Old Tips -- Part IV

Old Tips & Facts

From Fall 1998

Finishing Facts · Painting Tips · Brush Tips · Mouse Pads ·

Finishing Facts

When we finish our carvings, we find that we often transfer undesirables to the surface of the carving. We use lacquer and sealers before and after painting. We were getting these substances on our hands as we sprayed them. We found a solution for both problems.

We now insert a pushpin were possible. The pushpin becomes a "handle" for the carving. The super-size pushpin is best.

For larger carvings, we made some handles by inserting a de-capitated screw into a four-inch dowel.

For our Christmas ornaments, we insert the screw eye first, then insert a straightened clothes hanger through the screw eye. This enables us to spray several ornaments at once and hang them to dry !!

Painting Tips

This edition features Instructions for Painting Santa. This developed by our good friends Lee and Lillian Perkins from Knoxville, TN. We took LLPs Santa class some years ago. Lee fueled our carving fires with his easy manner and Lillian quenched our thirst for painting techniques. This page is based upon a handout LLP provided us in that class. It applies specifically to painting Bed Post Santa. Generally, it has application for painting a caricature's eyes.

We re-drew the eye painting sequence and added some formatting, otherwise it is in its original state. It is used here with permission of the Perkins.

GO TO [ Painting Santa ]

Brush Tips

A few brush care ideas for you this time, include:

Tap the brush on the side of the water container to rinse.
When finished painting, clean brushes with brush soap or any non-detergent soap (Ivory). Rinse well.
Work additional soap into bristles. Pull and shape with your fingers into the original brush shape. Lay flat until dry. Store with bristles UP.
While painting never leave bristles touching the bottom of the water container.
When loading the brush with paint, load paint only halfway up the bristles. This prevents paint from accumulating and drying just below the ferrule (metal band). This accumulation prevents the tip from being re-shaped.

Delta, maker of Ceramcoat® paints, provides some excellent painting and brush tips (no pun intended). Visit their page for more information.

Mouse Pads

These days everyone has a number of mouse pads. . What to do with all these?

Unused mouse pads make for good tool pads. We use several to catch our carving tools as we move about the Studio.

Put one in your carving box, too! They make good vibration pads for bandsaws, scroll saws, sanders, and so forth.

Updated: 01.12.2001