Carved Panel

It looks great Mike!

Hey Shaz, nice to see you!

Mike,

Thanks for taking the time.

Very information.

While I do not carve, I absolutely learned something from your description of the grain problems from glue ups.

...bartee...

Yeah, a carving glue up is different from a furniture panel glue up. For furniture, you orient the boards so that the grain looks good in the panel. You might flip a board to get a bookmatch, or run one board one way and the next one the other way.

But when doing a glue up for carving the overriding issue is grain direction. Carving wood generally does not have a strong grain figure and, even if it did have some grain figure, the carving will "hide" the grain to a very large degree. What you really want is no "surprises" at the glue lines.

You also want to use a "soft" glue like PVA, over a hard glue like urea formaldehyde. If the joint is perfect, it probably doesn't matter. But if there're any pockets on the joint - maybe you bumped the wood putting it together - the glue will collect in that pocket and damage your carving tool when you hit it. Just safer to use PVA.

[That's also the reason I patch with PVA. If you have a chip out, or an element breaks off, when carving, you can easily glue it back in and make it invisible. Many people suggest using CA glue but I don't like it because it's too hard. I'd rather use PVA (I use white glue) and wait until it dries.]

Mike

very nice and very informative mike...thanks

chris