09-03-2018, 08:25 PM
I brought back some mahogany from my last visit to Panama. We have a farm on the lake that the canal runs through. The farm was my wife's grandfather, and the story is he salvaged some logs from the canal zone and had them sawn up a long time ago. Its possible that that those logs were cut and cast aside as the canal was being built. I am making this box for my wife's Step-father and wanted to put a little carving on it. Shells are pretty simple and don't take a lot of chisels. The ones in the picture are main ones I used. There were a few other chisels that made their way into the carving, but these were the primary. One thing I forgot to do was remove some material towards the central hub. I realized that while processing the photos. ANother mistake was using a chisel to mark out the scallops. Should have used a pencil, so those chisel lines would not be there. Both will be easy to correct. This is less than 20 minutes of carving.
They look rough at the moment, but they will clean up nicely with a small shaped scraper and sandpaper. Thing I realized about carving is that it generally looks crappy until you get close to done, then all of a sudden it looks good.
They look rough at the moment, but they will clean up nicely with a small shaped scraper and sandpaper. Thing I realized about carving is that it generally looks crappy until you get close to done, then all of a sudden it looks good.