{"id":222,"date":"2012-01-09T19:40:32","date_gmt":"2012-01-09T19:40:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sterlingsculptures.com\/wp\/?p=222"},"modified":"2012-01-09T19:43:06","modified_gmt":"2012-01-09T19:43:06","slug":"carving-a-noggin-and-making-a-crook-knife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sterlingsculptures.com\/wp\/?p=222","title":{"rendered":"Carving a Noggin and Making a Crook Knife"},"content":{"rendered":"
What’s a noggin? \u00a0It’s a small, carved wooden cup carried by frontiersmen, often carved from pretty burl wood. \u00a0This one is just cherry. \u00a0It will hang from a chunky button on a string that goes under a belt, so the prospective Dan’l Boone has it handy to get a drink out of the crick with, and doesn’t have to take his eyes off the dangerous woods by lying down to get a drink.<\/div>\n
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Bandsawn blank out of a piece of thick cherry I had on hand.<\/div>\n
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Using a Forstner bit to begin roughing out the hollow. \u00a0No reason to make this painful… \u00a0Do the drilling now while the bottom is still flat… \u00a0An old timer would have carved this out of a burl while it was still green (wet) so the carving would be easy. \u00a0I’m using well seasoned cherry so carving this strictly by hand would take many days of painful hand labor.<\/div>\n
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Smaller Forstner bit to continue the hollowing. \u00a0Don’t let the drilling get too close to the bottom or sides, and remember there is a small brad point on the Forstner bit that penetrates farther than the flat bottom of the hole…we don’t want the cup to leak.<\/div>\n
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I’ve been wanting a set of crook knives for a number of years now, and made one to test out the concept. \u00a0It works great! \u00a0Now I need several more with differing amounts of “crook.”<\/div>\n
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Speaking of painful, I decided to cheat a bit and roughout the noggin with my Foredom flexshaft grinder and several shapes of Typhoon carbide burrs. \u00a0This makes mountains of fine dust, so a good dust mask is mandatory.<\/div>\n
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And, starting to refine the interior with the crook knife. \u00a0It works really well, and leaves a nice texture. \u00a0I’ll be carving the inside and outside off and on for the next week or so.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What’s a noggin? \u00a0It’s a small, carved wooden cup carried by frontiersmen, often carved from pretty burl wood. \u00a0This one is just cherry. \u00a0It will hang from a chunky button on a string that goes under a belt, so the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[23],"tags":[9,24,4],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6qLAy-3A","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":814,"url":"http:\/\/sterlingsculptures.com\/wp\/?p=814","url_meta":{"origin":222,"position":0},"title":"Burl Noggin part 1","date":"January 19, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"After making the new crook knife, I needed a good test for it. \u00a0Scrounging around in my wood stash, I found a small block of big leaf maple burl, which has been seasoning for, oh, about 20 years now. \u00a0It was hard as the dickens, but the crook knife did\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Carving"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/sterlingsculptures.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/Burl_Turtle_Noggin_1-300x237.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1009,"url":"http:\/\/sterlingsculptures.com\/wp\/?p=1009","url_meta":{"origin":222,"position":1},"title":"Burl Noggin part 5","date":"January 24, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"And, finally, the noggin and button are finished. \u00a0Here it is as the entire ensemble. Thanks for looking!","rel":"","context":"In "Carving"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sterlingsculptures.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/Toms_Noggin_7.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":861,"url":"http:\/\/sterlingsculptures.com\/wp\/?p=861","url_meta":{"origin":222,"position":2},"title":"Burl Noggin part 4","date":"January 22, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been working this morning to remove the background of the engraved copper disk. I used my NSK micromotor grinder and several sizes of very small carbide burrs to carve away the background, leaving a pleasing texture behind. I fastened the antler crown with the epoxied engraving in my engraver's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Carving"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/sterlingsculptures.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/Antler_Crown_NW_Frog_18-300x272.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":819,"url":"http:\/\/sterlingsculptures.com\/wp\/?p=819","url_meta":{"origin":222,"position":3},"title":"Burl Noggin part 2","date":"January 20, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, since I made the fancy Gentleman's Noggin, I now need a high-end chunky button to go along with it. \u00a0These chunky buttons were designed to allow someone to hang the noggin from their belt, but still be handy to take it off for use. \u00a0It struck me that this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Carving"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/sterlingsculptures.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/Antler_Crown_NW_Frog_1-300x210.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":842,"url":"http:\/\/sterlingsculptures.com\/wp\/?p=842","url_meta":{"origin":222,"position":4},"title":"Burl Noggin part 3","date":"January 22, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"When last we saw our hero, he was getting ready to begin engraving. Above, I've stuck the copper disk on a small block of walnut with pitch (Northwest Pitchworks, in Bellingham WA). \u00a0Here, it is clamped in my engraver's vise. \u00a0I also transferred my design - in this case, I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Carving"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/sterlingsculptures.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/Antler_Crown_NW_Frog_6-300x223.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":233,"url":"http:\/\/sterlingsculptures.com\/wp\/?p=233","url_meta":{"origin":222,"position":5},"title":"Carving a Noggin and Making a Crook Knife","date":"January 10, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"After testing my crook knife, I liked it so well I decided to make another, with less \"crook\" to it. \u00a0In the Pacific Northwest, this one is called a \"planer\" crook knife, since it is used to produce a nice texture on flat or convex curved surfaces (not used so\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Carving"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/sterlingsculptures.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/Crook_Knife_1-300x207.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sterlingsculptures.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sterlingsculptures.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sterlingsculptures.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sterlingsculptures.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sterlingsculptures.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=222"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/sterlingsculptures.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":230,"href":"http:\/\/sterlingsculptures.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222\/revisions\/230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sterlingsculptures.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sterlingsculptures.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sterlingsculptures.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}