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.