All About Carved Wooden Caskets

Carved wooden box - A classic souvenir and a pleasant product that will never be an extra gift. She will decorate a female boudoir, become an elegant and unassuming present for a teenage girl, will turn out to be the very thing that was not enough to store important little things. And if it is a handmade carved box, it also becomes an unusually warm, favorite thing of the owner.

This is both a decorative and utilitarian product. Carved wooden box mainly serves as a container for jewelry. But it stores both money, and important papers, and various memorabilia (like biocharts from the hospital). A casket can also become a special interior attribute if other carved wooden elements or just a tree of the same shade are found in the decoration of the room.

Making boxes is a very ancient direction. In particular, the popularity of this craft in Egypt is known. IN China and Japan caskets were made of precious woods, hand-painted and carved adorned these products. In the caskets they kept valuables and valuables.

Wooden products are more popular than many other casket options. They are affordable, the choice is also always pleasant for the buyer. These are aesthetic and original products that you want to consider and touch. Different wood is used to make caskets. Decoration itself mainly occurs with a jigsaw and carving knives.

Not only is solid wood suitable for creating caskets, although it is by far the most preferred material. MDF and chipboard are also used, although there are less opportunities for threading specifically.

Caskets are made according to diagrams and drawings. First, the master selects the design of the future product, transfers it to paper (creates a sketch), sets the dimensions, cuts out blanks from paper and compares them, draws up a drawing. The cutting sheet of the casket is formed on the basis of this drawing. It is possible to make cutting using paper templates or computer programs.

Beautiful patterns, nice geometric images seem so openwork and complex that many simply do not have the spirit to try their hand at carving. But fortunately, for such cases there is a stencil. This is the name of the device, which helps to apply a pattern or other symbols to a wooden surface.

There are 3 basic rules regarding the choice of ornament:

• if the box is large, openwork and small ornament will be an unfortunate choice;
• a small box will not fit a large ornament;
• the main thing in the thread is proportions, errors in them erase all other advantages of the product.

The thread itself may be slotted, flat-embossed and embossed. Slotted is a very complex technique, because in the process, the background, background or substrate is almost completely removed. As a result, an almost airy ornament is obtained on the finished product. Billets are made of linden or coniferous wood.

Handmade wooden casket from solid wood is an expensive and high-quality option. You can safely count on the fact that such a product will last for more than a dozen years. But there are simpler options, for example, a box of plywood. Plywood sheets can be bought on the construction market. The main requirement for plywood is that it must be well dried, and its thickness must be at least 8 mm. If you have to work with wet, insufficiently dried plywood, the appearance of the product will suffer.

MDF - This is a medium density fiberboard. Plates are made of small sawdust so that their structure is dense and reliable. Regular plates are even and smooth, completely homogeneous. Therefore, they are very comfortable in processing: it is easy to mill and process MDF with a jigsaw.

The wood for carved boxes is different.

1. Pine. It has a straight-layered structure with yellowness, it is easy to work with it, but it is unsuitable for small relief carvings.
2. Larch. Wood of the highest quality, strong and heavy, but not very easy to process.
3. Juniper. The tree dries out a little and is not afraid of decay, behaves perfectly when cutting. Suitable for flat-necked carvings.
4. Oak. Dense wood is distinguished by the elegance of the structure. Fine material for carving and turning.
5. Aspen. Soft and tender, lends itself well to chisel carving.

A beginner cutter does not have to have a complete set of tools. But a basic kit is needed, and it is also not always possible to assemble it in one day.

What you need to work:

• knives-jambs - tools with a beveled blade, which is convenient to make notches and indentations;
• cutters for geometric carving - handle roundings and curved shapes well;
• Bogorodsky knife "Tatyanka" - perfect for carving "for strength";
• chisels - there are many variations, often sold in a set;
• jigsaw - simplifies work and speeds up the process;
• engraving machine - beginners may not be necessary, but for products for sale, the creation of personal and designer items, interesting finds will be required;
• sandpaper - helps to finish the product.

Finally, an example of an algorithm for making a carved jewelry box with your own hands. We will analyze step by step how to make a beautiful box.

1. First you need decide on a project for beginners, it is optimal to start with a contour thread. The pattern will not go deep on a flat surface, the lines will form only the outline of the picture. It will require the preparation of the box itself, well, if it is made of soft wood. Carvers such blanks are called "linen."
2. Ideally, if the beginner has already mastered the technique of creating stencils and templates. But you can try just transfer the sketch to the base, the main thing is not to rub it with your fingers. It is convenient to use the puncturing technique in this case.
3. Threaded workpiece adorn starting from the back. Errors there will not be so noticeable, but at the beginning there are always more.
4. Defects in flat-necked carvings - this is a common situation. In order not to destroy the pattern, the carver can attract superglue to his assistants. It is perfectly absorbed into the carved surface of the casket, forming a plastic film on it. But glue must be applied not everywhere, but in places where the lines converge.
5. After the back surface is cut out, you can proceed to the side. And only when everything is ready, and the hand is already "full", you need to engage in threading the cover. Nevertheless, this is the most important part of the work.
6. Usually a box also wants paint, or rather, slightly change its tone with varnish or stain. If you have to work with varnish, the process will be multi-stage. Have to cover the product in several layers. And each time you need to wait until the previous layer dries. Simplifies the work by spraying the casket.

No theory can compare with practice: it can only inspire for feats of art. To some newcomers, drawings and drawings of future carvings seem too complicated, but if you just look a little into the principle of craft, the icons and diagrams become clear. And transferred to a tree, they inspire pride in themselves and give an excellent result.

See how to make a decorative box of wood with your own hands in the next video.