After a couple years of occasionally drawing and redrawing this image, then another year of on-and-off work carving it using everything from a 1-inch gouge meant for turning wood on a lathe to several tiny ones in the 1-millimeter range, I finally stopped coming up with reasons to put off printing it.

Printing required 2 separate blocks for the two colors of ink, and that meant setting up a system to make sure each sheet of paper hit each block at the right place. This is called registration. I explain it in more detail in another instructable (https://www.instructables.com/Woodcut-Linocut-Printmaking-Registration-Jig/). (Note: I did not use that system for this print.)

I know this is a lot of words and pictures for a single print, but I’m hoping someone will find it some day when they can’t figure out how to make something work and it will help them.

These are for sale, but that's not the point of this. (That said, if you want to know more, they're here.)

NOTE: as you go through this you'll notice the images keep flipping left to right. Sometimes I was drawing the way I wanted it to print, sometimes I was remembering to reverse it since printing always makes a mirror image.

Supplies

(There are 8 photos in this section. Click "5 more images" to see them all.)

There are a lot of tools and accessories and supplies involved. A few important ones are:

The wood (I used 1/2-inch MDF for this because it has no grain that could interfere with carving circles and lots of tiny lines. Plus it's easy to get, inexpensive, and totally predictable.)
The ink (I used Cranfield's Caligo Safe-Wash, an oil-based ink that cleans up with dish soap instead of solvents)
The paper (I used a heavy, archival printmaking paper)
The carving tools (a variety of gouges, including large and very small)
Magnification (I've never had great eyes, and age isn't helping.)
Registration pins and tabs

(Others will be mentioned in what follows.)

Step 1: Inspiration and First Drawings

(There are 6 photos in this section. Click "3 more images" to see them all.)

This print was originally inspired by an old (1960s, I think) Czech matchbox I saw online somewhere. (It is not under copyright.) As a joke to send to a couple woodworkers I know (Hi, Bob! Hi, Paul!), I photoshopped the hand to move the injury to the middle finger, then shortened the finger. Unsophisticated humor, simple task, took a few minutes (that would stretch to several years).

But I kept thinking about it. And about all the farmers, loggers, carpenters and mechanics I have met over the years whose hands were reshaped by tools, machines, ropes, large animals, etc. It also brought to mind the many awesome safety posters and filmstrips you used to see in school woodshop classes (when schools still taught such things).

The Czech on the matchbox means something like “use safety equipment to prevent injuries.”

I pretty quickly decided I should do my own version. After taking pictures of my own hand giving the finger to the wall and looking through my toolboxes for old saw blades to stare at, I drew a few initial versions in Procreate on an iPad. At that time, I hadn't decided on how many colors the print would have. Having several colors would have made the hand a LOT easier to carve, but I try to simplify my prints as much as I can—especially in terms of color. It’s a more fun design challenge and it means there are fewer chances for misregistration between multiple blocks. (Again, see that other instructable.) It can also mean that carving will be a LOT harder because I can't just print shadows with a different layer of ink.

Step 2: Drawing, Redrawing, Transfering to the Block

(There are 9 photos in this section. Click "6 more images" to see them all.)

Eventually, I had to draw it in black and white to prepare for transferring the image to the wood. Since I wasn't using a layer of ink to show shadows, I had to use white and black lines. I experimented on the computer to see how it would look using straight lines, but I didn't like it (first two photos in this section). Eventually I just had to stop looking for easy ways out and draw lines on the hand that followed the contours.

So, using printed copies of the sketches and black markers, I figured out how the different areas of the hand would work. It took a lot of trial and error, but eventually I got it to a point where I was either satisfied with it or at least sick of obsessing over tiny details.

I scanned it, used Photoshop to scale it to the size I wanted, knowing that if I went too small I’d never be able to carve all the small lines in the hand and blade. That was the main factor in determining the size: how small are my smallest tools and how much do I trust my hands and eyes to carve accurately with them?

The final size was too big for my home printer, so I tried (but failed) to find a local printing company that had a laser printer or copier that could output something 15 or 16 inches wide. (Inkjet prints are not easy to transfer to wood.) That meant I had to have it printed in 2 pieces, then cut and tape them together for the transfer.

To make aligning the 2 halves a little easier, I added a grid behind the image before taking it to be printed.

Transferring

It’s usually possible to transfer a toner-based print to the block using acetone (or xylene, in some cases).

DO THIS OUTSIDE!

In my experience, different copiers (and laser printers) require different chemicals, and in recent years new toner tech has meant that some of them don’t react to anything I’ve tried. I try to find old-looking copiers.

Here’s how the transfer works:

Put the printed image face down on the block of wood (or linoleum, if you’re going to use that instead) and tape it down so it won’t move during the transfer.
Get a wad of cloth or paper towel wet with your solvent and rub it firmly on the back of the paper. The solvent soaks through the paper and breaks the toner’s connection to the paper. The pressure you’re applying causes it to stick (though not always very securely) to the block.

In the images of the results, you can see that it wasn’t a great transfer. I think this is mostly due to the fact that the printer thought he would be doing me a favor by using nice, heavy paper instead of regular copier paper. Cheaper paper is probably always better for this. It might also have been due to his machine using a toner that’s less susceptible to acetone (xylene did nothing to it).

Trace it!

Because of the uneven transfer and my fear that it would easily rub off of the wood, I immediately drew over everything with a fine-tipped purple marker. (But even if the toner image was dark and complete, I would have done this anyway. I almost always do.

Speaking of markers, you may notice that I also colored over the block with a yellow marker. This is because the wood is the same color inside as on the surface, and it is hard to tell where it hasn’t been carved yet or where the carving has not gone right up to the edge of what will be the black parts (purple in these photos). Making the surface yellow meant that I could easily spot anywhere that needed further attention. In the images you can see that there’s not much difference between carved and uncarved, as well as how easy it is to spot areas that are still uncarved if they're yellow.

Step 3: Carving!

(There are 13 photos in this section. Click "9 more images" to see them all.)

I won’t go into how to carve a woodcut (or linocut). It’s pretty self-explanatory, I think. If not, there are lots of videos and instructions online and in books.

A few things to keep in mind:

Never carve toward yourself! These tools are sharp. Usually (for me, anyway) injuries occur when I stop paying attention and carve toward my other hand, whether it’s involved in the process, such as holding the block steady, or just resting in the wrong place. Blood photo?
Keep your tools sharp by stropping frequently. It’s easy to get in the zone and not want to stop, but you’ll eventually notice that it’s getting harder and harder to cut the block, or that the cuts aren’t as crisp. Learn how to do it correctly. I’m still working on it, but getting better.
Quality tools are a big help in getting clean cuts and having control so you don’t overshoot the mark* and remove something you wanted to keep. I didn’t have any tiny gouges when I started this, so I bought the smallest I could find quickly. That’s the sort of hourglass-shaped one in some of the photos. It was difficult to keep the relatively soft metal sharp, and I probably wore off half an inch of it with all the resharpening. I eventually got some good Swiss-made (Pfeil) gouges (1 mm and 1.5 mm) that sped things up quite a bit.
Finally, and you can skip this one if you have better eyesight than me, invest in magnification. I tried a pretty cheap magnifying head band thing I bought online, but it wasn’t really much help. I tried one of those lamps with a built-in magnifying glass surrounded by a ring of light, and it was OK but led to weird posture and backaches.

And then someone who loves me gave me an amazing gift last year: the Optivisor. Works well over my glasses, is always in focus (unlike the cheap one), and has an (optional) attachment with lights (that are way brighter and longer lasting than on the cheap one). It’s amazing.

*Speaking of Overshooting the Mark

I made a dumb decision that led to a big mistake and a lot of extra work while carving this block. So here’s my new never-forget rule for carving:

NEVER CARVE OUT BIG AREAS UNTIL ALL THE SMALL ONES NEARBY ARE DONE!

While carving the saw teeth, I got tired of dealing with tiny details, so I broke out the biggest gouge in my arsenal and set to work clearing the area outside the image. It was easy and it quickly made a satisfying mound of wood shavings. Plus, completing such a big portion of the block felt like real progress toward the finishing line. In reality, it set me back months.

When you remove wood from one side of a line, you are weakening it and when you start carving on the other side of the line you have to be careful not to push in the wrong direction.

Guess what I did!

Maybe I was rushing, maybe I was tired, maybe the dog barked and startled me, or maybe I was just being dumb. With at least half the teeth carved, I managed to screw up and remove the top section of one of them. I considered living with it and pretending it was intentional—like maybe the saw broke a tooth when it cut the unlucky finger. But that’s not how saws work unless it’s the titanium alloy hand of a terminator.

So I had to cut off all the teeth—everything outside the circles—then start over on a new piece of wood. This time I did NOT carve outside the teeth until they were all done. Finally, I had to cut out the center of this new block and fit the hand and blade into it. This isn’t my main responsibility in life, so it took a long time to get this all done before I went back to finishing the non-teeth part of the blade.

I didn’t take any pictures of the damaged tooth, unfortunately (or fortunately?), but it’s easy to see how it happened when you look at the uncarved teeth (colored yellow) in the second photo in this section, which lack any support. Notice in the next photo that while the new teeth were being carved I avoided removing anything outside them.

Assembling New Teeth and Original Blade and Hand

To join the two pieces, I used some metallic heating duct sealing tape I had sitting around. Before taping, I did a quick test print to make sure I hadn’t overlooked anything. And…

Turns out I had: I took too much away in the area where the wrist and the teeth meet. I ended up filling it with wood putty, which worked. It looks like there’s still a void there, but it printed solid black.

The test prints also showed me a bunch of high spots that could accidentally get inked and leave unwanted marks on the print, as well as areas within the design that needed more work. I marked them with orange and then got to fixing them (which was a little tricky sometimes, since the print and the block are mirror images of each other).

Step 4: How to Make a Second Color Block

(There are 7 photos in this section. Click "3 more images" to see them all.)

The red blood soaking through the bandage requires a second block (that gets printed first). Since it has to line up in exactly the right spot on the final print, it has to be set up properly before it can be carved. Here’s how I did it:

First, I made a press bed out of thin masonite. I drilled two holes exactly the size of 2 aluminum binding posts. I also drilled the same holes in two more pieces of masonite onto which I would fasten the wood blocks with double sided tape. The binding pins are solidly held in place by their heads under the bed and stand up vertically. This way, every time I put one of the blocks on the press bed, it’s in exactly the same place. It's kind of hard to describe, but you can see the posts in the first two photos.
Next, I used double-sided tape to attach a small block to one of the masonite pieces, making sure it was in the right area to match up with the center of the image where the red was needed. The hardest part of setting up a multi-block print is making sure each part of the image is in the right place.
To make it happen, I first printed the black plate onto a sheet of paper. Then I removed the black block from the bed and put the uncarved red one in its place (using the two binding pins again), laid the paper back down over it, and pressed it down to transfer the wet ink onto the empty block. That allowed me to figure out what I needed to carve away.

Note: in this situation only white areas need to be removed. Since black will be printed over red, anything black or red can be left alone.

Step 5: Registration Setup

The previous step also relied on the registration system I used for this print, as did the final process of printing dozens of prints.

I used Ternes-Burton registration pins and tabs. The pins are taped to the press bed and the tabs are taped to back of the paper that will be printed on. I prepared 50 sheets of paper. Search the web to find lots more about using these and other registration systems.

Step 6: Printing: Ink, Press, Drying

(There are 6 photos in this section. Click "3 more images" to see them all.)

Ink

Printing requires ink, and ink requires its own set of tools and skills. I don’t have any photos of that part of the process, so I’m going to suggest that anyone who wants to know how it works should do some searching, read some articles, and watch some videos.

In brief, I roll out the ink on a piece of plate glass with a brayer (roller). The brayer also rolls the ink onto the block. It's important to wear an apron, because ink is always going to find its way to where you don’t want it. I also wear nitrile gloves (the thin black ones that food service workers wear) while getting the ink ready so I don’t accidentally leave ink fingerprints on the paper when I’m printing.

Press

My “press” is a cold press laminator that I’ve modified so it will accept thicker materials than it was designed for. I also replaced its tiny crank handle with a bigger wheel for easier pressing. It applies even pressure, turns smoothly, and was an excellent purchase at a fraction of the price of a “real” press. I'd love to have a real press, but this works fine.

I put a layer of felt and a couple layers of paper over the printing paper, which helps distribute the roller’s pressure evenly and make up for any differences in the height of the bed, blocks, or rollers.

Drying

I hung a metal grate (it was the side panel of an old collapsible dog kennel, I think) from the rafters and then hung the prints from it with binder clips. The red ink took about a week to fully dry before I could print the black. The black took longer to dry due to colder temperatures. Maybe two weeks.

Misprints

I set out to print 50. I ended up with 40. All of the misprints were my fault, but some were more my fault than others. A couple times I let the paper touch the inked block before it was on the pins. A few times I accidentally missed a spot or two on the block when I was rolling ink onto it with the brayer (see photo). Some others got smudged. One got dropped onto the basement floor, where the fresh ink picked up lots of sawdust and probably some dead spiders.

And a few were lost because I forgot to flip the paper mask (see last photo) back over the block before locking the next sheet of paper onto the registration pins. There's always some ink on a part of the block where it shouldn't be. Without the mask, it often ends up on the print.

Step 7: Finishing Up

After the prints dried, all I had to do was trim them so they were square, number and sign them, and take photos so I could try to sell them. I haven’t figured out where all the old shop teachers are hanging out, but when I do I hope a few will be interested.

If you happen to be one of them, find out more at https://www.etsy.com/listing/4403801316/pay-attention-handmade-2-color-safety

Thanks for reading!

Introduction: Woodcut Print: “Pay Attention!”