Hand tool for roughing out?

**marsolen** · 19th February 2012, 09:48 AM

Hi there from England!

I'm new to the forums so forgive me if I'm posting this in the wrong place and, please also forgive me for what I'm sure is probably not the brightest of questions:

I'm new and getting started on some basic woodcarving. My problem at the moment is that I have the wood, I have the design and I have the carving tools. But I haven't a clue how to rough out the wood and we have no machine tools, only hand tools. The design I'm working on is really pretty simple - a cartoon-esque elephant - and it's pretty small too, but I need to be able to get rid of the excess wood between the front and the back legs and in a couple of other places too. There's just too much there to be able to chip away at it with a knife or gouge and the angle also makes that idea very tricky. From what I can see on the net, people are mainly recommending using a bandsaw, but I don't have one and at the moment, am not in a position to invest in any type of machinery. I do, however, have a hacksaw, a regular saw, a chisel, a hammer and a couple of small handcarving tools. Could anyone suggest how to blank out the edges and get down to something I could work with??

Thanks!

**Paulphot** · 19th February 2012, 09:58 AM

Hi Marsolen,

Welcome to the forum. For your problem, this is what I would do. Cut a series of kerfs through the area you want roughed out with your regular saw. Then use your chisel and hammer to knock out the waste. Give yourself a bit of a fudge factor with how deep you cut the kerfs but this should make it a bit easier for you.

Let us know how you go.

Paul

**marsolen** · 19th February 2012, 10:01 AM

Gosh, a reply so quickly! Thanks! Now I don't exactly know what a kerf is, but I'm going to go ahead and guess it means cutting a series of cuts down to near where I want to cut out so it can be knocked out easily? I had considered this already but had no idea if it'd work

p

Thanks so much!

**Chipman** · 19th February 2012, 10:05 AM

As for machines, a bandsaw is THE answer. If not, then you could.

1. Buy a fret saw or coping saw... quite inexpensive hand saws (worth doing anyway)
2. Make multiple side by side cuts with and ordinary saw and then knock the waste out with a chisel.

My problem is the other way around...I have the bandsaw but can't at this stage afford carving knives and chisels so I did my latest carving with an ordinary 13mm (1/2 inch) chisel.

Good luck

Chipman

**mic-d** · 19th February 2012, 10:08 AM

woodworkers might do that with a bandsaw, but you could equally well use a coping saw with a coarse blade.

Cheers
Michael

**Robson Valley** · 19th February 2012, 11:50 AM

Hi
Any kind of a hand saw will do. Make a bunch of parallel cuts, perhaps 1/2" apart, go slow at the bottoms, measure a lot. Leave some wood for carving tools. Those are the "kerf" cuts.
Big mallet, big carpenter's chisel and bash away at the fins that you've created. I use everything from a coping saw to a 26"(?) bow saw. I have a band saw, lots of times, I'd rather use a hand saw of some sort.
Any bandsaw big enough to rough out an elephant carving (less that life size, of course) is going to be expensive.

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