening sharpening. I'm in the middle of working on a flat panel carving and in doing so I'm having to master not only using carving chisels but also sharpening them. I have now undertaken two carving workshops run by Silvio Apponyi. There are about 10 participants in each of these workshops all working on a variety of individual projects. I am attempting to recreate a 17th century Norwegian flat pane panel. This comes from a design that was created in a book called Norwegian carving by Odd Fauske. This is an interesting book based on a training manual by Odd Fauske and published by Ian Whittington and translated by his wife Elaine. The book contains the original Norwegian text and the English translation on the facing page. In order to do this I copied the design out of the book which was spread over several pages. I converted it to an svg file in a program called Inkscape. This program has a n auto trace function which allows a jpg or other image to be made into an svg file. The advantage is that the image is scalable without losing resolution. It is similar to Adobe's Illustrator but is an open source project and it seems to be regularly updated. The project has resulted in me buying some additional carving chisels both new and second hand. .At the workshops there is the opportunity to borrow tools from other carvers to see how they suit my needs. I only buy after attending thee workshops to see what I actually need. This brings me to the subject of this article which is sharpening. It's almost like some sort of dark art. No matter how much equipment you [...]
