Carved Box

This is another carved candle box—this one claimed by the First Lady when she saw the koi carving.

This features Japanese-inspired carvings, all in shallow relief. The lid is a koi design borrowed from Chris Pye’s Woodcarving Course book. I chose this design because I wanted to practice low relief carving and relieving a flat background. (My previous carvings have all been flat strapwork with a textured background.) After doing the koi, I wanted related designs for the box sides, and settled on a branch of cherry blossoms and a view of Mount Fuji. Both of these designs are originals. The front end of the box (not shown) has a carving of the kanji for “Nature”.

These carvings were lined in with a skew chisel—probably not a recommended technique, but it worked well enough for me. My previous carvings were all patterned with gouges and chisels as described by Peter Follansbee in this posting so I wanted to try something with more traditional lining in, but frankly I’m not good enough with a V-tool yet. Then everything was relieved and shaped with gouges. In some areas (especially the cherry branch carving) I don’t have the proper detail gouges to work the tight areas and so they remain a bit rough.

The wood is American Walnut and all work was done with hand tools. There was no sanding, all surfaces are straight from the smoothing plane or carved. It was finished with several coats of Minwax Satin Wipe-On Poly. This was easy to apply to the carvings and worked well, although it is still a bit too shiny on the flat surfaces for my tastes.