How to Make Piano Rosettes From Wood
- 1). Select a kind of wood to use for your carving. Woods with fine, tight grain such as basswood are the best for carving. Orient the wood so that the grain is horizontal when carving.
- 2). Find a rosette design you wish to copy. There are a number of royalty free sources for rosette designs and woodcarving magazines sometimes carry their own.
- 3). Lay a sheet of carbon paper over your wood, with the black side facing down. Place the rosette design on top of the carbon paper. Trace over the design with a pencil, pressing firmly down on to the paper so that you create a crisp impression with the carbon paper.
- 4). Remove the carbon paper and design. You now have a copy of the rosette drawn directly on the wood.
- 5). Practice on a piece of scrap wood to acclimate yourself to the carving tools. Chip carving is a kind of carving that uses a pair of knives to dig away at a design, flaking pieces off, until it is finished. One of these knives, the cutting knife, is for slicing away at flakes and the other, the stab knife, is for making deep gouges. Hold the knives by wrapping your fingers around the handle and balancing your thumb and first knuckle on the base of the handle for stability as you carve. Hold the blade at 35-degree angle to the wood.
- 6). Begin to chip away at the rosette design. Begin with shallow parts of the design first. Use the cutting knife with these.
- 7). Use the cutting knife and go over the design again, this time working on the deeper areas. Most of your carving should be done with the cutting knife.
- 8). Add finishing details using the stab knife. The stab knife is used to add small little punctured flourishes to your carving. Brush away any accumulated wood chips.
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