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Dremel Rotary Tool Wood Carving
Aug 15, 2015
How I Carve Wood With a Dremel Rotary Tool
Have you ever wanted to carve wood but lack the inclination to get out the chisels? Maybe you feel you either don’t have the talent or just don’t have the time to learn the skill that is involved. But you still want to carve some wood that result in some beautiful wood carvings. Have you contemplated wood carving with a rotary tool?
There are other alternatives to hand wood carving out there. There is CNC, (Computer Numeric Control), aka Shopbots. With this tool, you either make a design on your computer or find one already done and set up for the CNC, make adjustments to depth of cut, x and y axis.. etc. then let the computer and the router cut for you. A ton of companies have sprung up as of late offering several options. This isn’t a cheap tool though and seems to have as much of a learning curve as hand carving.
You can do some basic carving for making signs with a router. This option sort of limits you to 2 dimensional designs though. Thus the detail and beauty of old school hand carving isn’t really available. The size, shape, and how a router is built simply limits what you can do with it.
Then there’s the rotary tool. Or what many simply call the Dremel. There’s still a good bit of skill involved, but in my opinion, still a good bit easier to learn than the skill required to carve wood by hand. Wood carving with a Dremel rotary tool is certainly quicker and with some practice you can get more detail than you can doing it with chisels.
I’ve made a series of videos showing how I use my Dremel rotary tool to carve wood. From start to finish I show how I take a block of wood and put a fairly detailed wood carving design on it. Part 2 in the series is below. I’ve posted the intro and Part 1 already in a previous blog than can be found by clicking here.
Or just click here and go to my youtube channel to watch the whole series from beginning to end.
I hope you enjoy these videos I’ve made about wood carving with a Dremel rotary tool and get inspired to try it yourself. I find a calming peace in my body and soul when I sit down and carve wood, I hope it does the same for you.
Redneck Know How Blog
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An option for dealing with nail holes and voids in a table top made with pallet wood.