Carving lettering...

Re: Carving lettering...

Tony - Memphis

>There is a good book on letter carving by a real well known guy but its been a long week and darned if I can think of his name...I have two or three of his books....Carving on Turning, Turning Tools, etc. Argghhh! Taunton has a carving video that covers some letter carving (its the one with Mack Headley carving a shell too).

Tony

Re: Carving lettering...

joel

>lettercarving in wood by chris pye is the newest best book I have seen on the market

Re: Carving lettering...

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>The video is "Carving Techniques and Projects" w/ Bush and Headley (a very young Mack), letters and shell, very good.

Pam

Re: Carving lettering...

Tom in Tipp

>The Chris Pye book is a good one. Really nice work in a variety of styles.

Tom

Re: Carving lettering...

CBT

>I'll second or thrid the comment on Chris Pye's book. I am using it now. It is very helpful. Amazon has it for less than $15 or $18 can't recall the exact amount. It's a great buy.

CBT

Re: Carving lettering... *PICS*

William R. Duffield, on the Cohansey

>I've done a bit of incised letter carving. There are different styles, and different schools of thought. For incised letters, I find I don't need much more than V-groove tools (veiners) to do all of it. Although many texts show gouges, and even backbent gouges, sized to conform to the various radii of the letters you want to carve, I see no more reason for these than for changing quills or brushes in mid-stroke when you are writing with ink on paper.

I find 60� veiners most useful, but sometimes 30� and even 90� tools are handy. Most important is to select the size of the tool to match the depth of the letters you are carving. A tool that is too small means you need to make multiple passes to get clean surfaces. A tool that is too large is harder to control, but most important, the radius of the apex of the V is too large, resulting in blurred letter shapes. For clean-up, skew chisels, carving knives and scrapers are useful. The 30� veiner is most useful for carving serifs, like the sharp points on the bottom strokes of the "A".

Here is a "sampler," in the Apple Chancery font, of a couple of letters for a proposed nameboard, that I carved into a scrap of teak. All the tools shown in the picture are too small for the majority of the work on letters this large.

When I carve the nameboards that will be attached to the schooner, the A. J. Meerwald, NJ's official tall ship, they will be in a font that was more typical of the time and place the ship was built, more like the Copperplate font. I will use the same tools, just fewer curves.

The most important consideration is to use an angle that is smaller than the incised angle. After the initial defining cut, deepening and refining the curves of the walls must be done one wall at a time, in opposite directions, so that you don't cut against the grain. On the initial cut, or when you are increasing the depth of cut, there is not much chance of chipout, but when widening a stroke, paying very close attention to the direction of the grain is critical.

Here is a sample of the tools I use for lettering. I like the Pfeils (SwissMade >>--> ) best, but I make some modifications to the handles of the ones that get the most use. The Sorby tools shown have required significant modification to the bevels, and sometimes even more drastic reshaping, to effect a profile that enters and exits the stock intuitively. They also have to be rehoned more often.

This phot shows my latest acquistion, a larger 60� veiner that I purchased specifically to complete this project. For the price of a couple of these, you could be the proud owner of a L-V shoulder plane.

I also sometimes carve my name and place n the space-time continuum in original pieces I have designed and created. Here is an example in a timberframe truss. The only difference is the scale.

These examples are all in teak, Tectona grandis. I've also carved lettering, including monograms, in mahogany, walnut tuliptree, and linden, but I don't have any photographic examples right now.

Re: Carving lettering...

Don Thompson, Cutler Ridge, South of Miami FL

>Nora Hall has a Letter Carving Video.

Thanks, everyone!

Scott in Douglassville, PA

>Great information. Looks like I have a steep learning curve to start on. I've got some resources on order, now. Will post some pictures when I get going.

Thanks again for all the suggestions!

Scott

Re: Carving lettering...

Scott in Douglassville, PA

>Beautiful description, thank you. But I've got to ask, now - what are some good sources for picking up the chisels?

Re: Carving lettering...

Terry

>One other approach -- as opposed to using carving chisels, is to use a knife and chip carving-like slicing technique. You only need a single or at most a few knives to do a wide range of lettering sizes. Use a chip carving knife for smaller sizes, and a larger mill knife with a slightly different technique should you want to do larger signs.

For larger lettering, there was a Fine Woodworking article that describes the use of a re-ground mill knife -- it was "Carved Signs, Freehand lettering with a Murphy Knife" by Roger Schroeder, September 1981.

--Terry

Re: Carving lettering...

William R. Duffield, on the Cohansey

>There are mail order sources for Pfeils, that have been named on this forum. I got mine one at a time from various and sundry Woodcraft. I probably don't need to tell you that you have one of those within about twenty miles. My Robert Sorbys came from the recently defunct Woodworkers Warehouse.

Woodcraft...

Scott in Douglassville, PA

>You know, the wife and I spent Saturday (courtesy of a babysitter) shopping down toward that Woodcraft, but there's so much down there, that I couldn't figure out where it was. I was set to spend, too.

Looking at Yahoo right now, I see we were about 400 yards from it. I hate when that happens...