Next Step - Citrus

The basic design has been blocked out in ink. Here, I'm following
a number of drawings that are really studies of dried clementines and lemons. Mostly clementines don't have pips, though I've found some that did, and as I want to imitate the clementine shape and outer colours, I've mostly studied those. Both shape and colours are fairly complex, so it'll be another test to see if I can make my drawing concrete.

The dried fruit shows many indentations on the surface, so the cross-hatching in the design will be where this takes place. The vertical lines indicate where the fruit has dried along the edges of its sections; these show deeper indentations than the part which will show the sections of the fruit. The arrangement of pips will show some cut in half and others whole.

Tools I'm using at the moment? Some mini-gouges, tiny knives and scrapers. All had to be made and I might have to make one or two more curved ones to get into small, skewed recesses.

Half a Citrus

This is in boxwood - much easier to carve than tagua, knots and ridges notwithstanding. This wood is much used by netsuke carvers because its hardness and fine grain holds small, carved details very well.

I'm using some dried limes, lemons and clementines for live models, as can be seen on my carving slab, some photos for the inner parts and some drawings of tricky parts. It will be worked all over with texture, which will make it quite rough in the hand; if all goes well there won't be any smooth, polished part.

The staining will be time-consuming as there are so many variations across the outer peel and the inner 'flesh' and pips. The himotoshi will be formed from the bent stem at the bottom of the netsuke. The dimensions will be roughly 3.8mm x 2.5mm.

I'll try to take photos at various stages on development, so something can be seen of the processes involved. The current one shows the wood rough with the sections of the fruit and pips drawn in and some shaping to the underside. Beside it are the various dried fruits themselves. I'll be following the Clementine shaping of the dried example reasonably closely, though with some modifications.

Wasps' Nest

I've finished the tagua nut sliver which was started about June 2009. It's really just an experiment in high-gloss polishing and bas-relief work with what is essentially a flat plane across the tree and nest and isn't meant to be a netsuke, though it originally was. It's very tactile and feels good in the palm of the hand. I followed the design in the nut when I cut it across and 'found' the rough shape of the nest within, though I did some drawings before carving. The nut will darken to a honey brown over time, so the bark of the tree will be more distinct and the cracks on the bark will fill with dirt, making them more obvious. The stain on the nest and leaf will also correspondingly darken.

Originally, the back of the design was going to have himotoshi, an incised beehive and my initials, but after practicing incising on spare pieces of nut, the material really isn't suitable for it in very small detail, as all such incised work on tagua tends to have rough edges and background and looks crude. I then decided that I liked the feel of the polished tagua as is, so following my original thoughts of letting the nut dictate the outcome, I decided further to leave out the himotoshi and initials. So it's now really a one-dimensional, hand-held, relief miniature. Another instance of how the design can be changed in the making to one more suitable to the material! It's also another lesson learned - don't attempt to push the material too much beyond the limits of what it can do.

Tagua's really nasty for carving fine details because it has a tendency to chip and I don't generally find it to be a sympathetic medium, so am glad to get back to carving boxwood. When hard, the nut has a grain, which is laid down in layers as the tagua has dried. Working along the grain causes tools to slip and skid as the surface is like very hard candle wax; working across the grain can cause chipping, so only really tiny tools, much magnification and hours of scraping will overcome this tendency. It'll be a long time before I work the material again.

Tagua, wasps' nest, angled sliver from 3/16th" on the smooth, highly polished side to 1/2" on the matt 'tree' side, with the nest, twigs and leaf being a little polished; no detail on the reverse, just highly polished. Overall dimensions, just under 2" x 1 1/4". Very light staining on nest and leaf; turmeric and saffron on nest; turmeric, paprika and white tea on leaf; mordant for stain - alum. No acid mordant used for tagua, as a practice piece showed some disintegration of the nut surface; polishing papers up to 12,000 grit.

Tack Bowl

It's been a busy family summer, but I'm back to work now.

I wanted a support for carving netsuke, but didn't want a fixed bench peg, the traditional way carvers hold their work to steady it when carving.

I took an idea from a metalworker's pitch bowl, but scaled it down considerably. I found an almost hemispherical 5" metal bowl with a lip, hammered it into more of a hemisphere, part filled it with lead fishing weights, then filled it with white tack. The support for the bowl was made with four pieces of a thick scart cable, each taped together with insulating tape. The resulting rings were placed on top of each other and the whole ensemble covered with more insulating tape and two courses of looped stringing. It was then covered with cotton tape to finish it.

The carving is placed on the white tack, or, rather, a pit is dug in the tack, making a secure hold for the piece being carved. The contraption works and is heavy enough to hold the piece steady, without the bowl support slipping, when carving. Even with the lip, the bowl tilts as much as I'll need for carving purposes. Cost? About £5.00 and a couple of hours of work. Of course, I've now found out that there are small jewellers' pegs that can be clamped to a workbench and removed when not being used, but I'm satisfied so far with the d-i-y arrangement.

Snags

I'm half-way through carving a tagua nut netsuke and have hit difficulties, wanting to engrave a simple design on the back, but being completely new to engraving in any form. That being so, I've been practising the art on odd bits of nut for what seems like weeks, but the results are crude; the line's still uncertain, wobbly, even, and I'm getting more and more frustrated.

I know there's no substitute for continued practice and I'm determined to get it to the state where I feel confident enough to tranfer the results to the real thing. If I don't learn to do it now, I'll have to learn how to do it later, so it's a question of just ploughing on.

What I am learning, though, is while I'm quite confident about transferring the crafts I know, like dyeing and staining, to netsuke, when it's something I don't know, then I'm back to crudity and lack of confidence. What is odd, though, that I had no such issues when starting to carve in the first place, so I still can't really understand why engraving is such a problem. Oh, well, it's all in a good cause, I suppose. Moan over!

Erm, a revelation's just happened and might help. How daft can you get?

I visualised the results of what I was carving quite strongly before and as I was carving; I haven't done so with the engraving, even though I have sketches and drawings of what I want to achieve. In any art work I've completed in the past, I always had pretty strong internal visualisations of what I wanted to achieve, even if I changed things slightly while in the making of it. I've more of a sense now of what I need to concentrate on with etching; focus on achieving the outcome and stop fretting about tool use. Time will tell if I'm in the throes of delusion!

Hippo Ivory

I've recently acquired a whole hippo tusk (or tooth)from the lower jaw, 50 years old, much cracked, but with enough whole material to carve a number of netsuke and have lots left over for ojime, inlay work and other projects. At 4lbs weight, the most massive tusk I've ever seen, its cost of £100 was pretty reasonable.

I haven't yet sawn into it and am still studying where I should do so, but I have taken off some of the enamel and the underlying ivory is very white.

Its provenance is unusual. It was brought back to the UK in 1950 by a retiring member of the Ugandan Police Force and was acquired in Jinta, Uganda around the same date. It was inherited recently by the man who sold it on to me.

Hippos weren't a protected species in those days, and even in the early days of the CITES legislation, it still wasn't protected. Now it is, though not to the same degree as elephant ivory.

After inquiries to CITES/DEFRA, it was deemed legal to sell it on to me as both the seller and myself are in the UK, but if I do carve it and if ever those carvings are sold abroad, they'll require CITES certificates, which is why it's necessary to know the material's provenance.

Ivory

With the CITES restrictions on the material, it's now next to impossible to obtain elephant ivory - unless, of course, you can find the ever more rare old billiard balls. And I certainly don't intend to hack into the two old Thai bangles I possess; they're a rarity in their own right.

Many netsuke-shi now have resorted to using mammoth ivory, as did some of their predecessors. But that, too, will get increasingly rare. There is, after all, a limit to dead mammoth. It's also difficult to find pure white pieces that aren't too chalky. It won't stand water-based bleaches, stainings or cleansers because that can cause surface cracks that may deepen over time. It's also becoming more expensive at between £100-£200 per pound.

Other ivories? Hippo tooth, fossilised walrus tusks and some sharks' teeth are available, but these tend to be small pieces without the versatility of the bigger mammoth and elephant ivories. On the other hand, they can test the netsuke-shi's powers of adapting his/her skill to fit the material available.

Purists and collectors will probably hand-wring for eternity, but I see no reason why carvings can't also be made from the good ivory-like plastics now coming onto the market. They are, after all, just more blank canvases with qualities of their own. A good netsuke-shi would be able to exploit these.

Tagua Nut

I looked at the price of clean, white mammonth ivory and nearly wept (the same applies to clear amber), so bought some tagua nuts from a reliable timber specialist in Wales.

Of course, being me, I couldn't resist skinning one and cutting it in half to examine its structure, even though I was working on another boxwood piece. The interior suggested a design which I worked up in some sketches and I wanted to practice high gloss polishing, which the nut certainly takes well. It seems to be about the same hardness as boxwood, so would be a little softer than carving ivory. Polished, this piece is very slightly grey in tone, but has a similar appearance to some mutton-fat jades. Whether or not it will take himotoshi (the two holes that make the netsuke wearable as a toggle) without cracking remains to be seen. However, the piece is an experiment to see what the nut will do, so it won't matter if anything happens to it.

One thing not to do with tagua is to soak it with water; that will cause splits. The nut needs to be dried for around seven months after it's picked before it's of a hardness for carving and it's wise to pick out the small gelatinous bit from the stem hole so that the interior (especially if it has fissures, which most nuts do) can dry out evenly. I also keep the skinned material in a plastic bag with ventilation holes when I'm not working on it so it can dry out slowly; unskinned nuts are stored in a plastic bag without ventilation.

Magnifiers

I've old eyes - short and long sight and an astigmatism; the lot! I find I can only work on netsuke with my glasses off, but my eyes start to ache after about 45 minutes, so magnifying spectacles or glasses are in order. My optician at the daft end of the city said that "people don't ask for these, so, no, we don't do them." After searching all over, I found that no optometrist supplies them. I then bought some x3 clip-ons, but they're worse than useless, though my hand-held x8 magnifier is great, if useless for a carver, as I haven't got a stand and it's not wide enough at 3". I've now invested in a headband with multiple attached lens, which, when combined, should give me a much needed x8 vision and I can wear them with or without my everyday glasses.

There are many varieties of magnifiers, though, and I suspect that what people choose will have to suit their individual needs. There are table models, ones that rest on the collar bone, clip-on or stand alone jewellers' loupes, optivisors and the ones I've descibed above. Prices vary from very expensive German and Swiss precision lens to reasonably cheap, if straightforward, magnifiers. I'd have preferred to have found an optometrist to provide the correct types of lens, but if the over-the-counter route is the only way I can go, so be it.

The Loupe Store is the best supplier of magnifiers in the UK that I've come across online.

Staining, sanding and polishing

It takes hours. Once the netsuke is carved, decisions have to be made about its finish. Will it be stained? If so, there are a variety of colours and materials, from water or oil-based stains, commercial or homemade, and techniques, from boiling the piece, to repeated dippings in hot stain, to dippings in cold stain. Some netsuke-shi colour the piece only after sanding to a fine, polished finish; others stain before the sanding process because colouring in water-based stains raises the grain of the wood, which then has to be sanded down and polished. Some netsuke have staining in the crevices only, the rest being sanded off the piece; sumi ink, oak gall, yashi or other dark-coloured stains are often used for this purpose.

Whatever the process, sanding is important. Carvers usually work with grits from 200 up to at least 2000, using even finer abrasives and grits up to 12000 if they want a high polish. Other carvers use pumice or rottenstone powder as part of the process and slightly stain the piece afterwards to colour any powder trapped in the pores. Both sandpapers and powders are used with polishing compounds such as hard-finish waxes or hard-drying oils in the final stages of sanding. Final polishing may then be completed with a thin layer of oil or wax and buffed hard with a chamois leather or soft cotton (T-shirt cotton) cloth. Some netsuke-shi use an electric sanding/polishing wheel, while others prefer to complete the process by hand. Each piece is treated differently, with some perhaps having a high gloss finish and others a more matt sheen; all depends on the quality of the carved material and what end the netsuke-shi is trying to achieve. In general, the harder materials like boxwood, holly, ivory and tagua will take a high gloss, if so desired, while the softer woods respond better to a more matt finish. As well, only parts of the netsuke need be polished, while others may be left in a rougher state so that the piece varies in quality and appearance.

There are many oils and waxes. Those who want a stain with their oils can use boiled linseed or tung oils; those who don't may want to use pale walnut or grape-seed oils. The idea is to bring out how the light reflects the qualities of the grain of the wood and is the reason why varnishes and shellac are not encouraged; the latter result in the piece being too shiny and uniform. Thin coats of wax can be used instead, as long as care is taken not to clog the crevices of the carving with it. Thin layers seems to be the rule for both oils and waxes.

Some netsuke-shi experiment with urushi, or lacquer-work finishes. As with carving and other types of finish, be prepared for hours and, in the case of lacquer, days of work.

Finding tools

Mainly, it's difficult. There are some manufacturers of micro woodworking tools, but these tend to be expensive, not under 1mm in width and only of the chisel, parting tool, gouges, v-tool variety. Netsuke-shi often have to work with tools of a smaller width or diameter. It is possible to use some dental tools and to find micro-reamers, drill bits and needle files, but micro-scrapers, punches, engavers and knives are also needed. Netsuke-shi either resort to specialist tool makers, or resort to learning forging techniques and make their own.

I've recently made some from hand-grinding micro-width pin punches and some scrapers, punches and engraving tools from off-cuts of piano wire, chosen because it's of a high-tensile enough steel to forge and temper to the right degree of hardness. That meant buying a mini-anvil and various small jewellers' hammers. I drew the line at building a mini-forge, or working indoors with propane gas burners, and, instead, used the flame on the gas jet of the kitchen hob. It heats the metal to a high enough degree to allow me to work it - and to temper the tool after. After an oil or water quenching, the tools are then set and glued into hardwood handles.

Now, all I need to make are some angled scrapers and mini knives and some round-headed punches - for the time being.

It's becoming clear that it would be best to make the tools I need as I go along.

First things first

After a couple of false starts, this pumpkin was my first completed netsuke, measuring about 43 x 23mm, though the photos were taken at a stage before completion.

It was carved from 8 year old sycamore and stained with a strong mixture of Assam and Rooibos teas, resanded with up to 12,000 grit sandpaper, then treated with grape seed oil, left to dry for a few weeks and polished. It took about three months and over 150 hours to complete. That was 150 hours without preparation and sketching time, or final sanding and polishing. The polishing took about 12 hours, or so.

Though I've always loved the minuteness of netsuke, I'd never realised just how many hours went into making them. Using power tools for some of the work might have reduced the time, but I'd determined to complete all the process by hand, from sawing the wood-block to final polishing. I can't see how else a craft can be learned, initially; power tools may or may not come later.