Hi,
We started carving the shell around the barrel tang. That will be the only carving on this gun, as it should be. First, we did a paper rubbing of the carving on the Heylin fowler in my possession. We just did one half. The Maria traced the rubbing on to card stock using carbon paper. Next, she cut out the card stock tracing and we taped it on the stock.
The Heylin design is a little too wide and long for Maria's stock so we traced the shell on the stock but contracted the forward decoration to fit her stock. Here is the fully traced design on the stock.
We may simplify the forward ends if they are too busy and don't really fit well. The Heylin barrel is wider at the breech so we have less space in which to work. It may be that we have simple tendrils going forward that fade out in a simple scroll. Regardless, Maria stabbed in the current design. When I stab in an intricate design, I walk the tiny stab in chisel forward along my line by always making sure the rear edge of the chisel is in the incised line I just made and then rocking the tool forward to create a new segment of stabbed in line. That way the line is smooth and continuous rather than jagged. Maria acquired that skill very quickly.
After stabbing in the outer edge of the carving design, she relieved the background. She likes my palm chisels so I started her using a small palm skew chisel to remove background.
However, my method of teaching is to let the student work with a tool for a while to discover its strengths and weaknesses, and then I introduce a new tool for comparison. That way they learn the differences and develop their own preferences. In this case, I introduced a full length skew chisel to Maria for removing the background. I have very strong hands but severe nerve damage in my fingers. I cannot position full length chisels very quickly like palm chisels so I use the latter. But that is me and Maria is different. She quickly discovered that she likd the full length skew chisel much better. It gives her more control and power.
Finally, for tight sections, she still needed small chisels like this tiny skew.
Her outlining came out great and we are on our way. Not to bad a start for her first carving.
She will ouline the inner edges of the carving and then we will leave it until after whiskering the stock. When that is done, she will carve the details just prior to staining.
dave
