2nd and 3rd time carving a ball in cage :)

L

lotoblades

Joined
Oct 20, 2006
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Well I started a thread awhile back showing my first attempt, so I thought I should show my last couple efforts!

The one on the left, is my first one again. The second one was carved from a scrap piece of pressure treated pine, it was some hard carving! The other one is from a tulip poplar I had cut and split up for fireboards, I was just whittling and thought there might be room in the middle to carve out a ball in cage. The other two are just from an after noon when I was bored lol.

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I think I'm hooked on carving now, very relaxing past time from what I can tell!
 
What's that on the bottom a knife? They look good. They are a lot better than I could do
 
texasboy said:
What's that on the bottom a knife? They look good. They are a lot better than I could do
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Thanks for the compliments guys! And yea, the bottom on is a little dagger or something along those lines. Oh and texasboy, a ball in cage is a lot easier than I thought it would be at first, should give it a try, might show me up:D
 
Those look really good. I just started my first one a couple of days ago and I'm finding that shaping the ball is giving me problems, do you have any tips that might help?
 
bowlerdude320 said:
Those look really good. I just started my first one a couple of days ago and I'm finding that shaping the ball is giving me problems, do you have any tips that might help?
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Thanks again guys, I'd like to see them when you finish them!

Bowlerdude, I'm pretty new to this myself, but I can say it's a lot easier if you do as much work on the ball as you can while it's still attached to the rails, just starting at the corners, round every thing off as best you can before you separate it. And since your cutting at all angles to the grain, a very sharp knife helps a lot, I stropped my knife several times even though it never got below shaving sharp, that little extra makes a difference! Good luck and watch those fingers! ( I sliped once on the second one :o )
 
bowlerdude320 said:
Those look really good. I just started my first one a couple of days ago and I'm finding that shaping the ball is giving me problems, do you have any tips that might help?
Click to expand...

Shaping the ball takes a lot of time and patience. Once you cut the ball loose from the cage, you're done. One other tip, which I got from Tom Krein.. strop the knife on leather about every 10-15 minutes to prevent the knife from getting dull.

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This stuff is fun. It's pretty easy to do with some woods, but like the OP suggested, pressure treated lumber is a lot harder to work with, and then if you get into the real hardwoods like walnut, alder, oak, or something like those, the product can be very nice, but the work is much more difficult.

I usually do this stuff to relax, so I like to use sugarpine, poplar, cottonwood, and other very soft woods.
 
I've heard that basswood is the easiest on the knife blade, so thats what I use almost always. I have also uses some cedar, which is also easy to whittle.
 
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