Shop Sign progress part 1

As I was preparing to teach my upcoming carving class, I realized I didn’t have a sign.  So, I thought I’d warm up my carving muscles for my class and demo, and make a sign for Badger Woodworks at the same time.

I started with some the Alder I’ve posted about before which I’m running a little low on, and glued three sections together to make a larger panel.  I used Hide Glue and a bunch of clamps, and it worked like a charm.  The wood has some funky grain in a few spots, but otherwise seems carve-able.

Staring the Layout

Staring the Layout

For this layout I started with a border around the edge, and set circles in the corners. I played around with proportions until I got something where I could put two S scrolls along the bottom, and a single one up the sides.  Putting the roundel or circle in the corner made it easier to layout, and gives me lots of options for designs.   I tried to do some strapwork based on the circles on a previous design and nearly drove myself mad trying to make it work with the proportions so I skipped that this time.

Since I knew I was going to put my shop name in the middle, I sub-divided my remaining space and used the center line to create two half circles at the ends to bound the middle space. I’ve seen a bunch of corner/triangular space filling designs in other chests and I thought this might be a good place to experiment with those.

Carving the Scroll work

Carving the Scroll work

With the layout basically done, I started setting the scroll work, and relieving the background.  I knew I had the carving demo coming up so I deliberately didn’t finish the outside edge so I could use it for examples in my demo.  I experimented with a half button inside the loops, but I’m still not sure the design element works here.

Outline of the text and filling some space

Outline of the text and filling some space

For the text I went to my trusty word processor, picked a good font and started playing with layout.  Once I felt I had something good, I started printing out samples and laying them on the wood.  It took four tries to find the right spacing and layout.  Once I had that I taped it down with blue tape, and went over the outlines with a pen directly on the paper pressing down HARD to make a dent in the wood below.  This left a nice impression that I was able to follow later to make the letters.

I knew that “Woodworks would be much longer than “Badger” so I had to fill in some space as well.  I tried free handing the design but I’m not sure it works as well as I was hoping, something I will need to practice some more.

To outline the letters I set in outline with 3 different chisels, a small medium curve gouge, a slight larger gentle curved gouge, and a straight/flat chisel.  I was able to do almost every single curve with these two gouges.   I had to be very careful on the thinner legs of the letters and already chipped one out which I had to glue the wood back in.  Then it’s just a matter of relieving the outside, and texture punching the background.

More to come later as I finish the project.

One Comment

  1. […] See previous post here: Part 1 […]

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