 Welcome back to Whittling for Beginners, Whittling with Salty. Last time we were just starting on the project of making a chain, and this is what we want to end up with. And so we're going to go through some of the steps again. We were working on this part of the project, but in order to do that, we first have to make a layout on here so that we get our chain links all in the same place. And to do that, we used a pattern that we made using a circle the size of the width of our stick. We lay out the chain links, and then we lay out the chain links that are going to face in the other direction so that we don't cut through them. And by marking this, then we can go over and we can mark these chain links on this side, and then the ones that we're going to carve facing in the other direction. And you do that on all four sides of the stick. And if you're careful in laying that out, you should have no problem. Of course, as you're carving, you can always adjust things a little bit. The piece that we were working on last time now has been, the sides have been cleaned out. The last time I showed you at the end how we finished cleaning out the sides here so that we can carve the chain links. And to do so, then, well, we want to make sure that our chain links are nice and square, flat. We don't have any rough edges any place. And as soon as we get those carved out, then again we have to remark that chain link from where it was on top. We can see here where it's supposed to be, and we mark our chain link. We don't have to worry about the inside at this point. And we mark on the other side here. And then in order to finish this, then we must cut in between so that we get the individual links laid out so that we can carve the interior of the link. This one is pretty well done except for the third side, which is not finished. When we have done that, we can begin to carve our links. The one on the end here will finish that one to start with. Make sure that your corners are nice and clean. And then this side I have cleaned out. Now we're going to clean out this other side here. Make your stop cut. Always make nice little chips. Don't try to hog it all at one time because that's the way that the person can get into trouble because you try too hard and sometimes accidents happen. You cut something off the stick that you didn't want to cut off or in those really bad cases you might slip and injure yourself. And we don't want to do that. Almost everybody that carves has cut themselves a little bit at one time or another. And that's not too bad because the way we're built we heal up again. It gets to be more of a problem if you cut your shirt or pants because that doesn't heal up and sometimes that causes discord in the house. We'll finish carving this out. This end link that I'm working on is connected to the spacer between the projects. This little part here. The other end is done differently. That's just to give you a little practice on doing it two ways. There's other ways that it can be done also. Again I'm going to use a marking pen. I don't ordinarily do that. I ordinarily use a pencil because a marking pen will often bleed into the wood and make marks where you don't want it. But the inside of the chain link then would have to follow about in this pattern. It comes fairly close. And don't worry about that because you'll have plenty of room. I'll show you how that works out. But we'll mark our chain link like that. And then we would do the same thing again on the other side so that we know where we are going to remove the wood. Now the first thing we'll do is we'll want to clean out this wood down here. And the easiest way to do that is to keep making little stop cuts on each end. You can round them off later on. We'll make a cut lengthwise and then take out little slivers. Always work carefully. Taking small slivers so that you don't go beyond the cut that you want to make. On the bottom here you have to make kind of a little curve cut. And if you've made your stop cuts you should not be in any trouble. One of the reasons that I like to use pine for carving is that it smells good as you carve. Fairly easy to work with. Some people prefer bass wood. And that's a fine carving wood also. Aspen is another wood that is often used for carving. It's a little bit more difficult to carve than pine but not very much. Some of these slivers you just break out by cutting on all four sides. It looks a little bit crude but it works. And you can work like that from both sides until you have cleaned that out. And then I would also carve out between the ends of the links. Your other links will be run fairly close to the edge. And again you're doing the same thing. Make little stop cuts here on both sides and cross ways. And then just take out those little slivers in between so that the trade links are set out individually. If you're working on a table like this, a regular table at home it might be a good idea to have a little cutting board of some kind that you can work off, work from. I even have one on my carving bench because sometimes you might be working rather close to the table top and you don't want to be making cuts in the table top even if it's just a work table. Keep things nice and neat and clean. That's the same way that we clean out all around the chain links. When we have done that these three and a half links are still fastened together. The other two and a half links are loose. You can notice that as I carve the links I carve the outsides rounding. And I do that so that we get lots of room in between our carvings. You notice that the markings for the sticks were rather close. And here we have a chain link that is partially carved out on two sides. There are one, two, three, four places that you have to carve from. And if you take them in turn a little bit at a time they loosen up very easily. You have to be careful now when you're doing this that you're not putting a lot of pressure from the back of your knife onto the next chain link because that's how you can begin to split things. So you have to be very, very aware of where the pressure is on the chain link as you're carving. Because remember you have a knife that is a couple inches long and if you remember anything from high school physics class the mechanical advantage is very dramatic. When you're considering that you're working with a sixteenth of an inch at the knife tip and you're say two inches away that's thirty-two times the amount of force on your knife tip that you're multiplying from one part to the other. So you work those corners out a little bit at a time, little shavings and rounding out your chain link as you go and carve along side at the same time so that you free up the side of your chain link. A little bit at a time. If you were using other types of tools, for instance worn tools, exacto, general, there are a number of tools that are made, that were illustrated in our first show. Little short pieces, little short blades that are curved. That would be somewhat easier at this point juncture but a nice pointed knife such as this works very well. If your hands are able to handle a smaller blade that also could make the job a little bit easier. Always be careful when you're carving and putting pressure on things that you know where your knife blade would go if it slips or if something would accidentally break. Once in a while you'll find a piece of wood that has a flaw in it. Some place inside. Maybe it's a split from something else. Maybe the tree got caught in the thunderstorm one time and was severely stressed and strained and it had some splits inside and so as you're carving you might run across something like that and things will come apart on you when you don't want them to. Didn't expect it. So you always have to be aware of where your knife is and where it can go if something goes wrong. Much like defensive driving. Always have to be aware of where your car is and where it could go. We call this defensive whittling. Being aware of where the knife blade is. Keep working your way around the link. I've known carvers who get anxious at a point like this and then they try to wiggle the link to see if they can break it loose and chances are they do and chances are also pretty good that they break it in a place they didn't want to. And then you either have to get the glue bottle out and start over if you can or repair it the best way that you know how. So it's always better to take your time. Work very easily. When it's ready to come apart it'll let you know. Whittling can be very, very engrossing. As the whole world disappears it's a good way to relieve stress because after all if you have a sharp knife in one hand and a piece of wood in the other hand you don't have time to think about other things. You have to keep your mind on what you're doing. There's our chain link, it's loose. You see all we have to do with the end is do a little bit of trimming and then we have to do the same thing on the other side of the link, the other half. If you make your chain links about this size now see we have another chain link loose here that looks just about like the other ones. And we would still have a couple more to go. But making chain links is one of the neatest things that a person can do. It's very amazing to a lot of people they watch and they don't quite know how you put that all about. Well, we start out with a blank of wood and we mark it off carefully. Space the links, every other one leaving a little bit of room in between so that you can cut in between and carefully cut down the sides remark the chain link and cut in between the links cut in between these links and now you can see where they lay so it's not going to be so difficult. Then we begin to cut out the empty spaces in between do that all the way oh you could do them one at a time also just to clean them all out so that when I start to carve I can begin to round off my blades my chain links first I do the outsides all of them and then I would when I have all of the outsides done then I would start working on rounding off the inside so that eventually we would come up with something like this and then all we have to do is cut the corners loose like we did just now don't forget that it's always important to keep your knife blade sharp I like to use a little sharpening stick that I make myself with wet or dry sandpaper with 400 grit to 600 grit 1500 or 2000 and maybe a little piece of leather or you could use a little piece of belting you can use a piece of a whole piece of blue jean put a little bit of soft scrub soap on there and let it dry it just helps to polish the knife finally and you can use water just for touching up I don't even bother just lay the knife blade down on there flat because there's a little bit of give under here with the foam rubber then maybe four or five times on one side and four or five times on the other side move to the next finer grit four or five times on one way four or five the other way and finally get to the 1500 grit or 2000 grit where it's getting very very smooth and then finally just polish it this kind of takes off any wire edge that's left when you're polishing, honing like this then you can tip the blade up just a little bit because what you're attempting to do is if there's a wire edge you want to bend it back and forth and break it off you can check for sharpness by looking under a bright light and see if there's any reflection from the edge of the blade you can run it down your fingernail easily and if there are any little nicks or grooves they will catch on your fingernail and you will show you don't have to touch it this way because you might cut yourself and you really would want to do that if your blade is sharp whittling is easy and fun next time we're going to work on carving a ball in a cage we're going to put all of our skills together that we have learned so far and we're going to carve a ball in a cage so have fun whittling keep your knife sharp and we'll see you next time