Carving Cedar 107: First Cuts

Back to the Juniperus ashei cedar. I sketched a simple design that includes a slight concave grip and an angled ring around the top of the hilt that descends down into a long, straight shaft. For the base of the hilt, I intend to keep the original wood, but we'll just see how that goes.

I like how, in the design, the extended hilt looks like the end of a broom; however, the branch is 20 inches from bow to stern (??), which is really long, so the hilt as drawn is seven inches.

I don't spend much time worrying over the merits of the design. It feels right. You can see in the photo above that I've already penciled in the lines for the primary cuts for the hilt.

The first thing I do is to smooth down two large branch nodes that stuck out of side. I use the regular Dremel 407 1/2" Drum Sander to sand the nodes down, revealing the honey-colored wood underneath the sun-bleached and weather-hardened bark.

I move down to the hilt to start the shaping, beginning with the grip. I've drawn a line around the middle of this section where the grip will be the thinnest, flaring outward to the top and the line I've drawn to mark the base of the grip. Holding the Dremel so that it's angled slightly toward me, I use the tip of the sanding bit carve a shallow groove around the branch, following the line. With that little bit of opening in the wood, I'm able to apply more of the sanding bit (instead of just the tip) to carve deeper into the groove, moving away from the center line toward the bottom.

I slowly rotate the branch in my other hand, peeling away the wood and moving the sanding bit slightly further down the grip with each turn, then returning to the mid-point and digging a bit deeper into the wood and moving down the grip again. I repeat this process until the middle of the grip is nearly as thin as I want it to get. Then I turned the branch around and sanded down the upper section of the grip in the same manner. Soon I have an hour-glass shape.

Next is to carve the ringed notch at the bottom of the grip. Similar to how I started the grip, I draw a line to indicate the middle of the ring and then use the angled sanding bit to carve from the center line to the outer line. This part happens really fast because I just spent an hour shaping the five inches of grip in the same manner. Instead of having to create a gentle tapering, I only have to carve an angled cut about as deep as the length of the sanding bit.

I ditch the sanding bit and attach a Dremel Sanding Disc to cut the notch at the center of the ring. The sanding disc I have mounted is starting to get a little frayed but it still cuts a straight line, about 1/16-inch wide.

With the proto-wand in my left hand and braced against my leg, I turn the Dremel on high and slowly begin cutting the line at the center of the ring. I use a high speed here because I want to quickly get a clean, deep cut as I rotate the wood, trying not to pause or to lift the cutting bit away from the wood. Whenever I pause or lift the bit, I have to start again from the exact place I left or I'll get differentiations in the cut. I also have to keep the line straight or the ring won't meet itself on the other side.

I widen the cut on the second time around to about 1/8 of an inch, and then I clean the notch by rotating the proto-wand several more times, making sure the edges of defined and the depth uniformly deep all the way around.

Before I take a break, I decide to get a start on the shaft. There are 13 inches of wood to sand down to 1/2 to 1/4 inch, straight. I concentrate on removing an initial layer for a couple inches, returning to the basic sanding bit and starting at the top of the hilt, working toward the tip of the shaft. After the first layer is removed, I repeat the process several more times.

I get about a third of the way up the shaft before it's time to stop to rest my back. When I return, I'll finish the first cut of the shaft and then complete the shaping of the hilt.