I’m new at chip carving but I’m a pretty decent woodworker. So I’m fluent in using hand tools. I do not sand the carving boards. I plane them by hand, using a #4 finishing plane set to a cutting depth of about 0.002″. The resulting surface is very smooth. Then I transfer the pattern or draw my own.
After the carving is done, I use the same #4 to remove the pattern marks. Depending on what I’ve carved (eg, a swirl rosette), I have to be careful not to flatten the sharp edges of my carving. But this method seems to work well for me.
Is there a down side to the way Im doing this?
Fred