Fossil Carving

Dinosaur carved in wood, detailed and artistic design.

Kevin Alviti unearths an archaeopteryx

‘Your boy likes dinosaurs, think you could carve a fossil?’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Like a fossil being unearthed from a rock, you know with that classic pose with their head craned backwards.’ It was a good idea, and not something I’d seen carved before. It got my brain working.

I always loved dinosaurs as a child, collecting models with cereal packet vouchers, although they hadn’t featured much in the past 30 years of my life (other than a rereading of Jurassic Park every few years). It was eight years ago, with the birth of our third child – a son this time – that dinosaurs came crashing back into our lives. I loved it, something about them just feels perfect for a child’s imagination and my own as well.

I was reading a study the other day that said children who like dinosaurs are more likely to have a better attention span, develop knowledge and persistence, with deeper linguistic skills and be better at processing information. I’m not sure if that’s true or not but we certainly have a young lad who embodies all those attributes, he even spent seven hours carving his mum a Christmas gift this year (showing his attention span), where he chatted constantly (linguistic skills), used different tools, including a pyro pen (developing knowledge) and has worn a bandana constantly every day since watching a programme on the Stone Age last March (persistence). He ticks all the boxes!

My friend’s suggestion of a carved fossil really tickled at my creativity and I thought it would be a perfect thing to hang on his wall, maybe inspiring him to carve one of his own and keep his interest in chipping away at wood. For the project I used a small piece of lime with some discolouration on it. This doesn’t affect the carving and, in a way, it adds some interest with the different colours. Lime is obviously an easy wood to carve and takes the fine details needed in this piece really well, something like sycamore would be perfect as well, anything tightly grained.

Carving wood with chisel and finger guidance.
Child woodworking with chisel and mallet in workshop.
Alistair carving his mum’s Christmas present
PlanDownload
Sanding wooden board with electric sander on workbench.
1. Prep the blank. I found a piece of lime that was discoloured and decided it wouldn’t matter for this piece, maybe adding something to it as it could look like the layers of rock
Drilling into wooden board for woodworking project
2. Create a jig to hold the blank down. I use an old piece of plywood with timbers screwed on like a fence. I then fix one of these fence pieces slightly further away, on an angle, and cut a wedge to suit this gap. This way I can quickly tighten the workpiece or loosen it with the wedge should I want to turn it around, enabling me to work from both sides easily
Using clamp to secure wood on workbench
3. This jig, for holding the carving, is clamped down to my workbench using a pair of F-clamps, making sure they are far enough out the way to not foul anywhere I want to carve later
Hand sketching on wood for carving design.
4. Draw out the fossil on the wood. I always use a 2H pencil and just sketched it from a picture of a fossil I found online. I altered a few bits that I thought wouldn’t work well as a carving. Wood is a very different medium and, although some lumps and bumps might have archaeological significance, they don’t translate to a carving very well. Keep it simple and you’ll thank yourself later
Hand carving design on wooden board with chisel.
5. Begin lining in the carving with the V-tool, leaning the tool over so most of it is in the waste side of the wood. Make multiple shallow passes and try not to go too deep in one go
Wood carving artwork in progress on table
6. Line in the whole project. Decide which ‘bones’ will connect to which and where you will have them disconnected. Plan now for the smallest chisel you own to be the gaps when needed
Hand carving intricate wood design with chisel tool.
7. Start lowering the background up to the raised area of the carving. Do this with the biggest gouge you can, I used a No.6, 13mm gouge – you can make quite big cuts using just your hands to push and control the chisel into the lime
Hand carving intricate wood pattern with chisel
8. Go back to the V-tool and make the carved area deeper, lining in again. With some areas this is especially important, around the skull, for instance, where it needs to have a curved shape and enough depth to pull this off
Close-up of wood carving with chisel
9. Use a selection of chisels to cut down vertically around the outline to make the edges crisp. Find chisels that match the curves and cut with a short tap of the mallet. Sometimes it’s necessary to slide the chisel along and use it almost like a knife as you follow the line
Close-up of hand-carving wooden block with tool.
10. I found myself reaching for my chip carving knife here as well – it was perfect to follow some of the curves. Try not to go too deep otherwise it will leave a line in the background that will be hard to remove and be distracting to the eye
Wood carving with chisel in progress.
11. Start levelling the background up to the edges of the carving. Use a flatter gouge (here using a No.3) to level it out and not leave so many gouge marks, taking off the high points between your lowering in Step 7
Close-up of hand carving wood with a chisel.
12. With some areas, to get the crisp edge I wanted I would work up to it with a number of shallow cuts with the knife, then remove the background with a gouge, then go back to the knife again, taking it slowly to give a good edge and working my way deeper a little at a time
Person carving intricate design into wood
13. Use a narrow deep gouge and dig down into the eye sockets of the skull and the gaps between the wing bones. Again, do this in layers so no wood splinters up when you try to remove it – always remember slow is steady and steady is fast when doing something like this. Far better to take your time than to have to spend time trying to fix something later
Hand carving intricate wood design with precision.
14. Shape the skull so it looks curved from above. As this is only a shallow carving you won’t get the full curve on it, but by rounding it over the illusion of it will work well. I used my No.3 gouge the other way up to shape it as much as I could
Carving wood with a rotary tool close-up.
15. Woodcarving purists look away – as a fossil has a worn feel to it, I wanted to emulate this with edges smoothed off. I found the best way was to use a rotary tool, with a small burr in it to help shape things a little more
Hand carving wood with chisel on plywood surface.
16. Start working on the details. The feet need to be really obvious as to what they are, with the separations of the bones quite visible. I spent a lot of time carving this out using knives and fine chisels to remove the wood a little at a time
Carving wood with chisel detail craftwork
17. Create a feeling of depth by having some bits on top of others, lowering the ones behind. I did this with a fairly flat chisel to lower bones down. Getting the levels right before shaping them again is important, otherwise you’re just creating work
Hand carving intricate wood design with chisel.
18. Work around all the obvious joints with a small, fairly flat gouge and try to differentiate between them, carving down to the background level and giving them some shape. Use the smallest chisels you have to make this look neat
Hand drawing on wood with pencil
19. I went back to the pencil here and drew in all the vertebrae on the spine to get them evenly spaced before carving them with a shallow gouge. Hold the gouge fairly vertical. The idea is to remove a small chip of wood, but it doesn’t want to be too wide or it won’t look right
Person carving intricate wood design with chisel.
20. The pictures of the fossil I used for inspiration had feathers embedded in the rock. To add these details, I lightly carved slightly sweeping lines using a very narrow, very steep gouge – a veiner
Hand carving intricate design into wood surface.
21. The same chisel is used to carve in the ribs up to the spine. These are put in much more deeply – use hand pressure rather than a mallet and try to make them as clean as you can. One smooth cut here is better
Wood carving with rotary tool in progress.
22. With the rotary tool again, I changed so it was a small sanding ball on the end and blurred all the background detail as much as possible so it looked a little undefined, weathered, just like a fossil
23. I also used some fine sandpaper to smooth out the rest of the ‘bones’ on the carving. For once having it crisp isn’t ideal, it wants to look older
Hand carving detailed design into wood surface
24. With the rotary tool and a very fine pointed burr, I went back over the carving and made sure I got every last wispy bit, going over any deeper details to make sure it was smooth
Hand carving wood with rotary tool
25. Then, with a small flap sanding wheel, I just buffed up any parts of the carving that weren’t completely smooth
Hand applying finish to wood carving
26. With all the bones smooth and no rough parts anywhere it’s time to add a finish. I went for pure tung oil on this one. I find it enhances the natural colour of the wood without changing it too much. I gave it a number of coats over a few days, making sure it was dry between each one
Wood carving of flying dinosaur on wooden board.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY KEV ALVITI

Further reading

Carving a Hare

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Social Media

Instagram Facebook Youtube
Subscribe to our Newsletter

Company Info

The Woodworkers Institute

We bring you the very best of woodworking -
Projects, techniques, tools, videos, magazines and more...
"Make it with us"