Essential knowledge for learning to carve wooden gifts: the direction of cutting wood

Hello everyone, this lesson on carving wooden gifts will teach you how to use the best angle when cutting, mastering this technique will both make it easier for you when carving and improve the hardness of the wooden figurines you make. We will explain it with examples and moving pictures, so we are sure you will learn it.

Recognizing the cross-section and orientation of wood

There are six sides to a piece of wood, so let's start by finding the cross-section of the wood, the side with the annual rings. There are two cross sections in a piece of wood, and they correspond to the top and bottom.

Then we put the cross-section of the wood perpendicular to the table, you can imagine it as a tree growing on the table. Between the two cross-sections is the direction of growth of the wood, and parallel to the cross-section is the direction of the cross-section of the wood.

Carve in the same direction as the wood

Now that you know the direction of the wood, you can layout the wood. We always prepare a piece of wood and a drawing before carving. Layout is the process of placing the drawing on the wood.

No matter what kind of wooden gifts you carve, the height of the piece can be determined. For example, if you carve this animal, the distance from head to foot is its height. All we must do is to keep the direction of the height of the piece in line with the direction of growth of the wood.

Another example, if we carve a slender part, like the legs of this dog, make sure that the direction of the slender part is consistent with the direction of the wood grain. This is because the strength of the wood is greater in the direction of growth than in the direction of cross-section.

For example, if we take two sticks on top of the same piece of wood, and the direction of the length of the vertical one is in line with the wood fibers, then it will be stronger and more resistant to bending than the horizontal one. The horizontal stick, on the other hand, can be interpreted as a cylinder made up of several coins, like a lasagna, where the connection between each layer is much weaker and is more likely to be broken. Therefore, we must avoid this situation when typesetting.

Appropriate modification of the design to enhance the strength of the wooden figurine

If you come across wooden gifts that you can choose to modify this part of the shape, such as the trunk part of this elephant figurine, you can intentionally design it to be upwardly curved, so that the strength of the trunk's wood will be enhanced. If you want to carve a piece that can't be re-designed for the shape, then you should carve the trunk part separately from the main part, and then glue it together at the end, which will cover the traces of glue after the final coloring.

To summarize

By recognizing the cross-section of wood and the direction of growth of the wood grain, we can enhance the strength of the piece produced by making the shape of the wooden gift conform to the direction of the wood grain when we lay out the piece, making it more resistant to bending and long-lasting. This post is not an instruction on a specific piece of work, but it is very useful to master this technique, and we will continue to share useful wood carving tips in the future.