# Carving White Oak vs Red Oak



## Sirnanigans (Apr 3, 2014)

So I spent a good 10 hours with a chisel and some red oak for my most recent project. It's the first project I have done any meaningful chisel work on, and the 'carving' is more or less joinery work but not actual joinery (square edged features).

Anyway, trashed that project later due to bad miters (...yep). Went to Rockler and grabbed some white oak instead to saw into my new pieces, mostly for finish results and grain.

Oops.

This stuff is hard as a rock. Red oak had one problem: tearing. If I could avoid that, I could chew through the stuff quick at times and ease into the final dimensions later with accuracy. Not white oak, no sir. White oak seems to have no problem tearing. I did 'chip' it during some practice, but that was a rookie mistake. Instead, it utterly demands slow, patient work, or it threatens to dull my chisels faster than I can sharpen them. 

My chisel was just sharpened with an arkansas stone and 1500 grit sandpaper, too. In the condition it's in, I'm considering using it to shave in the morning. Still, getting through this white oak has to be taking just as long as red oak with a dull chisel, or longer. I guess it's the cost of getting the right finish and hardness for the project in the end.

Just though I would share my experience and ask for others' experiences with the two oak species, particularly carving the stuff and/or hand cut joinery.

P.S. I tried sawing 36" lengths off of my 3/4 thick white oak board with a crosscut saw, completely unaware that a rip saw would be completely necessary. After 40 minutes of persistence and one successful cut, I picked up the circular saw and got all 21st century on the thing. Lesson learned.


----------



## cabinetman (Jul 5, 2007)

Red Oak, White Oak, and I'll throw Ash into the mix are hard and don't carve that easily. You will need very sharp tooling, to do hand cut joinery. They all will pare fairly well if the tool is very sharp, and the take is very thin. 


















.


----------



## Brian T. (Dec 19, 2012)

The bevel angle on the tool edge is an important consideration.
Measured, I see that wood working blades are about 30 degrees.

For oak, I suggest 25 degrees and you will need a mallet for sure.

All of my spoke shaves arrived with 28 degree bevels so, knowing nothing else,
I've kept to that.
That's a fairly big angle to push wood open = hard work.
All of my wood carving gouges (mostly Pfeil) are 20.

Endurance: I hone edges every 30 minutes or less.
Just a few licks on cardboard with chrome green.

I think that as the bevel angle is reduced, there's less and less steel behind it for support
Cuts with ease but crumples more quickly.
I use a dozen crooked knives and a few straight ones, they are all 12 degrees.


----------



## Sirnanigans (Apr 3, 2014)

These points are definitely holding true for me. Without a comparison to other woods, I can't say how slow going oak is, but I can say that the project only calls for carving 1/8" down across a 1/2" face, so slow isn't a big problem. 

An interesting note, however, is that I have found it incredibly easy to achieve a flat, smooth, square face with oak. Perhaps it's the necessity to move slow.

No mallet for me. I find that my chisel (unsure of angle, whatever stock Kobalt brand is) pares through it fine if I focus on guiding and pushing with seperate hands. With red oak, the amount I can remove without tearing is probably about 1/64 to 1/32, given that I am not going against/across the grain. With white oak, I can only achieve less than 1/128" at a time with control and confidence. 

Did I mention that 95% of the work is done across the grain? I assume that I am using the correct term here, meaning cutting the the edge parallel to the grain (not end grain or with the grain).


----------



## Gilgaron (Mar 16, 2012)

Have you tried countoured card scrapers? I've not tried to carve oak, but when shaping some tool handles from Indian Rosewood I found the scrapers to easily shape it versus other tools after roughing with a bandsaw, coping saw, and chisels. I'm getting better at the spokeshaves but they still are more ornery and fussy than I'd like.


----------



## Brian T. (Dec 19, 2012)

Another thing to consider trying is a skew at 25 degrees. The angled edge reduces the apparent entry angle for an easier push. I bought some 1/2" Narex skews (LV) which were 25 and that was hard work for carving. So, I scrubbed them down to 20 and they are my go-to skews. Very durable steel.

I have built up 10 crooked knives. Bought the blades and made my own handles from rosewood and mahogany glue-ups. Of course, I had to inlet a slot for the blade tang and skews were very convenient.

You're right = go slow, take it easy, thin cuts and you soon get to see what you wanted.

Spokeshaves. Those are almost too much fun to use. I bought a Stanley (#64?) but I think that they forgot to harden the blade = junk. OTOH, the $15 Samona from the local Home Hardware store have travelled more than a mile in birch. They sing when they are tuned up, I can hear them in the wood.


----------



## Dominick (May 2, 2011)

I started a relief carving in some oak slab, and got half way done with it. I have up on it, and that was a few years ago. Way to hard to carve.

Here's the carving. 






























Kind of lost interest in this as well. 
Just one of those things. Oak is rough 
Sorry for hijacking with pics.


----------



## phinds (Mar 25, 2009)

"red oak" and "white oak" are generic names for a couple of hundred species each. There are some red oaks that are harder than some white oak, and vice verse so don't count on "white oak" being harder than "red oak" or the reverse.

In any case, I agree w/ cMan ... it's a bear to carve and NOT normally a choice for carvers.


----------



## Woodworker Seth (May 9, 2014)

Dominick said:


> I started a relief carving in some oak slab, and got half way done with it. I have up on it, and that was a few years ago. Way to hard to carve.
> 
> Here's the carving.
> 
> ...


These are very impressive! (Sorry for furthering the hijacking)


----------



## Sirnanigans (Apr 3, 2014)

Dominick, that is a formidable looking slab of wood. My project is essentially a shadow box (picture frame type thing, for those unaware) with some stoppers to hold glass on that can be easily removed and reset. It's actually a game board frame, made to have replaceable boards. Anyway...

This little frame has 1/4" wide borders with 1/8" stoppers on their face flush to the outside edge, and face of the borders needs to be reduced to create these. This is relatively small work, and I can't believe, after my experience with this project, that anyone would take a hand tool to a log of white oak like that.

P.S. Totally aware that a router bit or fillister/rebate plane could have made quick work of the reduction around that stoppers, but I refuse to use power tools if I have hand tools, and I don't have a fillister/rebate plane. Besides, chisels are fun, and I enjoy sharpening them.


----------



## Sirnanigans (Apr 3, 2014)

Pics of the projects. Top face with stoppers is being reduced. Distances between stoppers is adjusted to make the image smaller.


----------



## Rob Brown (Jul 7, 2009)

*chisels*

my limited experience has directed me to use chisels that are scary sharp for carving. The more pressure you need to make the cut is the more likely a booboo will happen. Booboos bleed so a carving glove is a good idea, also.


----------



## cabinetman (Jul 5, 2007)

Rob Brown said:


> my limited experience has directed me to use chisels that are scary sharp for carving. The more pressure you need to make the cut is the more likely a booboo will happen. Booboos bleed so a carving glove is a good idea, also.


+1. :yes: A slip with a chisel is a nasty gash, even a dull one. A carving glove is cheap protection.








 







.


----------



## Brian T. (Dec 19, 2012)

Ah. Now I see the project in Post #11.
I would outline the raised parts with a stop chisel = a wood carver's chisel, double bevel, 20 degrees, probably a 1/12 would work well. Go easy with a carver's mallet. I could start the waste removal with something like 8/7, anything bigger would be awkward. Probably have to go around and around 3X or more for full depth. Finish with skews, no more than 1/2" wide, aka 1S/12 in Pfeil-speak.

Oaks. Genus Quercus. "The oak genus comprises 500-600 species; about 60 occur in the United States; 11 in Canada." (Farrar: Trees In Canada, p246)

The "red oak" group and the "white oak" group are similarities in wood anatomy details, such as +/- tyloses.

Relief carving in oak is often done before the wood dries as, like alder and such, it really tightens up.
Check out any dozen old churches in England. The exquisite relief carvings in oak are all over.I don't expect to ever buy tracery-bent gouges!

Scary sharp, using fine grit W&D automotive finishing sandpapers, is one of several techniques to maintain wood carving tools in a "carving sharp" condition. I've had no choice but to add it to my methods, specifically for crooked knives in the styles common here in the Pacific Northwest.
Me, I don't need a carving glove as I have an aversion to carving towards any of my body parts.


----------



## Sirnanigans (Apr 3, 2014)

I am very familiar with bad gashes from slipping tools. All in the same project, I sliced a 4" long, 1/4" deep (slanted, so not all the way through) gash into my knee with a sharpened pocket knife, as well as skewered my finger tip from the end lengthwise to the knuckle with a bent and sharpened carpenter's nail that I made into an awl.

That finger accident almost had me pass out, because as soon as it happened I instinctively pulled the awl away from the finger before I knew how badly I poked myself. I tore through some stuff with that curved awl, and nerve damage persisted for months. 

Point is that, just like Robson, I don't put anything but the wood in front of my chisel. I stabilize my guide hand by pushing it up against the wood before the chisel, not by grabbing around the wood.


----------



## Brian T. (Dec 19, 2012)

Crooked wood carving knives have all sorts of sweeps, just as gouges do (see London Pattern Book).
Held in your fist, a pull cut is far easier to control than a push cut. Be that as it may, I now wear a very heavy denim bib-apron as a chest protector. Dug in too deep, didn't back out, tugged at it and it popped out with the chip for a Ushaped cut about 1.5" across that really tingled.
Gotta consider the follow-through, the run out, with every cut.


----------



## Dominick (May 2, 2011)

My hands are either holding the tool together or one is always behind. I don't wear gloves, knock on wood. Lol


----------

