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Are you a chisel and mallet carver?

Hand Lettering topics: Sign Making, Design, Fabrication, Letterheads, Sign Books.

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Pierre St. Marie
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun Oct 22, 2006 1:05 pm
Location: Kalispell, Montana
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Are you a chisel and mallet carver?

Post by Pierre St. Marie »

I've been carving for some 45 years, but the past 10 years have been in dense cast urethane, and that led to the end of my carving career.
My left wrist is now out of the surgical cast and is going through a rather painful physical therapy. Once completed, the right wrist will go through surgery and therapy. Tendons and ligaments are spiked and torn, the cartiledge is mostly gone and when all is said and done I'll have a nominal 75% of my wrist movement back again, a two pound weight lift limit and I've been advised that 10 minutes of chisel and mallet work in urethane would destroy the entire surgical restoration.
So......... how did this come about. Its difficult to type right now so I'll give you the short story. Wood and urethane are worlds apart in impact delivered to the wrists using mallet and chisels. The denser the urethane, the sharper the impact and shock... not something you can particularly feel, but its a fact. My case was examined by three orthopaedic surgeons with two of them being hand and wrist reconstrution specialists.
Wood, when aggressively chiseled is somwwhat forgiving. Dense cast urethane is not. Not at all. The shock normally absorbed by the cartiledge is handled fairly well when the medium is wood. With urethane the shock is sharp and when delivered to the cartilege it implements a slow but specific damage.
I'm one of some 12 cases that my own surgeon knows of. A few were stone carvers. Most were discovered before reaching the stage at which I find myself, but then I was an extremely aggressive chisel and mallet man when hogging out large areas of dense urethane.
If you work primarily with a chisel and mallet, use nothing denser that 15 pound. If you're a computer/router carver and only use chisels to shape and form, then you won't have a problem.
At any rate, please don't put yourself in the position I now find myself, unable to carve at all any longer, muscles atrophied from months of casts and incativity. I'm very fortunate that my Son has proven to be an excellent carver, but you can bet I'm guarding his wrists by insisting he use surgical braces and supervising his techniques. He's no dummy, and he's seen the potential end result of aggressive chisel and mallet work with dense cast urethane.
Don't make the same mistake. I'd never have believed the change in life that happens without full use of your wrists.
Take care of yourselves....... nobody else will.

P

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Pierre St.Marie
www.stmariegraphics.com
Kalispell,Mt
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Plan on knowing everything before I die and time's running out!

1911sr, k11, k31, PE57....the best of the best.
Family and carving........ Nothing beats 'em.
www.stmariegraphics.com
1911sr, k11, k31, zfk55, PE57 and Scheffield Chisels... The best of the best.
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