Carving some Heraldic Roses for a box

It’s been a bit since I’ve updated the blog due to a variety of reasons including a minor surgery that had a rough recovery.  I have been working the wood in the shop, just not posting here.  I have at least two other major posts I will be adding as I catch including one on my sons 6 board chest build, some finished carved boxes, and a couple shop made tools.

But for now, I want to share this bit of carving I did on Saturday which I think came out really nicely.

Completed carved panel with three heraldic roses

This is going to be the front panel of a traditional style nailed box, sometimes erroneously called a “bible box” that I’m making as a gift for someone.  The roses are modeled after heraldic roses from the Tudor period, and were new to me in terms of carving.  I studied a lot of period examples to get a sense of the form, and watched one of the recent videos from Chris Pye’s woodcarving workshop series in which he does a double-rose in a Gothic mirror.  (If you’re interested in learning carving, this is a very nice investment in your craft, Chris does a fantastic job of explaining and showing how to carve.)

I also took some step by step shots of the progression as a demonstration of how easy it really was to do.  As I worked on the first one I worked out the steps I needed and then captured a shot of the tool used to do each of the dozen or so steps to complete a single rose.  Then I put them together “Kari Hultman Style“.

Steps 1 – 3

Steps 4 – 6

Steps 7 – 9

Steps 10 – 11

Some of the shots were blurry, sorry about that I was grabbing these quickly with my iPhone and getting back to work.  If you have any questions about which tool or want to know more about a step I took let me know. I hope it’s somewhat self evident what each step is.

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