Carving Flower Rosette

Nine of these went to the customer who ordered them and one stayed on my bench. Do you want a real carved flower on a cabinet door instead of a pattern that looks stamped out by a machine? Is there a knife and one small gouge in a drawer somewhere? Then you have enough for this one.

What is a rosette in wood carving?

A rosette is a small panel with a flower carved inside a raised border, and this one is a copy of an older piece. Shallow work, all of it. The block runs 10 mm thick, three eighths of an inch, and the flower never stands more than 7 mm out of that.

I like this flower. Simple design, and still a good one, because you can put it almost anywhere. Architectural carving takes it, and so does furniture. Back when I built custom kitchens there was a manufacturer around every corner selling cabinets cheaper than mine, and one carved detail on a hood is what sold mine anyway.

Small is not the same as easy. Every ridge shows at this size, and there is nowhere on a panel this small to lose one.

What wood do you use for a small carved rosette?

Basswood, the same wood the old carvers reached for. American basswood, lindenwood, limewood. One tree, three names, depending where you live.

Soft enough that a knife pulls through in one pass, and tight enough to hold a bead a millimetre wide without crumbling. That second half matters most here, because the details ringing the flower centre are barely thicker than a pencil lead.

Nothing else on my bench behaves quite like it.

What size block does a rosette need?

Two and a half inches square by three eighths thick, which is 64 mm square by 10 mm. I ran ten of them through the planer for this class. Nine were the order and one stayed here.

Always carve one extra. Customers come back years later asking for more of what I made them, and a kept prototype lets me match it instead of guessing. That habit has saved me more work than any tool I own.

Ten millimetres is not much wood, and you will spend this whole project deciding how little to remove rather than how much.

How do you transfer a drawing onto a block of wood?

Photograph the original straight down with a phone, square the photo up, scale it to true size, and print it at one to one. No special camera. My phone and a free scanning app get the picture square, and the app does that part automatically, which is the part that matters.

Then I bring the image into SketchUp and scale it until the rosette measures exactly two-and-a-half inches, which is 64 mm. I used AutoCAD for years. SketchUp is quicker now, and I print through its layout side, because for some reason those prints come out more accurate. Maybe that is just me.

One to one means an inch on paper equals an inch of wood, and a centimetre equals a centimetre. The drawing rescales to any size you like, and paper is no limit, so a full size print is one command away.

When I design something myself I still draw straight onto the wood with a pencil. Copying a piece somebody else already drew is different work, and faster.

Can you glue a paper pattern to wood with spray glue?

Spray adhesive holds a paper pattern down well enough to carve straight through it, and it beats wood glue here because you do not wait for it. I use yellow glue for plenty of things. Not this.

Spray both faces, the paper and the block, then leave it about a minute. Touch it with your hand. If nothing sticks to your skin it is ready, and pressing the two together earlier just makes a mess.

Before any of that, run a block plane over the face. My planer leaves faint trail marks from a nick in one knife, and a couple of angled strokes take them off so the paper lies flat.

Spray glue has one cost. It leaves residue, and near the end you will be lifting the last shreds of paper off a finished flower with the tip of a knife. So it does not live on my bench every day.

How deep do you carve a small rosette?

Nine thirty-seconds of an inch on this piece, 7.14 mm, and not a shaving deeper. A quarter inch plus a thirty-second. I got that number by standing the original against a fresh block, eyeballing the edge, and nicking it with a knife.

Then the marking gauge goes into the nick and scribes a line right round all four sides. Now the depth lives on the wood instead of in my head. I never carve below it. Neither should you.

Of that 10 mm, 7 leaves as chips. Around 3 mm is all that holds the panel together, an eighth of an inch, which is why the mallet stays gentle for the whole project.

What holds a small carving still while you work?

Let it sit loose between two bench stops and turn it whenever the grain turns. My bench is drilled with 20 mm holes, about three quarters of an inch, and two stops drop straight in. Nothing stops me locking the panel down. I never do.

Rotation is the whole trick. You come at the same petal from four directions before it is finished, and a clamped panel makes you carve uphill instead of turning the work.

A scrap of wood clamped to any table does the same job. Nothing more to a bench stop than that.

What does sweep mean on a wood carving gouge?

Sweep is the curve of the gouge edge, and the number stamped on the tool tells you how deep that curve runs. A number 3 is nearly flat, and a number 9 comes close to half a circle.

At the start of this rosette I measure nothing. Hold tools against the drawn petal until one curve sits down on the line, and that tool becomes the tool for those petals on all ten blocks. Then it stays out on the bench where I can find it again.

For the main flower the winner was a number 6, half an inch wide, 13 mm, by Ashley Iles. A number 9 fitted the smaller petals under it, and a number 3 grounding tool did the flat work around everything. Which tool does what, and why, is the whole of All About Tools for Wood Carving.

Why do carvers use a fishtail gouge?

The corners. A fishtail gouge flares out toward its edge like the tail of a fish, so the two corners of that edge reach into a tight spot a parallel sided blade cannot enter. Somebody asked whether I really use them. I use them in everything I carve.

Given the same sweep at the same width in both shapes, I buy the fishtail every time. Nothing extra in skill, and it saves you owning three narrower tools to reach one corner.

Reaching a corner is not the same as forcing one. Every weak spot on this rosette sits where two petals meet, which is exactly where a fishtail corner wants to go, so ease in and stop early.

How hard should you hit a gouge with a mallet?

Barely. First pass round the flower, each stab goes down about a sixteenth, 1.5 millimetres, driven with a small brass mallet, and that is deep enough for now. Hit it properly and the panel snaps, because 10 mm of basswood does not forgive a confident arm.

Stand the gouge on the drawn line, tap, rotate the panel, tap again. Round the whole flower like that. I went too deep on one of the small petals with the camera running and said so out loud, because everybody makes that mistake on their first rosette.

«Семь раз отмерь, один раз отрежь». Measure seven times, carve once. Wood carving is an art of deduction, and once you have taken too much there is no putting it back.

Should you carve with the grain or across it?

Across the grain, for the bulk of the waste that rings the flower. Check which way the grain runs first, every time, then take the material off at right angles to it. Running with the grain is how an edge follows one fibre down and takes a petal with it.

The tool rotates as it travels. Watch my hand and you will see the gouge turning through every pass, and that slicing motion is what leaves a clean wall instead of a torn one.

Do not carve down to the pencil line at this stage. Leave a sixteenth proud of it, one and a half millimetres, and come back when the whole shape is standing. Getting close early feels like progress and is not.

What gives a clean background in relief carving?

Hold the tool almost parallel to the wood and take shallow passes with a nearly flat gouge. Presented low, a number 3 grounding tool gives you control that a steep angle never will.

Do not begin a pass at the edge of the panel. Start out in the middle of the ground, because at the edge you cannot know what the grain will do and a run out there takes the border with it. I begin somewhere safe and work outward to the line.

In the corners I use the knife instead. Slide it under a loose chip, hook it, lift it out. Some carvers say hooking harms the tool. Wood against metal, and metal wins.

The last pass, taken right up to the line, is the one I call a clean cut, and it wants the sharpest edge you own and no hurry at all. Sharpening sits underneath every other skill in this trade, and a dull grounding tool on a 10 mm panel crushes fibres flat instead of slicing them.

How wide should the border around a rosette be?

Five thirty-seconds of an inch on this design, about 4 mm, on every side. I read it off the original with an aluminium architect's scale, the one I have used for years, because pencil marks go onto aluminium and rub off again.

Two things go wrong here. Mark the border lines all the way across and they meet in a cross at each corner, which shows in the finished carving, so stop every line short. Then carve a shallow channel a thirty-second outside the main line, less than a millimetre, and the waste lifts out instead of tearing.

On the last rosette I skipped the gauge entirely. Middle finger against the edge of the block as a fence, pencil on the line, pull the finger toward you, rotate, repeat. A pencil and a finger, and the line came out straight enough.

Why is the background on antique carvings covered in tiny dots?

A bubbly background is a ground covered in small round dents, punched in with a steel tool instead of carved. My name for it, anyway. The original rosette carried one, and up close, whoever made that piece used tools shaped much like mine.

My punches are sold for leather craft, in a set, and they cost very little. Different faces give different textures, so I pick whichever comes closest to the piece I am copying.

One fact here changes how you carve the whole panel. The punch presses the fibres down, so the ground drops a thirty-second of an inch, under a millimetre, all by itself. So I stop lowering the background while it is still almost level with the border, and let the punch finish that last bit.

Use a mallet. No metal hammer, ever.

Is it cheating to use a background punch?

Carvers have punched grounds for generations, and mostly they did it to hide a background that came out uneven. A bumpy ground gets punched and suddenly reads as one even texture across the whole panel. Honest enough, and still a good one.

In some European traditions reaching for a punch marked you as no professional. That was the case. I do not agree, because the result is good and no customer has ever asked me how a surface got even.

On the rosette I carved with only a knife I left the ground bumpy and wavy on purpose, knowing the punch was coming. You can make your own punch as well. Take an ordinary framing nail, work the end with a file, and you have a face nobody else owns.

Gouge or veiner, what is the difference?

A true gouge can be stood on the wood and rotated to scribe a full circle, and a veiner cannot. That is the test, and the only one I use.

Gouges run up to number 9. Number 10 and number 11 are veiners, and a V tool is something else again, because neither will spin you a clean round. I still call them all gouges at my bench. Easier to remember, and nobody has corrected me yet.

On this rosette the test earns its keep at the centre of the flower. The centre is a dome inside a ring, both round, so I hold tools against the drawing until one spins the exact circle I need, then rotate it in place. One pass instead of twenty small ones.

What stops tiny carved details from snapping off?

Take the corners off first, then round what is left. The ring of small beads around the flower centre starts as a row of square blocks a millimetre or two across. Slice the outside corners off each one, right round the ring, and the rounding afterwards takes half the work and half the risk.

Light matters more than tools at this size. I swing a lamp low over the bench for the micro work, because I cannot judge a half millimetre pass in shadow, and neither can you.

The same principles run on a small carving as on a big one. Smaller, that is all. Every ridge counts for more, so one slip at this scale finishes the piece, and nothing puts it right. The reasoning behind those principles is what Principles of Design in Wood Carving is for.

Can you carve a rosette with only a knife?

A chip carving knife alone carved one of these ten, and it stands beside the others without apology. Outline straight down, hold the knife like a pencil, pull it toward you, and basswood gives way in one pass.

I call this carving on steroids. Production carving, if you want the polite name. Faster than gouge work, and less accurate, and on a low relief flower this small nobody can tell from an arm's length away.

Somebody watching asked me to list every tool I use. A piece like this, I could. For the Gibbons work that list would run for pages, and half of it you would never need to buy, because the tools you already own reach the same result by another road.

Watch the knife only workshop and you will see where a knife starts to struggle. The struggle is real, and it starts later than you would think.

Which wood carving tool should a beginner buy first?

A chip carving knife, and master that before you buy anything else. One knife will carve beautiful things. The name does not mean cheap, by the way. A good one costs real money, and I keep several brands because I care about the steel more than the handle.

I know what one knife can do. At nineteen I was in a Soviet jail, not for any crime, for what I believed. The Soviet Union collapsed while I was inside. There was no food, nothing, and somehow you had to survive in there, and I got one potato a day because I could carve. One potato. I carved mirror frames and coffee tables and small jewelry boxes, and the boxes were what the administration wanted most.

All I had at the start was a knife. A small gouge came later. So when somebody tells me they cannot begin because they have no tools, I know exactly how untrue that is.

You do not have to rob a bank to carve. Get one knife, learn to sharpen it, and come stand at the bench with us.

Do you need a router plane for relief carving?

A small router plane is the one shortcut I would call a must have for relief work. Mine is a small Veritas and it works miracles on a ground this size. Lie-Nielsen make a fine one too, more classical to look at, where Veritas looks modern.

Set the depth ring first, right at your scribed line, and the ring becomes a stopper that keeps every part of the ground the same thickness. Then back it off and work in passes of a sixteenth or so, one and a half millimetres, until you are a thirty-second above the line, not quite one millimetre, and leave that last shaving for a hand pass.

One detail people miss. Keep a scrap block of the same height beside the panel, because the plane sole rides on it once you reach the far edge, and without that block the tool tips into your carving.

A router plane is a hand tool, so nothing here is powered, and its blade wants the same really sharp edge as every gouge you own.

Should you sand a wood carving?

True carving comes out of the chisel, so I leave mine alone. Not one of these rosettes has seen sandpaper from me. There is nothing wrong with it either, and I will say that as often as anybody needs to hear it.

If a rosette looks rough to you, take a block, touch the high points, stop. I did exactly that on the last one with a block marked 80 grit that feels closer to 220, and I stayed off the details entirely.

Some carvers leave everything choppy, every knife mark showing, and it looks like what it is, which is work done by a hand. One man I know makes a good living selling relief carvings finished that way. All about form, and all about your preference.

Is a small rosette a good first project?

People call this one a beginner project and I am not sure I agree. The design is simple. Size is what makes it hard, because a mistake you would carve away on a big panel has nowhere to go on a square 64 mm across.

What it teaches is restraint, and there is no other way to learn that. The background alone trains you not to go too deep, over and over, for as long as the ground takes to clear.

Send me photographs when you finish and I will look at them properly and write you a certificate of completion. Not a download. Me, at this bench, looking at your work.

If you have never held a gouge, start with First Cuts for Beginners and come back to this. The lessons map lays the road out in order, the old carving books cost nothing to read tonight, and what Access costs sits on one page with no surprises. People usually want to know who is teaching before they ask the price, which is fair, so here I am.

So there is a scrap of basswood on your shelf, all 10 mm of it, and a flower drawn on a scrap of paper. Where does the first carving go? Come and find out at the bench, and by the third rosette your hand will know before I say it. Shall we carve?

All of that lives in Carving Flower Rosette. Seven workshops, filmed at this bench, one rosette carved with a full rack of gouges and another with almost nothing but a knife.