Carving a Dish

Carving a Dish   To start get yourself a log of fresh wood and chop it down the centre with an axe. Choose which piece of wood you would rather use and carve the split surface smooth and flat. Also carve the bottom slightly flat so your dish doesn't roll onto it's side.     Make 2 cuts where you would like the handles to meet the bowl section as shown in the picture. Mind you don't cut too deep otherwise you wont have handles at all...   Chop off the wood to form the basis of the handles.   Now round off the ends of the bowl section with your knife, you can take some wood off to start with using a small hatchet but you'll need good control.Then draw your handle shapes on and begin to carve them to shape too. Keep on carving until you are happy with the shape of your dish This carving job may take a while so if you decide to stop and carry on the next day put your work in a plastic bag so that it doesn't dry out. If the wood dries it will be harder to carve. Now its time to carve the bowl out using a crook knife. Most of the carving work is done by carving across the grain. This is going to take a while and is quite hard on the hands if you're not used to it. If it feels like you may get blisters, wear a pair of leather gloves.Try to carve the dish so that the walls are an even thickness, gauge where you need to take more wood off  using your fingers like callipers. Also, It can be wise to leave the wood a little thicker near to the handles, if thick wood suddenly meets thin wood it is likely to crack at this point when the wood dries. When you have finished all the carving work, place the dish inside an open bag (paper bag is best) for 1 or 2 weeks, this will to slow down the rate of drying which should prevent the wood from splitting. I like to put the bag on its side so that any evaporation does not quickly just go straight up and away.  You can now sand all the bumps and scratches away (Sanding green wood would have clogged the sand paper). Start with coarse grade paper and finish with fine grade. Alternatively, you could make a really clean and neat job in the last stages of your carving work; even tool marks have quite an attractive quality. Finally, wipe the wood over with some oil to bring out the natural colour and enhance to grain. I used vegetable oil but mineral oil is preferable, veg based oils can apparently go rancid.Happy carving!