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Step 6Carving the ice
This step is where the actual work starts. You will take the block of ice and carve a heart out of it. It took me more than two hours; I was surprised how hard ice actually is.
The actual form of the heart is up to you, your creativity is required here. The only important thing is to remember that since you will mount the heart on a piece of wood, the bottom side of the heart should be flat. See the pictures for inspiration.
Nevertheless, I will try and give some hints on how I carved the heart, hoping that they might help you. Of course, the best technique also depends on your tools. I would be glad to hear your experience.
The first problem I faced was how to sketch the outline of the heart on the ice. I could not draw on the ice, since the ink smudged immediately. The solution was to cut out the outline of the heart from paper and to place it on the flat side of the ice. (See the picture.) Since the ice is already getting wet, the paper sticks to the ice. However, while working the paper is often dislodged, so you have to take care to to reposition it regularly. Notwithstanding these minor annoyances, having an outline of the heart greatly helped while carving. (If the paper starts to dissolve, just take it as a template for cutting another identical heart of paper.)
I then started carving from the flat side by first removing the ice near the flat side (where the paper was sticking). The effect is that I quickly (more or less) had the outline of the heart on the base of the block of ice and then could get rid of the paper (which already started to dissolve for the second time). As soon as the base of the block of ice has the right form, I could continue to work upwards and give the upper side of the heart a gentle round form.
Concerning the tools, I used rasps (indented for wood, I do not know whether there are they special ice rasps, but surely they are not easy find). I used flat and slightly rounded rasps for the rough word, and a rod-shaped one for the incision between the two bulges of the heart. 'To make carving easier, I filled a pot with hot (but not boiling) water and immersed the rasps in the water. By changing rasps in a round-robin style, I always had moderately warm rasps, which probably makes carving easier. But be careful not to have too hot rasps, I fear that the ice might crack if getting too warm.
While working on the ice, you should wear (working) gloves for three reasons.
The actual form of the heart is up to you, your creativity is required here. The only important thing is to remember that since you will mount the heart on a piece of wood, the bottom side of the heart should be flat. See the pictures for inspiration.
Nevertheless, I will try and give some hints on how I carved the heart, hoping that they might help you. Of course, the best technique also depends on your tools. I would be glad to hear your experience.
The first problem I faced was how to sketch the outline of the heart on the ice. I could not draw on the ice, since the ink smudged immediately. The solution was to cut out the outline of the heart from paper and to place it on the flat side of the ice. (See the picture.) Since the ice is already getting wet, the paper sticks to the ice. However, while working the paper is often dislodged, so you have to take care to to reposition it regularly. Notwithstanding these minor annoyances, having an outline of the heart greatly helped while carving. (If the paper starts to dissolve, just take it as a template for cutting another identical heart of paper.)
I then started carving from the flat side by first removing the ice near the flat side (where the paper was sticking). The effect is that I quickly (more or less) had the outline of the heart on the base of the block of ice and then could get rid of the paper (which already started to dissolve for the second time). As soon as the base of the block of ice has the right form, I could continue to work upwards and give the upper side of the heart a gentle round form.
Concerning the tools, I used rasps (indented for wood, I do not know whether there are they special ice rasps, but surely they are not easy find). I used flat and slightly rounded rasps for the rough word, and a rod-shaped one for the incision between the two bulges of the heart. 'To make carving easier, I filled a pot with hot (but not boiling) water and immersed the rasps in the water. By changing rasps in a round-robin style, I always had moderately warm rasps, which probably makes carving easier. But be careful not to have too hot rasps, I fear that the ice might crack if getting too warm.
While working on the ice, you should wear (working) gloves for three reasons.
- First, the ice is very cold (as you probably guesses), and having gloves helps. Unfortunately, my gloves were not water-resistant, so they were quickly drenched in icy water. So if you have water-resistant gloves, use these!
- Second, when you do not touch the ice with your warm hands directly, it probably melts less quickly. And since you are going to work on that ice for a while, there is a substantial amount of melting involved. (But at least in my case not so much as to endanger the project).
- And third, although rasps are not the most dangerous tools, it is still can hurt if a slipping rasp takes away a bit of your skin.
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Apr 27, 2012. 1:37 AMsusanchen2011
says:
So many tools are needed.
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