Real materials 11:
"Sea and Sky"
by Seth
(March, 2007)

Here you can see the initial carving. I used a light "dremel" drill to rough out the piercework, and a simple locking-blade cutter knife to make precision cuts.

The wood is 1 inch thick, and roughly the size of office copier paper (A4 / 8.5"x11").

One needs surprisingly few tools to do a piece like this: a little sandpaper, a drill to make the piercings, a coping saw (or copious amounts of drilling) to finish the holes, a thin, locking segmented-blade cutter knife to do the majority of the lines and clean cuts, and a simple lightly curved or flat gouge to give the carving depth.

Here is each step in the creation of this piece:

• 1    Sketch on paper
• 2    Sketched on wood.
• 3>> Rough-drilled
• 4    Mostly carved
• 5    Partly painted
• 6    The completed piece