I spend a lot of my time when I am not carving or teaching working in our cabinetmaking business. Several weeks ago we had purchased some 3/4 inch poplar for some paint grade cabinets that we were building. Poplar is a fairly soft wood that has an even grain and takes paint well. The sapwood is usually a light cream color and the heart wood is often a gray to green color and is not usually known for it’s beauty. On rare occasion you will find a piece with steaks of black, brown or purple in the heartwood. One of the boards was the most colorful piece of poplar that I had ever seen. I dragged it home and propped it up in my carving studio hoping that I could somehow come up with something to do with this fabulous board.
I sat and looked, wondering how to best utilize the wild and dramatic color and grain pattern. I finally decided to cut apart a plasticine mask to use to make pattern pieces. From the clay I made cardboard pattern pieces and then was able to place them on the board to best utilize the colors and make the best use of the wood.
After the pieces were cut out I decided that I liked the look of the pieces but thought that they were too thick. I re-sawed each piece so that I had 3/8” slices instead of 3/4”. I wanted the carved pieces to end up being loose or possibly put back together slightly misaligned. The pieces were then glued with hide glue so the face could be carved and then unglued.
The carving went fairly quickly since cutting to the pattern pieces left very little waste. After doing the finish sanding the whole thing was put into the sink with warm water to dissolve the hide glue.
I am now working on reassembling the whole thing. I found a package of gold foil used for bottling champagne that I had bought from East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse. I am wrapping the back and edges just leaving the carved face showing and will then put it all the pieces back together.
