Incised Letter Carving

By: Joe Smith

19199 Bear’s Paw Lane

Strongsville, Ohio 44136

smithj@strongnet.org

(h) 440-238-7167

(cell) 440-221-2400

Incised vs. Raised Lettering

Incised lettering occurs when the surface of the wood is cut into in some way. Good incised lettering is cleanly cut. Support from the wood grain makes fancier, more delicate letters possible. A wide choice of letter styles is possible and the letters can be easily painted to highlight.

Raised lettering is also known as relief as the surrounding ground is reduced. Takes longer to produce but, the use of a router speeds this up.

Modern Roman Letter Style

The exercises that you will practice use modern roman also referred to new times roman on most computers. Letters of different fonts can easily be copied onto paper and then transferred to wood. All straight letters and some curved letters contain serifs. Serifs occur at the end of a free limb, or stem, as a small cross-line.

Carving Tools

Incised lettering is accomplished most efficiently using a variety of flat chisels and gouges of various “sweeps” or curvature. The number and size of the chisels and gouges will depend upon the size and style of the lettering. Since we will be carving 1 inch letters a 20mm straight chisel is desirable. Angle cuts, or obliques, create the need for a longer straight chisel of about 25mm. To cut the arms and counters a narrower straight chisel of about 8mm is helpful.

A #1 fishtail chisel 14mm and a #5 fishtail gouge 8mm are all that is needed to cut serifs.

Rounded letters are carved best with a #7 sweep gouge in a 6, 10, 14, 18, and 20mm. A flatter #5 sweep gouge 12 mm is needed as well.

Holding Carving Tools

Hold all carving tools with both hands unless you are using a mallet. Make sure that the front, or lowest hand, which is wrapped around the shank of the tool, is always resting on the surface of the wood or the work bench. Use a “pen and dagger” grip on the tool. The blade is held rather like a pen in the right hand. The edge of the hand, or the lower knuckles, rest on the wood. The tip of the middle finger rests behind the bevel and heel of the tool to support and guide the cutting edge from behind.

Sharpness

You cannot carve well unless your tools are kept razor sharp. A leather strop and sharpening compound are all that is needed to keep tools sharp if used frequently.

Mallets

When the work or wood is too hard or demanding for pushing tools by hand, a carver’s mallet is used. A carver’s mallet is round and its shape will not deflect the chisel or gouge if the blow is out of alignment.

The mallet strike starts at the shoulder, with the elbow kept into the body. The arm descends, but slows down just before the blow, to allow a relaxed wrist to whip the mallet onto the chisel or gouge handle.

Suitable Woods

Almost any close- and even-grained hardwood is suitable for letter carving. Mahogany, maple, cottonwood, and cherry all carve well. Bland vs. figured wood will be determined by the carver. Blander, light-colored woods will often highlight the lettering better.

Preliminary Stage

Preliminary designs allow the woodcarver to try out and firm up ideas, experiment with different letter styles and sizes, and adjust spacing between letters, words and lines. Make rough sketches before you draw precisely. Once scale drawings are made, transfer the lettering to wood using pencil. Do not use carbon paper as the ink left on the wood surface will smudge and dirty the work.

Carving Sequence

1 vertical straights

2 diagonal straights

3 horizontal straights

4 corners

5 curves

6 serifs

To maximize efficiency, the carver minimizes ‘down time’ by using each tool for as long as possible. Different sections of a letter (e.g. straight parts) are cut with different tools and using a different approach to other sections (e.g. curved parts).

‘Stab’ and ‘Stop’ Cuts

A stab cut occurs when the cutting edge of a carving tool is pushed or thumped into the wood. Sometimes just the corner of the tool is used.

A stop cut is one placed deliberately to prevent the wood fibers from tearing into areas where you don’t want them to. Stop cuts disappear in the final carving when they are incorporated into other cuts.

Depth and Angle of Cuts

Most incised lettering is cut with two side walls meeting at a center line, forming an inner V angle at the bottom of the resultant trench. Trenches of any width are usually incised at an angle of about 60 degrees, which gives the best overall light and shadow effect. It is important to cut the angles of the sidewalls as equally as possible.

Letter Families

Straight vertical and horizontal components only- E,F,H,I,L,T

Straight components with diagonals- A,K,M,N,V,W,X,Y,Z

Curved components only- C,O,S

Combination of straight and curved components- B,D,G,J,P,Q,U

Drawing Out the Letterforms

Ÿ Modern roman letters are made up of thick strokes and thin strokes

Ÿ The thick strokes are twice the width of the thin strokes

Ÿ The thick strokes are about one-eighth of the letter height

Ÿ With few exceptions, the thick strokes are vertical, or lie sloping diagonally from top left to bottom right

The curves are made up of thick and thin parts, aligned as the straight strokes, with the thickest part on the vertical axis.

Exercises

Vertical Stabbing with Mallet and Chisel

Using a 20mm straight chisel and mallet, produce a row of ‘upright’ stabbing cuts such as that required for the vertical stems of letters, which prevents grain breaking out in subsequent cuts. Try to create lines that are parallel and about 6mm apart.

Caution: When the chisel becomes imbedded in the wood lever the chisel handle back and forth across the width. Never rock an imbedded chisel edge from side to side, as this may snap off the edge.

Then try to make a stabbing cut in the center of the first line of cuts. This will give you practice with placing the chisel edge in the middle and parallel to the first set of cuts.

Angle Cutting with a Mallet and Chisel

Achieving a 60 degree angle to the wood.

1. Start vertically

2. Halve this to 45 degrees

3. Halve this again, and the move the tool down a little more

You may make a 60 degree template to begin with if you are not sure what the angle feels like.

Use some of your vertical stab cuts to practice making opposed angle cuts to remove a V trench. As with the vertical stab exercises, practice hitting the mallet with opposite hands.

You will very likely have to clean up the trench by hand and/or practice merging cuts.

Serifs

Adding serifs to a vertical trench such as that made in the last exercise will produce your first complete modern roman letter: I.

Serifs must look like an integral part of the letterform and never like an afterthought.

Serifs are deeper in the center than the trench from which they arise. They resemble an inverted pyramid. Serifs are best cut with fishtail tools: stop cuts are made first with a fishtail chisel, to control the wood grain within the serif, then a triangular chip of wood is removed with two side cuts from a fishtail gouge and an end wall cut with the fishtail chisel.

Horizontal Trenches

Letter carving is normally done with the wood grain running horizontally. This allows major cuts (vertical) to lie across the grain and gives the neatest, quickest result. Because horizontal cuts lie along the grain, the fibers tend to tear along the walls of the trench. When beginners clean up the trench it often times becomes wider and deeper than they wanted. When carving horizontal trenches, make a stop cut to prevent the horizontal grain tearing.

Make a series of parallel lines with the grain and stab cut carefully. When stabbing with the grain, the chisel tends to pre apart fibers rather than cut them. This means that you will need to be light with the mallet. On small letter parts you may use hand pressure only.

You should now be able to carve the letters H,T,F,L,E

Oblique Trenches

Obliques occur in several letters and should cause no problems if you can incise vertical and horizontal trenches.

Joining obliques takes several forms. A,M,N,V and W orientate across the grain, whereas K and Z orientate along the grain and require more care. The junctions of X and Y are relatively straightforward.

To a greater or lesser degree, there is always a problem with shortness of grain (wood fibers) at the junction of all these letters, and a careful approach needs to be taken, otherwise (for example with A), the result may be the crumbling of the inner apex.

Trace the letter A on your wood blank. The size of the chisel that you choose to cut the obliques should fall short of the serif and the short grain junction at the other end. To help prevent the loss of short grain fibers, the stop cut on the right oblique should extend past the center line junction. Also, use a light hand when tapping the chisel to remove wood from the obliques. Remember that the left oblique is a lighter cut than the right because it is thinner.

Use the fishtail chisel to make two stab cuts from the root at the top of the wide (right) trench, one to the wood surface at the apex of the letter, and another to the wood surface at right angles to the left trench. These should be light cuts to avoid ‘trauma’ to the short grain on the inner counter.

Now cut the apex, working the walls from right to left, swapping mallet hands as required.