Grain
A person who begins woodcarving is challenged to learn to work with the fiber and grain. Hardness and fragility vary with the species of wood. In general, wood tends to break in the "split direction", the direction in which the fibers separate. In the composition of work, one must work with and around this. Each direction of cut feels and works differently. Sharp tools are essential in allowing the artist's sense to shape the material.
Planks of wood are said to be quarter-sawn when the growth rings are more or less at right angles to the thickness. If the growth rings are more parallel to the width, then the plank is said to be slab-cut. While slab-cut planks are seasoning, they tend to cup in a direction so as to "straighten" the growth rings.
Seasoned wood never completely stabilizes, but continues to swell and shrink with seasonal humidity and temperature variations. Any design concept using wood must allow for the particulars of this dimensional variation. Warped wood may be described as bent, twisted, or cupped, or some combination of those modes.
Read more about this topic: Wood Art
Famous quotes containing the word grain:
“Whan that the firste cok hath crowe, anoon
Up rist this joly lovere Absolon,
And him arrayeth gay at point devis.
But first he cheweth grain and licoris,
To smellen sweete, er he hadde kembd his heer.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“He showed me that the lines of a good helve
Were native to the grain before the knife
Expressed them, and its curves were no false curves
Put on it from without.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“He never doubts his genius; it is only he and his God in all the world. He uses language sometimes as greatly as Shakespeare; and though there is not much straight grain in him, there is plenty of tough, crooked timber.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)