Tips And Tricks Using Carving Boards

Believe it or not there is a practical use for a carving board in woodworking. No this is not for cooking. I know somewhere down the line someone will find this thinking I am dealing with kitchen wares. This application is for wood shop uses.

To be clear on where it will be used, primarily the focus will be at your bench or wood carving station. For those who still apply some degree of hand carving it is a nice implement to have. It can save your blade from hazards especially when it is a nice Japanese carving tool.

How Does This Cutting Board Work?

When you get to hand carving, scraping, and cleaning it becomes important. Those nice chisels and especially the more delicate carving tools may thank you. Who has not had a tool slip in a direction we did not intend?

This slip can include an accidental drop on the top of the work bench. While it may not be the perfect solution, no one uses foam padding as a top to a work space. Yet here we can explore one additional element to add to the carving board.

There are mats which you can buy from hobby stores. These mats are essentially a pad that is often used in many crafts. I use this on top of my semi permanent cutting board. This provides a lot of protection to the blades edge in a slip while working.

Why not just use the mat and ignore the cutting board? These mats are really thin. It would not take much for a blade to slice through them. Those who hand carve know how sharp our finer tools can be. It is like using a razor blade yet with a thicker body, and the force behind it will do damage.

Having both in place is added insurance to protecting your tools. The wrong slip will go through the mat but take away the initial worst of the potential impact. The carving board behind the mat allows the blade to settle without hitting something to permanently damage the edge.

Size of Carving Board Is Important

You will want the size of the carving board to be considerably larger than the typical kitchen cutting board. When in use it will need to cover the space on the bench where your carving projects typically take place.

How much room you have on your work bench will often dictate this. In my opinion the larger the better. Clearly this surface can be used in other applications. So keep that in mind as it may be beneficial as a buffer in other projects.

There are two kinds of carving boards you can use. A mobile board and a semi permanent board. The mobile is nice for you can take it to wherever you need work done. The semi permanent resides and is fixed as the top of your work bench.

In my shop unfortunately my workspaces are at times crowded. Running multiple projects at one time is a pain but often necessary as we all know. Due to this I keep my mobile cutting board to about 2 x 2 ft in size. There are times when I definitely wish it were bigger.

For the semi permanent board it simply is a self made joined sheet of whatever softwood you can find. It doesn’t have to be pretty. Cut it to the size of the workbench top and fasten it down. You are ready to go.

Species Of Carving Board Matters!

Keep in mind this board will never be used in food preparation. So this is an altogether different kind of board. You will want a softwood of some kind. Its purpose is to catch accidental slips and blade impact.

A hardwood may be more durable, yet we are not focused on what is durable. We rather are seeking to minimize blunt force to a blades edge. Here a softwood helps aid in this.

When you are selecting the lumber for this project try to ensure there are as few knots in the wood as possible. They as always present issues for many reasons. Here it becomes a denser material for a blade to come into contact with.

The species you choose does not need to be of any special kind. Common local lumber will work. Function is everything. Let’s explore some possible options if one is looking for the best of two worlds in durability and protection.

Finding Balance In Durability And Protection

For our purposes a softwood is desired of the right hardness. If one really wanted to go to the extreme you could use Balsa wood as its janka hardness is around 90. This is not a realistic balance in durability and protection though.

The reality is a harder wood is needed. Without getting into searching for a pricey region specific lumber, such as Northern White Cedar at a hardness of around 320, we turn to pine.

Pine itself can range widely in hardness. It would be best to go with Eastern White Pine at a hardness of around 380. I would try to avoid anything in the 500 range and up which can be many other pine species. Yet there is Limber Pine at around 430, and Lodgepole Pine at about 480, then Jeffrey Pine hits that 500 janka lbf mark.

Lowe’s does sell 1in thick and 12in x 12ft Eastern White Pine. For the amount of board its is not a bad price. You can cut and then make your top according to what you need. No it is not as cheap as plywood. Yet there is a reason to avoid that route.

Why To Avoid Plywood As A Carving Board

Plywood is made from veneer cuts. These veneers are then glued to each other being rotated at each layer 90 degrees. When you begin to search for the wood used for making these sheets you will find either “pine” with no specific species, or often Yellow Pine.

Southern Yellow Pine rates at about 870 in janka hardness. In addition to this, as these layers are glued together the goal is to gain added strength for structural support. On all fronts this is not ideal for fine carving tools.

You are at more than double the hardness of an Eastern White Pine board just in the wood species which is used. For heavier and more durable chisel work this may be fine. For more delicate Japanese carving tools I would personally stay away from plywood.

If your goal is to provide an all in one solution to this I would hate to advise making a workbench top out of Eastern White. In of itself, it simply is not durable enough. If you do not want to go with an additional surface as the cutting board, the plywood is the next best option to serve a dual purpose.

Having the cutting mat on top of the plywood would at least aid in giving some cushion in a slip and tool impact.

Let’s Talk Workbench Tops

If you have been to Lowes or Home Depot then you have seen those pretty work benches which they sell. Aside from them being too small for me in most applications they are either metal or some pretty sealed wood. I avoid these ready made solutions.

A metal benchtop for woodworking is generally a bad idea. It is perfectly fine for other shops geared for engine work or similar environments. Woodworking is unique from those other purposes.

In my work I never allow my table saw blade to lay and rest on the steel top of the table saw. Call me obsessive if you like. Yet steel on steel contact is never desirable.

This is the general line of thinking within a wood shop. Anywhere that blades within their various forms can come into contact with a surface it needs to at least be wood of some kind. As you get into finer blades for hand carving this is more critical than obsessing over a saw blade.

Most woodworkers use wood benchtops due to simplicity and cost reduction by nature anyway. I added this segment to this article for those who may be looking at those nice stations at the home improvement stores. Unless it fits or serves a specific purpose I would stay away from them.

Every Surface As A Potential Carving Board

If you plan on using your benchtop as part of your carving board surface, I would advise to not seal it. None of my workbench tops are sealed in my shop. I treat every surface as if it is a carving board. In a wood shop this is important.

Understandably one must take into account how far one goes with sealing and finishing a surface. A simple coat of polyurethane will do little harm to any blade which touches it. What I am speaking of here is a finish with provides a layer of durability and hardness. This is especially true of two part finishing systems.

Why do I leave my benchtops raw? Even though I may not be using hand carving applications at each station I do have other sensitive blades. At my cnc mill and router stations I have bits that I regularly will lay on the wood surfaces.

In this case while the wood is often plywood, an unfinished top is softer and more like a carving board. Sealing the wood can create a harder layer at the surface where the sealer and wood bond together.

There is rarely any harm that can come to a bit or saw blade by laying them on a surface. My concern is twofold. First accidents happen from dropping the bit or blade, or I could drop something onto them while retooling equipment.

Secondly at my cnc mill I will often be working on some kind of hand carving or clean finishing with hand blades. Thus why I have a portable or simi permanent carving board for use. The benchtops being unfinished is for when less delicate blades are in use but still providing protection.

Shop Dynamics Apply For Personal Needs

No two wood shops are the same. Within my work all of my needs are associated with fine woodworking. Roughly 70 percent of the time each of those needs is associated with wood art in some format.

Due to this I treat my shop differently than others would. It is for this reason I tend to be a bit more obsessive about protecting my more sensitive blades from hazards when working. They are not cheap.

At the end of the day the slip of a hand can cause more damage in cost than buying the wood to make a carving board. So in this regard for me it is common sense.

Many of the better carving tools can run near the cost of a nicer saw blade. We are not talking about the 10 to 20 dollar chisels at Home Depot. For me carving boards are a must, not an option.

Greatest Benefit When Using Carving Boards

They are by comparison to buying new quality blades cheap and disposable. With time, wear and tear on softer wood will require disposing and making a new carving board. Yet all it takes is one slip and impact to a carving tool to pay for itself.

The worst that can happen to most tools when it impacts these carving boards is they need to be sharpened. In my mind going back to the honing stones is no big deal if needed. The carving board did its job.

If you do manage to dent, chip, or damage your tool on the carving board, something went wrong. If this took place you may have been doing something which the tool is not designed for while working.

With harder woods an incident can cause edges to blunt. A drop can dent. An impact at the wrong angle and at the edge of a tip can chip. All around the greatest benefit with carving boards is saving you money while keeping you working.

Minimizing downtime is part of saving your money.