Anyone who carves logs will tell you that cracking is a thing. Not necessarily a problem, just a reality to consider. A log will do fine until it is cut and de-barked, as these will hasten the drying process. The drying process happens unevenly in a log, and this leads to cracking patterns that are often predictable to the trained eye, but I’m not there yet :).
While I cannot explain the repair process as well as Kyle Hall (see his repair videos) or Ryan Cook (see his repair videos), I can tell you about my variations and how I make the repair-or-not-repair decision.
Much of the repair advice I’ve heard starts with the assumption that you are carving “green” wood and want to delay the cracking process as long as possible, or scenarios where it’s already been a year, and your carving is now in need of repair. My situation is different in that I’m working with wood that is long dead, so cracking patterns have sometimes emerged before I begin to carve. It’s hard for me to know because I’ve never worked with green wood, and I have no long-term perspective because at the time of writing I’ve been carving for less than a year.
Variation 1: Rather than waiting, I like to block out the carving and begin the smoothing process, then bring it indoors where it can dry as rapidly as possible. After a week or two the necessary repairs become obvious. The gnome pictured here looked fine when initially carved, with a few small cracks here and there, but two weeks in a dehumidified basement took its toll. This is a good thing, since I can now address the issue before going into the finishing stages. The second picture shows round #1, filling of the largest cracks. As a beginner/hobbyist, it doesn’t matter how much time I spend on these phases!
Of course, not all cracks are bad, and some carving styles and subjects tolerate cracks better than others. In the case of a rustic bear, some cracking may give it character. With pumpkins, the cracks can be hidden within the normal folds of the carving. But when gnomes are the subject, my preferred style demands a clear, smooth, glassy-painted surface with no cracks whatsoever. As you can see with one of my early gnomes pictured here, I had already painted him before the cracks developed, and had to back-track. This is after one or two rounds of filling cracks with chips and a mix of wood glue and sawdust that I’m trying to perfect, and if you look closely, you can see that I’m not above using spackle (Variations 2a and 2b). I’ve even heard of people using Bondo for this, but I find that spackle is much easier to work with, and it’s slightly less “automotive” looking.
Here’s another series showing the repairs on my “mailbox bear”. He’s more of a rustic carving so I overlooked many cracks, but the one running down his face and body was impossible to ignore to the point of distraction. For something like this, I draw the line if the casual observer would fear the carving was about to “fall apart”. This bear also shows one of my biggest take-aways from Kyle Hall’s video. That is, on a bear anyway, the filler material is easily hidden by re-furring over the seams.
Filling material: Kyle Hall has at least two interesting methods for creating the filler material:
- Make a small crack bigger by running your chainsaw through it at a certain depth, then fill the crack with some pre-cut slices that are 1-bar-width wide.
- Or pre-cut a bunch of narrow wedges on a bandsaw and use them.
I love both ideas, but sometimes expanding the crack is not an option, and I do not yet have a bandsaw for option 2. I’ve also seen people create jigs for creating wedges on their table saw, but once again I don’t have the right tool. At first I used shims from the hardware store (Ryan Cook recommends cedar shakes), but I wanted to match the wood species if possible, which brings me to Variation 3.
Variation 3: Create your own wedges using a “froe”. It’s a long blade with a handle at a right angle, originally designed to make wooden roofing shingles. It’s basically a precision wood splitter, and I had the added satisfaction of creating the mallet from an Ash log (very heavy, probably over-kill). I like the “old-school” aspect, and the way it allows me to use scrap wood in the same species as the carving. It’s an interesting and capable tool.
