When you’re a woodworker and Christmas gifts are needed, you get the assignment. A gift made by hand always trumps something bought, and you’re happy to help.

But how?

As you can imagine, Christmas was very close when I started this project. I didn’t have a lot of time to learn how to carve a knot. My approach was to spend about five minutes online watching parts of a couple different videos, then jump into a prototype. I’ve never carved a knot into a piece of wood before and I didn’t want to tackle my first one on the freshly laminated black cherry panel that was drying and risk making a mistake.

I traced a pattern of a figure-eight knot from the internet onto a piece of paper, cut it out, grabbed a piece of poplar, traced the pattern onto it and jumped into action. Poplar is straight grained and carves easily, so progress went quickly. I didn’t need to carve the whole knot. I just needed to be confident enough in my knot-carving skills that I could start on the real thing without fear of imminent disaster.

After about 20 minutes of routing and carving I had enough confidence to move onto the cherry panel.

After tracing the outline of the knot onto the panel, I used my router to remove a small amount of material around the perimeter of the knot with a 1/16″ wide straight bit. This would help to quickly define the shape and remove some material so carving would be faster and easier. I routed to a depth of about 3/16″.

Some carving gouges were then used to further define the knot and the area surrounding the knot.

Add depth

Since parts of the rope in a real knot are obscured by the rope above it, I needed to create a sense of depth and overlap in this carving. Removing about 1/8″ of wood where the rope would travel under an overlapping portion of rope, then tapering the wood before and after those areas, would make it look like the wood “rope” was travelling under the wood “rope” above it. This might work out after all.

A bit more work to further refine the inner and outer corners of where the rope meets up with itself and things were thankfully looking crisp and clean. At this stage I stood back once in a while to take in the look of the knot from a distance. I find looking at it close up is obviously needed, but pulling back for a wider view is critical from time to time.

Some sanding smoothed a few of the edges and surfaces and readied the board for a finish. I rarely sand a textured surface, but this situation was a bit different. I knew any slightly sharp edges would quickly get worn down by use, and I didn’t want to leave those areas exposed without a finish. Rounding the edges would ensure the finish will stay on for longer. I can always apply another coat of finish down the road, if needed.

All’s well that ends well

Although it was fairly rushed, my time in the shop on that day was enjoyable. It’s really satisfying to head into the shop to make a project and end the day with the first coat of finish on it. After another coat the next day, I was ready for Christmas.