Angled carving rest

Sort of a micro-project, but it will enable a lot of other things.

I had a couple triangular braces I’ll be putting on the insides of the legs of a bench I’m working on, and I plan to do a bit of carving on the bench itself and on the legs, but I haven’t done any serious carving for a while, so I thought I should warm up by carving the braces. Plus, they’ll make a neat surprise for anyone who looks underneath the bench.

So I cut some 45°︎ angles in some pine and glued and screwed it together to hold the angled pieces with their faces level. And it works pretty well. I clamp the “hook” at the front end in my face vise, and rest the piece in the trough, and I can carve away without have to worry much about workholding.

Also unpacked a box that had my texturing tools in it yesterday, so now I’ve got those to play with. The bench these braces will go onto will be going to a couple who were in their 50s and 60s when they found each other and got married, so I figured adding paired hearts would be a nice touch.

The wood I’m carving is some “cherry” that came from India in a crate holding a slab of stone. Not sure what it really is, but it’s pretty enough that I feel a little bad using it for mere braces, but there you have it.