The Georgian Bed, Part Five ~ Carving Bedposts

      Bas-relief carving consists of three processes – chopping in, grounding out and modelling. Firstly, chopping in consists of making vertical cuts to outline the edges of the motif, in this case an acanthus leaf, using carving gouges of appropriate width and curvature (called ‘sweep’) to match the penciled guidelines drawn on the wood. Ideally, this does take a large number of different gouges.  When you’re starting out and haven’t yet built up a collection, you will have to modify the drawn outline to accommodate the tools you have. Grounding out is cutting out the wood outside the chopping-in cuts so that the shape to be modelled stands above a floor, or ground. I have shown this stage in the top photo above.The last stage, modelling, is the detailing by  shaping the petals, leaves, ribbons or whatever to render the work into three dimensions in a lifelike way.  Frequently, that will involve further chopping-in between parts of the design as you go along to separate the various components. When carving, pay close attention to the way the grain of the wood runs, because it is very easy for splitting to occur in all stages of the process.  Some species of wood are more prone to this than others. This brings me to an important point.  When working in any medium, sharpness of tools is key, but when woodcarving it is absolutely paramount; the gouges should be kept razor sharp all the time.

I make it a habit at the beginning of each carving session to check each tool for sharpness as its turn comes to be used. In almost all cases I’ll give that gouge a few licks on the whetstone before putting it into use. Getting back to the modelling: after shaping the work as finely as possible with the gouges there is still work to be done, now by rifflers, possibly sandpaper,and finally perhaps by burnishing.I don’t like using sandpaper when carving, it’s just too easy to wear away detail and lose the crispness that marks a good work; but there will usually be a need for it somewhere.

For burnishing I have made a handful of small sticks, about pencil size, out of both hardwood and bone. I like using ash wood for this, and leg bones left over from a roast of lamb.  The business ends of these handy little tools may be shaped to be pointed or rounded, flat or curved, concave or convex. When rubbed over the carving it comes up to a high polish which sets the whole thing off beautifully.Lastly, the matter of tidying up the ground must be considered. By nature of it being recessed, it is sometimes difficult to attain a perfectly flat and smooth surface into every little crevice. For this reason the ground is sometimes treated with punches.  Commonly, these punches have waffle-patterned ends. They are not as easy to find as in the past, but you can make them yourself by filing or grinding a pattern into the end of a short length of tool steel or an old punch.

The Georgian Bedstead, Part Four ~ Turning and Carving the Lower Bedpost Sections.

          You can’t afford to take any chances with expensive wood, especially if the supply is limited.  I took a short piece of pine, made it up in the same way as the posts just described and put it on the lathe to turn a trial of the urn that adorns the upper end of the leg section.  This way you see whether the theoretical design does in fact please the eye.  If so, then from it you take exact dimensions in order to copy the form four times.   If you are lucky enough to own a duplicating lathe, then the trial piece may be mounted as template which will give you four exact copies mechanically.

Next job is to make a careful drawing for the carving on the urn and transfer this design to the workpiece. I intended to carve four acanthus leaves around the urn.  The transference can be done with carbon paper, but I prefer to make small cardboard templates and trace around them.  The first templates I made were too skinny – I hadn’t allowed enough for the varying circumference of the urn. Before starting to carve I made a measured drawing of the trial urn, which serve as the standard for four posts. Some carving on the trial piece is a good idea to test the concept, but there’s no need to carve the entire urn.   I went about halfway around. This is helpful too as you learn and note which gouges will do best at the different parts of the carving. After carving the same motif for a while you get in the swing of it and will automatically reach for the right tool, but at first this is difficult to remember, so when chopping in the trial carving I labelled a copy of my acanthus drawing at every different curve with the identity of each tool used.

A final note. I am taking a large number of reference photos during this ongoing project.  I am posting up the most relevant with this blog, and a very few of the most interesting ones on my Flickr site.  For those interested in yet deeper detail I have all my pictures in a folder 'on the cloud' at my "Dropbox" site.  Upon request I will be happy to send you a link to my Dropbox folder, and here below is a link to the 'Georgian Bed' set on Flickr:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/a_henwood/sets/72157635480669119/ 

The Georgian Bedstead ~ Part Two, Drawings and Design Factors

    The bed being fabricated in Canada, but destined for England, I had to plan carefully so that the various components would be small enough to be taken over as checked baggage on the airplane.  This is a tough constraint, but not insurmountable.  The bedposts would end up with a final height of about 86 inches (see drawings).  They would be made in sections which would be screwed together, and could be taken apart in future when required for moving.  In order to get the bed into use as soon as possible, I planned to make the lower post sections first,  take them over and source material for the bed rails and structural head and foot boards in the UK, since they would be too big to take on the flight. 
           Here are the first drawings. At this stage I  planned simple head and footboards, the same width and thickness as the side rails, so as to be able to bring the bed into use quickly. The design for a panelled decorative headboard is presently in early stages. We may leave the footboard as shown, the original having just such a simple arrangement.
          
The first challenge was to design a very strong, simple, foolproof connection between the bedpost sections.  I have built poster beds in the past, connecting the sections variously with hanger bolts or sections of threaded wood. Neither of these methods proved to be a perfect solution.  From a lifetime of experience Jim gave me his advice, which was to connect them with a long length of threaded steel rod, through a continuous hollow central core running the length of the post.  Right away, I had to modify this plan, because the posts would be connected with the rails and boards of the frame by means of bedbolts passing crosswise through the centre of the lower post sections. A longitudinal rod would block that.  So the rod fastening the lower post section could not be allowed to run down to the floor.  I solved that difficulty with a plan to embed collar nuts in the heart of the legs into which the rods would be screwed. The thrust would be borne by large washers abutting the collar nuts; (see drawing).