Dave Speer
Active member
Going to spend a couple weeks with my family (a work-cation, instead of working from home I'll work from my sister's house)...
I mentioned I may bring a couple decoy heads to pass the time, and she said her oldest (who is still pretty dang young) was really curious about how I carved ducks. Uh oh, don't want that kid stabbing himself or cutting a finger off at such a young age!
Did some googling on soap carving and came up with this. I made four "knives" from dowels, here is the process.
What they are gonna look like when done (they are 5" long overall)
Using a 5/8" oak dowel, I drew a centerline by resting a pencil on my workbench and sliding the dowel down the pencil. I matched this with the end grain to attempt to keep some strength. Then, I made a mark on each side of the line at 3mm. Rolled the dowel until the pencil matched up with the mark and slid it to mark the outer bounds.
I decided to make the blade 1" long and added a 1/2" to roll out of the cut on the saw for a bit of a taper to the handle, to keep the handle out of the way of carving.
I carefully bandsawed the top view of the knife (dang dowels want to roll when you are sawing them, be careful!) Then, once I had the flat, I marked the blade shape. I came in 1/8" on each side.
One view of the knife cutout.
Marked a centerline on the sharp edge, and then using a cylinder bit, followed by a padded sander, shaped the blade.
Did a quick test carving to make sure they'd work well.
When all this was done, I coated the knives, blades, handles and all in marine epoxy. Mostly to help harden the blade just a tad. Not shown, but I took a pencil before I epoxied them and shaded in the thick, dull side of the knife and ran a thick line/shape down that side of the handle so the kids could get used to which side was sharp or dull just by looking at the line.
I mentioned I may bring a couple decoy heads to pass the time, and she said her oldest (who is still pretty dang young) was really curious about how I carved ducks. Uh oh, don't want that kid stabbing himself or cutting a finger off at such a young age!
Did some googling on soap carving and came up with this. I made four "knives" from dowels, here is the process.
What they are gonna look like when done (they are 5" long overall)
Using a 5/8" oak dowel, I drew a centerline by resting a pencil on my workbench and sliding the dowel down the pencil. I matched this with the end grain to attempt to keep some strength. Then, I made a mark on each side of the line at 3mm. Rolled the dowel until the pencil matched up with the mark and slid it to mark the outer bounds.
I decided to make the blade 1" long and added a 1/2" to roll out of the cut on the saw for a bit of a taper to the handle, to keep the handle out of the way of carving.
I carefully bandsawed the top view of the knife (dang dowels want to roll when you are sawing them, be careful!) Then, once I had the flat, I marked the blade shape. I came in 1/8" on each side.
One view of the knife cutout.
Marked a centerline on the sharp edge, and then using a cylinder bit, followed by a padded sander, shaped the blade.
Did a quick test carving to make sure they'd work well.
When all this was done, I coated the knives, blades, handles and all in marine epoxy. Mostly to help harden the blade just a tad. Not shown, but I took a pencil before I epoxied them and shaded in the thick, dull side of the knife and ran a thick line/shape down that side of the handle so the kids could get used to which side was sharp or dull just by looking at the line.
Dang that looks like it must've hurt for about 3 years.