I was looking for a Christmas gift idea for my little niece. I received a stick of gray alder from my sister some time ago, and thought it would be fun to make something from it for her daughter. Stacking is a great activity for small children's hands, so I decided to make a set of stacking blocks with her initials engraved on them.
This was also to be achieved only by using hand tools. I have not done dimension planing and engraving before, so it could be an interesting project.
First, the log had to be cut to a reasonable length, and I needed a piece that was long enough without large knots or cracks that could cause problems later in the process. I ended up with a piece that had the potential to become three blocks of about 6x6x6cm.
The roughing in of the dimensions was done with a hand saw and an axe. The measurements were roughly sketched out with a pencil beforehand. Once I had managed to create a reasonably square tower, it was time to introduce the plane.
This relatively quickly yielded quite decent results. But getting all the sides parallel and straight is not as easy as one might think. The result was good enough.
After cutting the tower into the three blocks I was going to end up with, the end grain of the blocks had to be planed clean and straight. To avoid the fibers breaking out on the back of the block, I clamped it in the vise with a sacrificial piece at the back.
In the end, it was the engraving that remained. I had borrowed some engraving tools from a neighbor, who had taken the trouble to sharpen them properly. Alder is not a particularly hard type of wood, and it is also supposed to be a decent wood to carve. After some testing, I decided to use a printed template for the letters. It provided the most consistent results, and Times New Roman has a nice shape that engraves well. I printed out a sheet with the three letters that were to be engraved, and in the absence of carbon paper, I just pressed down a bit hard with a ballpoint pen, which was more than strong enough to make some thin marks in the wood that I could follow with the carving tool.
I should probably try a few more projects like this before the results become flawless, but I managed to finish before Christmas. And the result turned out quite decent :) so I am very satisfied with the project!
