Glazing your 3D Carving - A Step by Step Guide

[tmerrill]

Hi all,

I have just completed a guide you may find useful if you are interested in finishing your 3D carvings using a glaze to add depth.

The document should open as a .pdf file and allow you to read and/or print.

I hope you find it useful. Any questions, please ask.

Tim

Brian - 11/12/2009 Copied to technical archive and non-technical responses - original topic can be found here -> http://www.vectric.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=6622

[cncworks]

Great tutorial!

One thing I didn't see though was how you kept the glaze from the background. Just careful brushwork?

Donn

[tmerrill]

First, thanks to all for the nice comments and PM's. My personal gain in writing this was to get the satisfaction of helping others, and that has worked.

Donn,

Interesting observation and question. Up to this project I had always shaded the dish around the design, just keeping it a little lighter so the image would stand out. For this project, I talked myself into leaving the dish natural so the image would really stand out. You can't be that careful with the brush, so I ended up with a border of glaze to be removed. The FlexCut scrapers really worked great here. When I put the shellac on the image prior to the glaze, I did cover the entire dish. So all I had to do was scrap the glaze off the surface of the shellac and never came close to touching bare wood. But it was still very tedious, especially with the 3D images being so small. I actually made two complete story boards, so got to do it to twice as many images.

Thanks for asking.

Tim

[jhop]

Thanks Tim, you will see from my next question how helpful this is to me.
Now for the dumb question. I stained a sign carved in birch plywood with water base stain. Can I seal it with spar urethane without messing up the stain?
I'm not doing anything until I see you answer.

Thanks

Jim

[tmerrill]

Hi Jim,

You should not have any problems doing this as long as the stain has dried good.

There are exceptions, but normally you can put any finish on any stain as long as it has had time to dry. Once the solvent flashes off, whether it be water, oils, spirits, etc., what is left is stable and hard.

Time to dry thoroughly is harder to predict. If time is not a big issue, give it as long as you can. With water based stains and glazes you should be safe in ~24 hours. Sometimes the can will provide guidance for time to wait until coating with a different based finished, so that might be worth a look.

Tim

[Butch]

Thanks for the tutorial.
Here is my first attempt at detailed glazing.
I appreciate the effort you put into this pdf.
thks
Butch

[Phil]

Nice work on the turkey Butch.