Chip carving is done with a pair of specialty carving knives  and a lot of patience. I did my first piece today.

It’s not just a piece of chip carving though. It’s also a stamp, I think. A woodcut. It will print a pattern — possibly on fabric or paper.

Most chip carving is done with three styles of carving — three basic types of cuts. The first and second types are three-sided carvings and straight lines. This design is mostly these two types of cuts. The third kind, largely not shown here, is the two-sided cut. These are all done with the same knife, a so-called chip-carver knife. 

There’s also a decorative element done with a different knife, called a stab-cut. 
The three elements of this kind of carving that I can see, right now, is that the quality of the work is dependent on the sharpness of the knife.

On the whole, my work isn’t bad. It’s the quality I’ve come to expect from myself as a beginner. But learning this work is part of my overall goals of furniture making, because I want to be able to include decorative elements like these in my design work.

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