Stop Cuts in Relief Carving

Stop cuts in relief carving  

Stop cutting to learn about stop cut.
Each of us started wood carving in his life with different desires. But we have one common feature - there is no one who wouldn't like to create his own work of art. Speaking about masterpieces, it definitely comes to relief carving, which you already know about.
If you ever tried yourself in carving pictures in the wood you could probably have struggled with proper interaction of design area intersections. Stop cut is a labor-intensive but extremely simple technique in any known way of relief carving. First of all, it should be mentioned that you can use single or two-stroke stop cut depending on the required width. Sample steps to make a single stop cut:
1. Drive along with your pattern line with your bench knife.
2. Do as many accurate strokes as needed to reach exact depth you want to intersect with another layer or background.
3. Select your final incline and slant your bench knife according to pattern element you are currently cutting.

Useful tip: Do not try to reach perfect estimated depth in a single try. Doing stop cut carefully and step-by-step you can recut it as much as possible/you want in order to develop your results.

As we already mentioned, if you need to get a wider cut, you can try another technique, wide stop cut. Sample steps to make the wider, v-shape cut:
1. Make your first cut on your pattern line.
2. Turn your wooden area by the opposite side. (180 degrees)
3. Make exactly the same cut at an angle to the first you already did.

Useful tip: It is important to leave a small gap between two cutting lines. If you struggled not only how to do stop cut but which tool will be suitable, this is also a case we can offer you a solution: BeaverCraft C6 - this knife includes all of the features you may need.

After all, you can return to use chisels and gouges - the main part of relief carving is done with those hand tools. Do not forget to use a mallet if required. Using this technique carefully instead of doing lines on your own will help you to forget about awareness of splintering as far as you will master this type of carving.

To conclude, you need to remember - relief carving is not an easy-going way to earn your living or to become famous worldwide like Paul Kaptein or Giuseppe Rumerio but success awaits for those, who are patient enough and dream to transform working materials into works of art!