Carving Byzantine Acanthus Leaf 1

Holding a carving blank without clamps is a job for paper and spray glue. A board goes at the bottom, a sheet of paper in the middle and the piece you will carve on top, and every face that meets another one gets sprayed. In Leaf 1 of my Byzantine acanthus course the paper holds the first layer of the panel down on its board. Someone at the bench asked if I had to clamp it. No clamps at all, just the paper.

Do you want the wood to sit still while you carve? And both of your hands free for the tool? Then let paper hold it.

Below you get the way I spray it, the finger test that tells you when to press, how big a carving it has held for me, and what it costs you later. After that comes the rest of Leaf 1, with its plastic pattern, two colors and a border that no tool may touch.

Leaf 1 in six short lines

• Glue goes on four faces, two at a time, with a wait before each pair meets.
• Turn the piece over first.
• When the glue no longer sticks to your finger, it is time to press.
• Paper held the huge lion head onlays I carved for a client.
• Blue marks the concave first layer, and orange marks the convex second one, the piece that goes on top.
• A border of about 3/4 inch (19 mm) stays clear of every tool, because the second layer gets glued there.

How do you lay the paper sandwich down?

Two surfaces at a time, with a wait in between.

First you take your surface, the board the piece will sit on, and spray it along with one side of the paper. Wait a minute. Don't stick it right away, because it has to be dry enough that it doesn't stick to your finger when you touch it. Then lay the paper down on the board.

Now take the piece you're going to carve and turn it over. Make sure you are working on the back side, so you don't glue it the wrong way. Spray the other side of the paper and the back of that piece, wait, and check again with your fingers.

Then place it, just like that, and it's going to hold.

When is the glue ready to press?

Your finger tells you. Touch the sprayed face, and if your finger isn't sticking, then it's time. If it's sticking, or it's too wet, it's not the time yet, so give it another minute and check again.

I check with my fingers on both rounds, paper onto board and piece onto paper.

For the Acanthus over Moldings course I explained the same wait as a couple of minutes or so, until the glue is just tacky and not liquid.

In the Grinling Gibbons class in Maine we used a backer board of MDF with a couple of pieces of paper per person, and I added two warnings. Don't over spray, because the piece gets harder to take out later. And lay the papers without any gaps between them and without any overlap, or the piece on top won't sit solid and comes loose.

Will paper hold a big, heavy carving?

Paper held my lions through the whole carving, and they were heavy.

They're about 48 inches (122 cm), 47 3/16 inches (1,199 mm) to be exact. While I was carving I used a piece of plywood and exactly the same thing, paper, with huge blocks of wood, and I was able to carve the whole thing.

My review of the Schaaf carving tools has that story too. Those were lion head onlays for one of my clients, on 48 inch boards, and they were held by a piece of paper with the sandwich method. I use it all the time, even on big projects.

It works small as well. Micro carving works on paper, and so do huge carvings like those lions. The sandwich is one of the best methods, so make sure you understand it, and just use it.

Can you use wood glue instead of spray?

Wood glue works too. For my olive wood lily box I glued a piece of poplar about an inch by an inch (25 by 25 mm) onto the back with paper between, and I used Titebond 2, the normal yellow glue you would use on other woodworking projects. With that glue I clamped it and waited about an hour or so.

I gave a word of caution there. Sometimes that joint is not as stable. Olive wood is a little different, somewhat oily inside, and the glue doesn't stick to it as nicely as it does to poplar. If the paper won't hold, glue the block right to the surface, and later you can take it to a band saw and clean the back side. I still went with the sandwich, because it's much easier to clean later on.

The spray in this Byzantine class needed no clamp at all.

What does the paper cost you?

A few dark spots, and some time if you have to turn the work over.

The chamomile and bow rosette held really well on paper, and I had no problem with the paper whatsoever. The only downside of the spray was all those dark spots, dust and rubbing hands and so on. It gets kind of dirty and it's not really appealing. I'm okay with that.

When I took the leaf out in Leaf 10 of this course and removed the paper, you could see how dark the board had become beside it. Then that same board became the background, and we gave it a texture.

Turning the work over is the other cost. With the Hashemi flowers I flip the piece upside down all the time, so I moved it onto my MDF board with 20 mm holes, four inches (10 cm) apart, where I can clamp it and quickly unclamp it. That way there is no separating the plywood, cleaning the paper and gluing it again each time I work the back side. The sandwich would work there too. I just don't think it's the only way to hold a piece like that.

How does the carving come off the paper?

Slowly, from more than one side, after you have checked everything.

Before the chamomile rosette came out of its paper I checked everything and found an undercut I had missed underneath a flower. It took me a couple of seconds, and that is easier while the piece is still attached. Some connections there were really fragile. Then I drove a tool in carefully with my mallet, from different points, and it started popping out. A few spots were still holding, so a second tool went in there. See, it's really strong.

At the end of Acanthus over Moldings the last step was the same, take it off the board and work the back.

Why draw the pattern on plastic first?

One drawing on plastic can be flipped and traced again and again.

I call it the cheap man technique. When I asked if the class knew what I meant, someone said no, so I explained. It's the smartest way to make the carving.

We would have two patterns. I drew right on the board, then took a plastic piece and the magic tool, which I call a marker, and traced it. The plastic then goes over your piece, with carbon paper under it.

And when you want the next movement, and the next one, and the next one, you flip it, flip it, flip it. You could do the cover of a whole church that way if you wish to.

We would work the way Grinling Gibbons did, I said, drawing on the board itself. They did it without the plastic. They had the pattern on plain wood, and they would cut around it, flip it and trace around it. Someone said I had made a template. Template, yes.

The plastic was drop cloth. Be careful with it, because it's kind of fragile and you don't want to tear it, and that is why I use a little thicker sheet.

What goes into the first drawing?

Three divisions come first, division number one, division number two and the main movement. After that you can add some movements on this side. It probably didn't make sense 100% yet, I said, but it would.

Look at the swirl. I don't want to overcomplicate it, but it's still a leaf, just a normal leaf. It just twists. This one goes that direction, then up, up, up, and backward, so it is going to be full 3D.

When the drawing was done I counted, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and the main one goes back, eight. Those are Fibonacci movements on the first layer.

Then I rechecked how it was going to look. It is Fibonacci, but I want to make sure it looks good.

Don't worry about being perfect. On the other hand, don't drift away by an inch (25 mm).

What do the blue and orange lines mean?

Blue is concave and orange is convex. The blue one is the first layer, and it is going to be deep, like an ocean. Orange is the second layer. I marked that on the board itself so you would understand it, and the black marker was only there to give you a picture on the screen. You don't have to use black, and I told the class to use a pencil.

The first layer is the really important one. Inside it we make a concave, like a bowl almost, but we still leave some surface to glue the second layer on.

Why must no tool touch the border?

The second piece gets glued there.

Along that orange line I asked for a step of approximately three-quarters of an inch (19 mm), closer to the corner. Five-eighths of an inch (16 mm) is fine too, but three-quarters is going to give you better gluing surface. See how it tapers there, and then keep about three-quarters, consistent, the rest of the way.

That part we keep. No hitting it with a gouge, or with any tool. Don't touch it, because that's your border, and inside it all the rest gets carved. I asked the class if they understood why. We need gluing surface right there for the second piece.

At the start of Leaf 2 I said it again, please don't touch that area where you're not supposed to touch.

How was the top layer held in Byzantine times?

With tacks, not glue. They used some kind of tacks and laid it right there, so you could pop it off really quickly. Like I said in class, in Byzantine work they were able to replace that upper piece if somebody knocked it or broke it.

Toothpicks, a few pegs or screws from the back side would also do. Not in Byzantine times, of course, since they didn't have screws, but later on the Orthodox churches used screws from the back. In my case I'm just going to glue it, because I'm not going to take it apart.

Can you hide something between the layers?

One of my students did. In one class, when we did an acanthus leaf like this, he carved a small fly or a bee or something like that and placed it inside, just to impress other people. It's nice when people ask how in the world you carved that inside.

If you want a bee in there, or your signature, make the decision now. The place for it is before the second piece goes on. Done that way, people won't even know how you did it, because it is going to look solid, like it was made from one piece.

What else happened at the bench?

We started with the background, and we were not going to touch it yet. Maybe it gets a texture, maybe some kind of movement, and that depends on the speed we work.

Two pieces of plastic got cut for the patterns. One sheet of carbon paper did for the whole class. We don't have 16 people, so I didn't want to waste it, and it lasts for years. I asked for a ballpoint pen. Not gel. I don't like gel.

The second layer gets sawn out on the scroll saw. It's one of the safest tools, but don't be dumb, because you can still damage yourself. I wanted to show the tension, and in the end we went on to transfer the pattern instead. Keep your cutoffs, I told them, because we might be able to use them.

Someone brought me a cup of coffee. I had coffee, but no cookies, and I made a joke of it.

Why explain the reason behind each step?

I want you to understand why we do what we do, not just follow along at fifteen miles an hour and then switch gear.

Leaf 2 starts with the biggest number 9 gouge you have. All ten lessons of the course come with Access to the school.

Shall we carve?