Alexander Grabovetskiy, woodcarver, School of Woodcarving · Published 2018
What does setting in mean in relief carving?
Quick answer: Setting in is the stage where the outline of a relief carving gets carved down around the design, before any modelling happens. Waste comes off with a big gouge, the outline keeps a clear margin from every final line, and the background drops in two passes rather than one.
The block is one inch and seven eighths thick, 47.5 mm to be exact, and the background is going down a quarter of an inch. Two lines with a marking gauge, a one inch number 8 in my fist, and by the end of this workshop the leaf stands proud of the board with nothing modelled on it yet.
Does your carving lose its shape the moment you start removing wood? Have you carved right up to a pencil line and then had nowhere to go? Do you own one small gouge and wonder why everything takes so long?
Setting in answers all three. It is the least glamorous stage in relief carving and it decides more than any other.
What setting in actually settles
- The background drops in two stages, never one. Rough first, final later.
- A marking gauge has to be tight or the line will not be true on all four sides.
- Stay about an eighth of an inch back from every final line. That margin is your whole margin for error.
- Bigger gouges leave fewer facets and get there faster. Use the largest that fits.
- Carve the same cut on the far side immediately, while your hand still remembers it.
- A break is not a disaster, so work around the gap instead of reaching for the glue bottle.
How deep should a relief background be?
A shade over 6 mm on a leaf this size, measured with a woodworker's marking gauge, never a pencil. Set the gauge, make sure it is tight, and run it round the whole block. If the gauge slips even slightly the four lines will not agree and you will chase that error for the rest of the project.
A couple of passes on each side, not one heavy one. The gauge is scoring fibre, and a scored line breaks cleanly under a chisel where a pencil line only tells you roughly where to aim.
My basswood stock is nearly two inches thick, which sounds excessive for a quarter inch of relief. Wrong. Thick wood is what lets me carve toward the outer limit of the design without the board splitting out from under the work.
Why mark two background lines instead of one?
One eighth above the final line is the rough background, and it is where all the heavy work stops. My carving goes down to that rough line, and only once cleaning starts does anything reach the finished level.
Two stages, deliberately. Chopping straight to the finished level means every later mistake happens down there, with no wood left to absorb it, and there is always a later mistake.
The other line I draw at this point marks where the curl starts and where the volutes are going to sit. Edges of acanthus leaves create a concave look, going really low on the outside and higher on the inside, and I want that shape decided before a gouge touches it.
Where do you hold a panel this small?
In a carving vice that grips the board rather than the bench. Mine takes anything, a small relief panel like this one or a piece as big as the Grinling Gibbons work in another course, and being able to turn the work is half of carving comfortably.
Turning matters more than clamping force. Half the cuts in this workshop run one way and half run the other, so a holding method that makes you carve in one orientation will push you into cutting against the grain when you did not have to.
Which gouge takes the first waste off?
The biggest one that fits the curve. I take a number 8 by Ashley Iles, one inch across, 25.4 mm, and work around the whole design.
Bigger is better still, and I normally reach for one. Large gouges are not on everybody's rack, so any big one does this job: an 8, a 9, even a number 10 blade.
Because this design runs almost to the edge of the block I have to carve from the inside out, which is genuinely a bit dangerous and sometimes splits the wood. Thick stock is what makes that acceptable. Going outside in is better where you can, so watch what the grain is doing and choose your direction one cut at a time.
| Tool | Stage it belongs to | What it is doing here |
|---|---|---|
| Number 8 | the very first pass of all | lifting chunks of waste away from the whole outline in one go, fast |
| Number 5, one inch | outlining the lobes | its curve happens to repeat the shape of a leaf edge exactly |
| V tool, any angle you happen to own | the volutes and every division line | drawing a spiral in wood, which no gouge on the rack can follow round |
| Number 3 at half an inch | outline work and shaping the forms | nearly flat, so an edge gets defined without a scoop behind it |
| Number 7, three quarter inch | shaping and the rough ground | the unbranded one my teacher gave me, and still my favourite of them |
| Number 1 | cleaning up afterwards | a double bevel, though a carpenter's chisel does the same work |
Nothing on that list is compulsory. Use whatever you have, as long as the curve of the tool gets near the curve you want. Finding the gouge that fits the shape is a skill worth more than owning a hundred of them.
How close to the line should the first cuts go?
Leave three millimetres of daylight, or nearer five on a fussy corner. Leave space between the final design and your carving, and do not reach the rough background line yet either.
Then comes the 5, one inch across, because its sweep repeats the shape of the leaf better than the 8 does. Working near the line is fine once the tool actually matches it. I do get close, and I would still tell a student to stay a millimetre off.
Confidence is the variable, not the rule. I do not think I will mess it up, so I carve near the line. On your first leaf, take the millimetre.
Why do bigger tools give a cleaner surface?
Fewer facets. A small gouge leaves a great many chisel marks across a broad shape, and those marks read as noise rather than as a carved surface. With a bigger tool each cut is much cleaner, and you can use just the edge of it when you need something narrow.
Speed follows. The carving goes much, much quicker with a large blade, and I am always on the side of bigger tools myself. Something narrow will reach the same result eventually, through more cuts and more tidying.
I also use a lot of mallet work here. You could push these cuts by hand, and with a mallet you have much more control, which is not what most beginners expect to hear.
Why is a V tool the main tool for a volute?
A spiral has no single radius, so no gouge follows it. Any V tool will work here, 60 degrees or 45 degrees, whichever one is on your bench, and its job is to establish the main form of the volute before anything gets shaped.
This is not a simple spiral either. Angled, which means it does not read as a spiral when you look straight down at the board, and setting that with a gouge would take a dozen tools of different sweeps.
Look at any stretch of this workshop and you will see mostly V tool. In relief carving the V tool and the gouge are the two that matter most. On a big sculpture you reach for gouges far more often, so this answer belongs to relief carving and not to every kind of work.
Once the V has drawn the spiral in wood, a number 3 comes along behind it and establishes the forms around, and a small gouge cleans what is left.
How does the volute get its downhill?
By rounding it after the outline exists, never before. The volute has to run downhill, falling away from its centre toward the edge of the board, and that is a shaping decision made with a big number 3 once the spiral is already cut in.
Watch the sides as well as the top. A volute has to look right from the side as well, and not just when you stare straight down at it, and I use the V tool round the outside of the sticking out part almost the way I would use it for undercutting.
Inside the spiral the cuts go deeper. That is what makes a relief volute read as a true volute rather than a groove, and a 7 at 13 mm sets that shadow line on both sides.
Micro cuts near the end. It is better to take three small ones than one confident one, because the confident one is the cut that goes through.
What are the eggs on the volute?
The sticking out centres of each spiral, and I have never found a good name for them. They look like the end of an egg, so eggs they are, and a V tool sets them before the 3 lowers everything around them.
Then a step cut, which is exactly what it sounds like. One level drops below the next with a clean vertical wall between, and that wall is what will throw a shadow when the piece is finished and lit from the side.
Careful with the depth on these. Overdoing it is always possible, and an egg carved too proud has nowhere left to go when the background comes down to its final quarter inch.
How should the panel look at the end of this stage?
Rough, and correct. The overall shape is there, the leaf stands clear of a background that is not yet at its final depth, and nothing has been modelled, undercut or cleaned. This stage puts the main idea in place and then stops.
Resist finishing anything. Every surface you polish now gets carved away in the workshops that follow, when the shades get created, the undercutting happens and the background finally drops to its quarter inch.
What you should see by evening is a board where a stranger could point at the leaf and the volutes and say what they are. That is the entire test, and it is the reason this stage carries a name of its own in every carving tradition I know of.
Ready to set in a Roman leaf of your own rather than read about mine? Pick a course and start here, or take everything at once with Yearly Access and carve along at your own bench.
How do you keep both halves of a symmetrical leaf the same?
Carve them in pairs, never in sequence. When I finish a cut on one side I work right away on the other side, doing the same cut, and the forms come out as close as two hands can make them.
Always watch both sides at once. Look at the overall picture while you are carving one half, because a symmetrical design is judged on the relationship rather than on either half alone.
Perfection is not the target, though. If there is some imperfection, do not worry about it. Understand that it is not a machine doing this carving, it is a human being, and a carving with no imperfections at all ends up looking plasticky.
Check depth across the piece as well as shape. Right, centre and left have to sit at the same level, which is easy to lose while you are absorbed in one lobe.
What should you do if a piece breaks?
Let it be, most of the time. Sometimes you can glue the broken part back, and not every carving takes glue well, and it is better not to glue anything at all.
I break things. It happens when I am not careful, usually when I am trying to get the job done quickly. I have done some gluing over the years and I would rather not. If something breaks, it was meant to be, and I redesign around the broken part.
Prevention is simpler than repair. Feel what the block is doing at that moment, take the direction the fibre wants, and if you have to force a cut, stop and do not force it.
Sharp tools matter more than technique here. Carving against the grain is unavoidable on a symmetrical leaf, because half your cuts run the wrong way by definition, and the only real solution is tools that are really, really sharp.
None of this is about the tools, in the end. Everything rests on how you feel the three-dimensional world and how you establish the form. You can own a thousand chisels and, without that feel, carve nothing at all with them.
How it's done
- Set the gauge and score all four sides. Six millimetres for a leaf this size. Tighten the gauge properly, because a loose one gives four lines that disagree, then take a couple of light passes rather than one heavy pull.
- Add a second line an eighth above the first. That upper line is the rough background, and every heavy pass stops there. Only once cleaning begins does anything reach the finished level.
- Mark where the curl and the volutes begin. Acanthus edges fall away toward the outside and rise toward the inside, so a shallow dish runs across the whole panel. Settle that shape before a blade ever touches the wood.
- Take the bulk away with your biggest gouge. An inch wide number 8 lifts chunks you can hear landing on the bench. Work from the inside out where the design runs near an edge, and read the grain on each pass instead of afterwards.
- Stop an eighth of an inch short of every line. Leave a clear band of about three millimetres, and five on anything fragile. That untouched strip is the only room you will have when a later stroke goes somewhere you did not intend.
- Outline with a gouge whose curve matches the leaf. The 5 repeats the shape of these lobes better than an 8 does. Lay the blade on the drawn line first, and if the curve sits on it, that is the tool for the job.
- Cut the volute in with a V tool, then round it. Any V tool at all will draw the spiral, which no gouge can follow. Behind it the 3 establishes the forms, and the whole volute then gets rounded so it runs downhill.
Frequently asked questions
What does setting in mean in wood carving?
This stage puts the main idea of a design in place. Waste gets carved away round the outline until the shapes stand clear of their background, and no modelling, undercutting or cleaning happens yet. Everything after it depends on the outline being right.
How deep should the background of a relief panel be?
Roughly 6 mm suits a leaf on a block this size, and the number matters less than the method. Score that depth with a marking gauge on every face, then drop down in two stages instead of chopping straight to the finished level.
How near the pencil line should you carve at first?
Roughly three millimetres of daylight, and more on anything delicate. Confident carvers work nearer the line and I do it myself, every time. A beginner who leaves that band can still fix a wandering stroke, and one who does not cannot.
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