Alexander Grabovetskiy, woodcarver, School of Woodcarving · Published 2018
How do you carve detail in end grain?
Quick answer: Carving into end grain means meeting the cut ends of the wood fibres rather than their sides. Carving it needs a sharper edge, much smaller passes, and a relief groove cut before any shaping, so the fibres have somewhere to break toward instead of tearing out.
Fibre ends crush where long grain slices, so every rule changes. Take smaller bites, relieve the stress with a V cut before you shape anything, and sharpen further than you think you need to. Nothing about the tool changes. What changes is how much you dare ask of it in one pass.
Has a leaf tip ever crumbled under an edge that cut perfectly well two inches earlier? Do the scrolls at the outside of a panel fight you while the middle behaves? You have met end grain, and the wood is not being difficult. You are cutting across the tube ends instead of along them.
Workshop 23 of Carving Hashemi Flowers spends its whole hour there, on two berries and a volute that sit exactly where the grain runs out.
What end grain changes
- Bite size.
- Whether you need a relief cut before the shaping cut, and on delicate work the answer is always yes.
- How sharp is sharp enough.
- Which direction you can approach from, since on true end grain you can often come at the same spot from either side.
- How much patience the session costs you.
Why is end grain harder to carve?
Wood is a bundle of tubes, and end grain is where you meet their open ends. Cutting along the tubes, the edge slides between them and lifts a shaving. Cut at those ends and the edge must sever every one of them, and a dull edge simply mashes them flat instead. Through the handle it feels like a wall that was not there a moment ago.
Sharpness stops being a virtue and becomes a requirement. I say it plainly while working on these scrolls: at this stage the tools absolutely must be really sharp. A gouge that gets away with long grain will tear a ragged edge here, and on a piece already carved thin the tear is not something you can sand out of trouble.
| Grain | What the edge meets | The way I handle it |
|---|---|---|
| Long grain | the sides of the fibres, which part easily and lift a clean curled shaving | nothing special is needed |
| Across the grain | fibre walls severed across their length | the everyday case on a panel, and the direction I turn the work to find |
| Straight in | the open ends of every tube at once | small passes, a relief groove first, and an edge sharpened well past comfortable, every time |
How much should you take in one pass?
Less than a millimetre. Working the waste beside these berries I mention the figure out loud, about a thirty second of an inch at a cut and sometimes less, meaning a shaving rather than a chip. Several of those beat one confident stroke every time on end grain.
Two passes instead of one is the whole discipline, and I put it in plain words during this workshop: better to make a couple of passes than to make the mistake. Then, because it is true, I add that I do not want to make any mistakes any more, and that I wish I had not made them before either. Carving keeps a long memory of your errors.
What is a relief cut, and why does it come first?
A relief cut is a groove that gives the fibres somewhere to break toward. Normally you would set a gouge into a curl and roll it round in one movement, and on this panel the pressure that takes would be too much, so a small V goes in first and draws the stress off the grain. Even a tiny groove does it.
My V for that is a number 16 at 35 degrees, either 6 mm or 3 mm depending on the space, and its angle matters here for the same reason it matters everywhere on this panel. That is covered in the workshop on the V tool angle, and the ordering itself in why the V tool goes first.
Can you use the V tool as a chisel?
Yes, and on end grain it is often the best thing in reach. Look at a V tool end on and it is two small chisels with a rounded bottom joining them, and we call that rounded piece the keel. Lay the tool over on one of those flat walls and you have a narrow chisel already in your hand, which is exactly what a straight end grain trim wants.
Straight end grain is actually the easy version. Where the fibre ends sit in a flat plane the edge meets them all at the same angle, and the cut behaves. The hard version is where a curve carries the grain through several directions in the space of a centimetre, which is what the outer scrolls of this panel do.
Where do two grain directions meet?
At what I call the marriage line. Somewhere along a curved element the fibres stop running one way and start running the other, and a stroke carried straight through that point tears a splinter from the second half. Learning to see it before you cut is worth more than any tool you could buy.
Handling it is simple once you see it. Stop the cut at the line rather than through it, then come back from the far side and blend the two together, which is precisely how this workshop closes. Blending is a light pass with a gouge whose sweep matches, and getting that match right belongs to the workshop on flow lines.
On true end grain there is a bonus. Because the fibres run into the piece rather than along it, either approach works without penalty, which is a freedom long grain never gives you. Turning the work becomes a choice about comfort instead of a rescue.
The wood warns you twice. First warning is gentle: a rough edge where the cut should have come off clean, and most carvers push straight past it without noticing anything at all. Second warning is a piece of your carving lying on the bench.
Is it all right to wiggle the tool?
On end grain I do it, and I admit as much on camera. Books tell you never to rock a gouge sideways as it enters the wood, and on a scroll where the fibre ends are standing up to meet the edge, a slight wiggle gets the blade through without the shove that would otherwise be needed. Sometimes end grain simply does not help you, and the finished result is still worth the trouble it made. A rule that costs you the piece is not a rule worth keeping that day.
Tool choice on these scrolls stays deliberately narrow. A number 9 at 5/16 of an inch does the hollowing, a number 8 at 5/8 rounds the outside of the volute, and the edge doing the final work is whichever one is sharpest. One handle sitting on the bench in this workshop carries an Ashley Iles sticker, plain enough to read, though a Pfeil or a Henry Taylor of the same sweep would behave identically.
Does a knife help on end grain?
A knife helps more than most carvers expect. My number 12 has a point sharp enough that it does not need to match any sweep, so a single blade follows any line on the panel, tight curls included. Multi use is the honest word for it, and you can do a great deal of work with a cheap carving knife.
Where the knife earns its keep here is the final refining of a shape, after the gouges have done the removing. Cleaning up a small element with one point beats fetching four gouges in turn, and the course looks at that idea properly in the beginner course, which is carved almost entirely with a knife.
Want to watch the cuts rather than read about them? All 49 workshops come with tuition at the school, and this page is for anyone starting from nothing.
What keeps an edge alive through a whole session of this?
Strop it long before it feels dull. A shaped strop is worth owning for carved work, because a flat piece of leather cannot reach inside a curl, and mine has a rounded profile for attacking a hollow from the inside with leather on the outside for everything else.
Frequency is the part people get wrong. Waiting until a tool drags means you are already crushing fibres rather than cutting them, and on end grain you feel that within a stroke or two. Buff every few minutes and you stay ahead of it. The sharpening course walks through the whole routine, stone by stone, and it is the one course I would make compulsory.
Where do your hands go on work this fragile?
Keep your hands off it. By this stage the surrounding carving is thin enough that leaning a palm on it would break something, so my hands stay above the work and only one finger touches down for steadiness, which this course calls air carving.
Watching the neighbours matters as much as watching the cut. Every element around the one you are carving is a thing you can snap with an elbow, and I keep glancing at the surrounding leaves through this session for exactly that reason. The paper pattern still stuck to the surface flies off in shreds as the work goes on, which is a sign that things are going well.
That paper is held down with photo mount spray, the mild kind sold for mounting prints. It grips well enough to survive being carved around and leaves no residue at all when it comes away, which matters on a surface that will never be sanded. Ordinary spray adhesive fights you at the end.
A small confession about vocabulary belongs here too. While carving a leaf tip that turns over on itself I stop and ask the camera whether flip is even a word, decide that it is flipping in my opinion, and carry on. Forty years in and English still hands me a shape I have no name for. The carving does not mind what you call it.
Something similar happens with grain. Explaining which way the fibres run I catch myself and clarify that I mean the grain of the wood, not a migraine, which is the kind of thing that happens when you talk to a camera for an hour with a gouge in your hand. The grain direction itself is not complicated, and on basswood it is easy to read once somebody points at it.
How deep should a volute sit?
Deep enough to read, and no deeper than the wood allows. Measure one of these from the surface to its floor and the drop is about 3 mm, an eighth of an inch. On camera I add that going lower would be no trouble at all. A curl on the inside is what architects call a volute, though I often just call it a curl.
Varying them is what stops a panel looking stamped out. One volute on this piece sits level with its neighbours and another stands proud of everything around it, and that decision gets made with the tool in hand rather than at the drawing stage. There are several ways to carve one, and choosing between them is design rather than technique.
Restraint belongs in the same paragraph. I lean a gouge in to undercut one of these and then stop, because the piece is already too fragile to risk, and some meat has to stay under the shape. Undercutting is measured against what the wood can survive rather than against how good the shadow could be.
None of this is fast, and I say so plainly. It is tempting to take a big tool and a mallet and do it in one blow, and on this type of carving that simply does not work. Slow is the price of the material. Patience is what comes back, and patience is the part of carving that follows you out of the shop.
The wood underneath all of this deserves a word. Tilia holds detail on end grain in a way that oak and ash never will, which is why the acanthus work in this course is carved in it. Pierced work multiplies the problem, because openwork leaves end grain exposed on both faces of every opening. Look at the foliage by Grinling Gibbons in the V and A and you are looking at end grain cut by hand in the 1600s, in the same soft timber, by a man with no better tools than these.
How it's done
- Sharpen past comfortable. Strop before the session and again during it. An edge that copes with long grain will crush fibre ends instead of severing them.
- Cut the relief groove. Run a small V along the line before shaping, so the fibres have an open side and the stress leaves the grain.
- Take a shaving, not a chip. Around a thirty second of an inch per pass, under a millimetre. Several light passes beat one confident stroke.
- Find the marriage line. Look along the curve for the point where fibre direction swaps. Stop your stroke there rather than carrying it through.
- Come back from the other side. Approach the same spot from the opposite direction and blend the two cuts with a matching sweep.
- Leave meat underneath. Undercut only as far as the thickness left behind will survive. No shadow is worth a broken element.
Frequently asked questions
Why does end grain tear instead of cutting cleanly?
Fibre ends have nothing holding them sideways, so a blunt or heavily loaded edge folds them over and rips a group out together. Sharpness and a light pass are the two things that keep each one severed rather than pushed.
Should you cut end grain with the grain or across it?
Neither description quite fits, since the work goes against the fibre ends themselves. One freedom long grain never gives you: the same place can be reached from two opposite directions, so pick whichever leaves your hand more room.
Does end grain need different tools?
Same tools, sharper. A knife often outperforms a gouge on small end grain trims because its point follows any line, and the side wall of a V tool makes a very good narrow chisel for a flat pass.
What to carve next