This is the third in a series of posts about carving a little whimsical house from an old cedar fence post. See Carving a whimsical house, Part 1 for the introduction.

In Part 2, I finished carving the roof. The next thing to do is establish the roof line and gables, and carve the sides down in preparation for the doors and windows. To that end, the first order of business is to draw the roof line similar to this:

I use a Typhoon “bud” burr, shown on the right, to cut the roof line in the wood. If you
don’t have that particular burr, a flame shape or a taper would probably do just as well. This line doesn’t have to be terribly precise; just be careful not to carve away the roof.

The picture on the left shows the house after I’ve cut the roof line. You probably noticed that the bottom line looks like I cut it with the same burr. I might have. That bottom line, by the way, is where I’ll carve the rocks that the house sits on.

The next thing to do is carve the space between the roof and the base relatively flat so that the roof overhangs the house. I’ve used several different burrs for this and still haven’t decided which one I like the best. The 9/16″ Typhoon that I used for rough shaping the roof works okay, although it’s kind of hard to get the middle portion. However you do it, be careful not to go too deep. Also don’t worry about getting it perfectly flat. At this point, the most important part is to carve down the triangle that makes the gable on each end.

Above you can see that I’ve carved the gables, and then drawn lines to outline the trim board that serves to separate the wall from the gable. The next step is to relieve that board by carving down the wood above and below it.

Carving away the wood below is easy enough: just outline with the “bud” burr and then carve the rest of the wall. Carving the gable is a bit of a pain. I’m still experimenting with the best way to do that. If the area is large enough, I’ll use the bud or a flame shaped Typhoon burr. If it’s smaller, then the ruby carver seems to work pretty well. However I’ve done it, though, I’ve not been able to get a good sharp line. I keep trying.

Here’s what my house looks like after carving both gables and the walls on all four sides.

Again using the Typhoon bud burr, I roughed out the rocks that make up the base of the carving. I probably made a mistake using that large burr for this, because the resulting rocks have too much space between them. I had to do a lot of smoothing and shaping work to get it to look even halfway decent in the end. Live and learn, I guess. I would suggest taking your time with a ruby carver or perhaps a long taper Typhoon if you have one. In any case, something smaller and less aggressive than what I used.

After I finished roughing out the rocks, I spent a little time with the flap sander to smooth the walls a bit so that I had a reasonably flat surface on which to carve the doors and windows. If you don’t have a flap sander, a sanding drum will work as will any other burr that leaves a relatively smooth surface. The surface doesn’t have to be completely free from scratches, as you’ll be cleaning it up later. But you probably want something pretty flat for the door and window frames.

Next time: doors and windows.

This is the second in a series of posts about carving a little whimsical house from an old cedar fence post. See Carving a whimsical house, Part 1 for the introduction.

In the first part, I cut a piece of fence post into four blocks, each 2″ x 2″ x 3″ high, and drilled a 3/8″ hole in the center. The result is shown on the left.

I should note here that all of the carving on this piece is done with the Foredom power carver using various bits and burrs. It’s important when using these tools to wear eye protection, have some type of dust collection apparatus, and wear a respirator or some other way to protect your lungs. Power carving produces a lot of dust, and you do not want that stuff in your lungs. You might also want to wear ear plugs if your dust collection system is especially noisy.

I also want to point out that this series of posts shows how I carved one house. This isn’t the only way to do it. In fact my method is constantly changing as I become more familiar with using the tools. This is only the fifth one of these houses I’ve made, so I’m still just a beginner.

With that out of the way, let’s get started.

Oh, by the way, you can click on any of these pictures to get a larger view. Although the “larger” view might not be a whole lot larger. I seem to be having trouble currently uploading larger pictures.

I find it best to start with the roof. Establishing the roof line sets the stage for the rest of the house. Also, if you carve the rest of the house and leave the roof for last, it’s very possible that you’ll run out of wood to complete the roof you want. The style of roof I’m creating here can eat up quite a bit of wood. I had to throw a Cottonwood bark house away once because I didn’t leave enough space for the roof. I was carving that one with knives and gouges.

In the picture above, you can see that I’ve drawn a rough profile for the roof and chimney. Using a 1/2″ coarse Typhoon burr, I first outline the chimney.

The picture at the right shows how I begin to rough out the roof. The Typhoon burr is pretty aggressive, so I’m careful around the chimney, and I leave a lot of extra wood. I’ll come back later with a less aggressive burr and shape it.

Although the burr is aggressive, the cedar is a medium-hard wood and it takes some time to remove all that wood. Be patient and check your outline from time to time so that you don’t take off too much.

It took me about 20 minutes to finish roughing out the roof to this point. That’s okay. I’m not in a race to see how quickly I can carve one of these little houses. I’d rather take a little extra time than get in a hurry and either destroy the carving or, worse, lose control of the tool and injure myself. Running that Typhoon burr over a thumb hurts. Trust me.

Remember, too, that making a mistake isn’t fatal. These houses are supposed to be whimsical. They’re certainly not architecturally correct. If you inadvertently carve through the chimney, for example, don’t worry too much about it. You can always carve it to look like the chimney is falling apart. Carvers don’t make mistakes; we make adjustments.

Next, I shape the chimney using a smaller and less aggressive Typhoon burr. I also put a few dips and humps in the roof surface in order to make it a little less uniformly flat, although that turns out not to be necessary for the roof style I chose; the process of adding the roof tiles makes for an irregular surface.

The last thing I did before beginning to carve the roof tiles is go over the roof with a 120 grit flap sander to remove most of the scratches left by the Typhoon burrs. Again, that’s not strictly necessary because the next step has me going over the roof with a finer ruby carver, but it’s part of the process for me–something I do regardless of the roof style I choose.

I do all of the tiling with the flame-shaped ruby carver shown on the right. I’ve tried other bits, particularly for carving the lines between roof tiles, but they end up making deep narrow lines that I then have to spend time removing. I like the flame shape, but the ruby carver is a bit less aggressive than I’d like. It also tends to clog up on cedar, and I have to clean it now and then with a brass brush. Don’t use a steel brush.

I chose to do a tile roof on this house. This is something I’ve tried once before with a Cottonwood bark house, and also on an earlier Cedar house. Those two didn’t turn out so well. I experimented with one side of this roof to refine my technique. The photos and description I show here are from the second side. I think I almost have this roof style figured out.

Here you can see that I’ve outlined the first tile. The next step is to remove wood to the right and below so that the tile stands out from the roof. Then, draw lines for the next two tiles.

When I started, I found it helpful to draw lines for the tiles before outlining each one. I got the hang of it after a while and began just carving the next tile without first drawing a line. Do what you feel comfortable with.

Next, outline those two tiles, carve away wood to the right and below, and outline the next tile. Note that you don’t have to carve the whole rest of the roof down after outlining each tile. Instead, just carve down enough for the next tile. What you’re going for is a gentle slope from the top left to the center bottom.

Work your way down and to the right, outlining and carving away wood for each tile until you get approximately to the center of the roof. When you’ve completed the left side, it should look something like the large photo on the right.

The general flow of the roof should be towards the right and down. That is, tiles on the left should appear “above” tiles on the right. It’s okay if some tiles appear to stick up above where they “should” be; that’s part of the house’s whimsical nature. But do try to keep the general flow to the right and down.

Next, start at the top right corner and do the same thing, but work down and to the left. Again, take your time. When you get close to the center, where the tiles from the left meet the tiles to the right, you’ll probably have to make some adjustments. If there’s a trick to making that come out just right, I don’t yet know what it is. I will say, however, that this is the best I’ve done so far.

And that’s one side of the roof tiles, almost completed. You can see that I made a few mistakes, the biggest one being there on the far right where I have one tile sitting completely on top of another. It looks a bit strange, and is not what I had planned. Don’t know how I managed that.

If you have a smaller ruby or diamond carver, you might want to sharpen the edges between tiles. I suspect that with a bit more practice I’ll be able to get sharp edges between all the tiles. I did a passable job here, but some of the lines aren’t as clean as I’d like them.

That’s it for the roof tiles. Next time I’ll rough out the roof line and carve the gables.

An online carving group with which I’m involved is doing a “friendship stick” project. Each of 10 carvers makes 10 carvings from a 2″ x 2″ x 3″ block of wood, and sends one carving to each of the other carvers. Every carving has a 3/8″ diameter hole drilled through it from top to bottom. When we receive the carvings, we display them stacked on a 3/8″ dowel.

The only rules are that the carving cannot be larger than 2″ x 2″ x 3″, and it has to have that hole in the middle. Beyond that, anything goes. I decided that I’d make little houses from a cedar fence post. The picture above is one of the houses I’ve carved for the project. This blog post is the first of several parts showing how I go from fence post to finished house.

Above is a 13 inch long piece of cedar fence post. We’re replacing the 30-year-old fence around our property, and I pulled this post from the ground a month or two ago. The wood isn’t really cedar, but rather Ashe Juniper, Juniperus ashei. The stuff grows like weeds all over Central Texas, and the wood is commonly used for fence posts. That it’s held the fence up for 30 years is good testament to its suitability for that purpose.

The first step in making a little house is turning this post fragment into blocks. And the first step of that process is making one side reasonably flat. After carefully checking for and removing any nails and fence staples, I took the piece over to the bandsaw. I set my fence about 1/2″ away from the blade, adjusted the height, and made the cut.

(Yes, the picture is a little blurry.)

You can see a few ripples in the cut.  Normally I would have done with a resaw blade (a 1/2″ blade with four teeth per inch), but I had the 3/16″ blade on the saw and didn’t want to mess with changing it. The resaw blade would have made for a straighter cut, but this was good enough for my purposes.

With one flat side, I could then take the piece of wood over to the table saw to finish squaring it up. I used to do this on the bandsaw, but it’s easier to get square sides with the table saw.

The picture above shows the piece with three sides squared up. After cutting the second side, I set the fence for 2″ and cut the other two sides. Then I set it for 3″ to cut the blocks to the right length.

The resulting blocks aren’t quite square because my initial cut with the bandsaw wasn’t perfect. I could have made allowances for that and squared things up on the table saw, but it just wasn’t that important to me. As long as the blocks are approximately square and don’t exceed the size limitation, it’s good enough for making these houses.

The next step is drilling a 3/8″ hole through the center of the block. Again, perfect placement isn’t terribly important, although I don’t want to be too far off. I used to do this with a hand drill, but I recently got a drill press, which makes things a bit easier. I just mark the center by drawing lines from corner to corner, and then clamp it in my drill press.

Unfortunately, my drill press’s range is about two and a half inches. So in order to drill through a 3″ block of wood I had to clamp the block in my bench vise and use a hand drill to finish the job.

With the block cut and a hole in the middle, it’s time to start carving. Stay tuned.

Part 2, in which we carve the roof.