Carving a Dragon from Oak

Projects, Woodcarving, Woodworking Crafts

Table of Contents

Sleeping dragon plan
Drawings and how to resize them
Things you will need
- Tools
- Materials
Carving the dragon in oak
- Preparations
- Roughing out
Carving the detail
Finishing
Further reading

If you want to make this dragon as a woodcarving, it works well in oak (Quercus robur), although you could use any suitable hardwood. You could also make it as a relief carving on an oak block in the same manner as the stone carving, but I have made it as a freestanding creature cut out from the oak board with a bandsaw or jigsaw. Woodcarving needs more tools than stone carving because of the grain, but you can achieve finer detail with the oak version.

Sleeping dragon plan

Drawings and how to resize them

To enlarge or reduce the size of drawings right click on the image to download it and then go HERE to watch a video on how to use paper with a grid to do exactly that.

Things you will need

Tools

No.3, 10mm gouge
No.3, 10 & 20mm fishtail gouge
No.4, 6mm fishtail gouge
No.5, 5 & 7mm
No.5, 13mm curved gouge
No.8, 8mm
No.8, 8mm curved gouge
No.9, 3 & 20mm
No.9, 16mm curved gouge
10mm skewed spoon gouges, L&R
2 & 6mm straight V-tool
3, 6.5 & 20mm flat chisel
10mm skew chisel
Padsaw and either a bandsaw or jigsaw

Materials

Oak (Quercus robur) 270 x 210 x 50mm
Antiquax original wax polish

Carving the dragon in oak

Preparations

1. Get a piece of oak (Quercus robur) 270 x 210 x 50mm. Make a full-sized copy of the drawing, trace the pattern on to the wood using carbon paper and mark your cutting lines in red. Also, get some transparency film and trace the pattern on to it (it will help preserve the pattern as you carve)

2. Cut the pattern out of the block. First use a drill and jigsaw to cut out the internal voids, but be aware that the jigsaw blade will flex a lot at this thickness. A bandsaw or a scrollsaw, if you have one, is best for cutting round the outside to avoid the flexing problem

Roughing out

4. Now rough out the rounded shape of the body and tail. The neck is slightly lower than the level of the forehead, and the body in front of the wings spreads out sideways as the dragon is laying on its stomach. Behind the wings it slopes gradually downwards towards the tail. The height of the body and tail is roughly the same as its width at each point. Leave a ridge down the middle for the dorsal scales later

5. Shape the bat-like wings by carving out the hollows between the spines. As the dragon is sleeping, reduce the level of the wings towards the edges so they lay resting on the body and legs. Use the transparency of the pattern to redraw the spines as you work down. The dragon’s right wing curls under at its outer edge

6. Rough out and hollow the shape of the ears, which lay in a relaxed posture against the body, sloping down towards the legs

7. To finish the roughing out, cut around the bulge of the eyes and shape the crest scale that runs from between the ears to the tip of the nose. Round over the sides of the nose, and mark the position of the mouth

Carving the detail

8. Carve the dragon’s eyes and the crest scale between them. The eyes have an overhanging brow, and upper and lower eyelids are separated by a sloping V-cut to show they are closed. You may need to put the carving in a bench vice to access some of the cuts. Detailing is not easy in end grain at this small scale, so define the eyes with bold gouge cuts to make them stand out

TOP TIP

Some carvers print out the pattern, paste it on to the wood, and carve through the paper. I trace the pattern on to the wood with carbon paper which allows me to see the grain and the pattern at the same time when carving at oblique angles.

9. Carve the mouth partly open with the tongue inside it, and carve the nostrils in the nose. Cut bold grooves from the nose down and around the mouth, and from the eyes down and under the cheeks, rather like gills. Again, you may need the bench vice to access some cuts

**10.** To carve the ears and neck, you need to turn the piece upside down on a soft surface and carve away the surplus wood under the ears and between the feet and neck. Round over the underside of the neck and upper body

**11.** Now carve the final shape of the ears with a hollow scooped out inside them. The tip of the dragon’s right ear rests on the right leg, and there is a gap between the ear and the body. The left ear and leg are now separated. Carve both feet into four toes and undercut the body below the ears on each side

**12.** Refine the shape of the body and tail so it is nicely rounded. It helps if you round off the underside first so you can get a better idea where the top of the body needs to be. Carve an inverted V all the way along the spine and divide it with crosscuts to form the dorsal scales

**13.** Carve the tail swirls, which are in the Gothic ‘stiff leaf’ style. The tail should emerge from under the body and appear to connect to the curl of the tail that disappears under the left wing and flows under the body

**14.** Carve the ‘spines’ of the wings by running a shallow gouge along the sides of each ridge, then define the edges with a fine V-tool. Now carve the cross-bars at the outer ends of each flute with a No.8, 8mm curved gouge and define their edges with the same V-tool. These cuts run across the grain, so keep the tools sharp and take several shallow cuts for each groove

**15.** Finally, turn the carving over on a soft, non-slip surface and undercut around the edges of the body, wings and tail. Cut back just enough so that everything you see when it is on display is dragon and not surplus wood

TOP TIP

Undercutting an oak carving is much harder than with limewood (Tilia spp.), so it helps if you place the carving upside down on a soft surface and fix a strip of wood across it, screwed into the bench at each end as in photos 10 and 15, to hold it still while you carefully shave away the unwanted wood.

Carving a Dragon from Oak

Sleeping dragon plan

Drawings and how to resize them