Introduction to Chip Carving – Part 1

In the first of two articles, Tatiana Baldina demonstrates how to lay out some basic patterns for a chip carving sample board.

If you have been carving or working with wood for a long time, then you no doubt remember that you started with the simple but important things, such as observing all safety precautions, learning about wood types, the texture and appearance of the wood fibres, what type of wood to use in your work, how to choose the necessary tools and how to work with them, how to carve simple patterns and so on.

If something seems difficult to you, then try to divide it into simple actions – and then, maybe, you will be able to solve a difficult task. If you look at a complex chip carving design and think that you will never be able to carve it, don’t worry! Try to break a complex pattern into the simple elements of chip carving – step by step – and then you will see that the ‘complex’ pattern is actually made up of many ‘simple’ ones.

And that’s what I would like to talk about in this article – chip carving and its simple or basic patterns – the type of carving I have decided to devote my life to studying. The article will consist of two parts. In this first part we’ll cover the process of drawing the simple patterns of chip carving and multi-level carving, which will be carved out in the second article.

Drawing tools and materials

• A basswood board (250mm long, 150mm wide, 15mm thick)
• 0.5mm mechanical pencil with H or HB lead
• Ruler
• Compass

What is a practice board?

Practice is something that you cannot do without in any craft if you want to succeed in it or simply do it at a good level. And different activities have different techniques for practice. For chip carving, there are at least three kinds of practice boards with different levels of difficulty, such as carving the patterns a) against the grain, b) along the grain and c) carving the patterns in different directions. When you take a basswood (Tilia americana) board and a carving knife for the first time, you need to practise your carving on the patterns that go against the grain – it’s the best way for beginners to start chip carving.

Any type of carving begins with the simplest patterns. Perfecting the technique of carving these simple elements is something that I believe is essential to beginning the study of chip carving. In terms of execution, chip carving is perhaps the simplest form of carving to generate a variety of surface decoration. The main patterns are two-sided, three-sided and four-sided grooves of various sizes and depths. My practice board has four sections with four different levels of difficulty. You can see these sections on the completely drawn practice board on the right. 

Preparation

Before you can start drawing the patterns, there is one necessary stage – preparing a basswood board. Many woodcarvers say that it is necessary to grind the surface of the wood before you start carving. I cannot agree with this, since the knife will become dull much easier and faster than if the surface of the wood is not polished before carving goes.

First section of the patterns

Before laying out the patterns, divide the board in half lengthwise and draw a clear line down the middle of the board. Next, stepping down from the top edge by 5mm, draw parallel lines perpendicular to the centreline to outline each pattern maintaining an even distance between each one. Vary the size of the patterns to gain more experience in layout and carving technique.

Straight-wall chip pattern

The first pattern to draw is the simplest one in chip carving; a small straight-wall chip. The width between the parallel lines is 5mm and the width of a chip is also 5mm. I prefer not to use additional marks or geometric figures to separate the inner space of the limiting lines. I use dots for plotting and laying down markers then connect them afterwards. Work either side of the centre line as it will help you to maintain an even pattern on the board. Start by placing a dot along the bottom limiting line (the base of a chip/triangle) 2.5mm (equal to a half a chip) either side of the centre line then at 5mm intervals in both directions along the entire base line.

Repeat the process on the top limiting line starting from the centre line with an offset of 5mm. Then connect all the dots. Now move on to the second pattern. The width between the parallel lines is 7mm and the width of a chip is 8mm. The offset for the first dots along the bottom line will be 4mm left and right of the centre line then 4mm thereafter. The dots along the top limiting line will be 4mm left and right of the centre line respectively. 

Triangle pattern

A simple triangle is the next pattern to draw. The parallel lines are 7mm apart and the width of a chip is 6mm. Draw the triangles using the previous technique but this time we’re going to add some additional lines that represent the stop cuts for this pattern of chips. Find the centre of each triangle along the bottom line and draw a perpendicular line down from the top of the triangle to meet that point. Then, stepping upwards 2mm from the base of the triangles, mark dots inside each triangle on the vertical lines to identify the deepest point of chip. Then connect the dots at the base of the triangle left and right of the perpendicular line.

Snake pattern

The next pattern is the ‘snake made of the straight-wall chips’, as it’s called in Russia. The width between the parallel lines for this pattern is 8mm and the width of the chip is 5mm. So, to draw the full pattern, draw a central line between the parallel lines. Then, as shown in the photo below, start marking the dots. For the top line: starting from the central line of the practice board, draw dots every 5mm. For the central line of the parallel lines: start from the centre but make the dots every 2.5mm. For the bottom line: mark a dot 2.5mm (equal to a half of a pattern) on the left side from the central line of the board and a dot 2.5mm on the right side, and then start drawing dots 5mm apart to create a straight-wall chip pattern. Then connect the two identical rows of dots as shown in the picture below.

Second section of the patterns

The pattern I chose from this section to draw and then to carve is a chain of triangles that are connected to each other by bases. As you can see, this pattern goes along the grain. 

Triangle chain pattern

The width between the parallel lines for this pattern is 7mm and the distance between the dots is 14mm (draw an additional central line between the parallel lines in advance for identifying stop cuts). Let’s get started with the central line on the practice board: start marking the dots every 14mm on the top and bottom lines, then, connect all the dots diagonally as shown in the photo to the right. Also connect all the tops of the rhombuses with each other. Next, you need to find the deepest point of the triangles: at the base of each triangle, take 2mm steps to the left and to the right of it and mark the dots, then connect them with the bases shown in the inset photo.

Third section of the patterns

Now we’ll move on to a more complex pattern. You might find this tricky to carve because there are chips that go along the grain, against the grain and have different directions on the wood at the same time.

Circle pattern

I chose a circle with 16 three-corner chips for this section. The patterns of this design connect with each other, so you need to control your knife more. The width between the parallel lines for the circle is 30mm, so the radius of the circle is also 30mm. Then find the central lines of the circle, and start to divide these four sections into 16 three-corner chips. Draw a circle inside of this one which is smaller by 2–2.5mm. Then find a centre on the base of each triangle of the smaller circle by eye and connect these dots with the bases. Finally, diagonally connect these dots to create the inner lines for stop cuts.

Fourth section of the patterns

The fourth section of a practice board is for multi-level carving. I decided to take one of the basic patterns which is used for creating multi-level carving. 

Multi-level carving

The width between the parallel lines for this pattern is 12mm and the width of the pattern is 10mm. To lay it out repeat all the steps for bigger straight-wall chip as described in the first part of this article.

Further reading