Window Watchers, Episode 9 (November 19, 1954)

hi window watchers you know what this is sitting up here on the top in front of me nope it's a piece of soap and it's carved it's been carved into the form of a fish that's what we're going to talk about today soap carving and you know if your mother keeps an extra store or soap in hand why don't you run and get a newspaper and a paring knife from the kitchen and a pencil and a piece of paper and a bar of soap right now perhaps you can carve so bright along with me he'll be lots of fun because carving soap in itself is a lot of fun that's what we're going to be talking about today is carvings open and how to go about it where to start what you should finish up with so where to start I guess perhaps that would be with the bar of soap wouldn't it and there are some soaps that are better than other so it's a very very soft soap is really what you want and buy well a really soft better so you can even squeeze just a little bit through the wrapper and your thumb and your forefinger will really sink into the soap just a little tiny bit and then the next thing to look for is the size of your soap soft soap and if it's the first time at carving you probably be a lot better off than getting a large bar of soap but you can use the small ones too it's just depending on what what it is that you're going to carve then spread a newspaper down and get a piece of scratch paper and on this scratch paper or in the kind of paper tablet paper take a pencil and draw around your bar of soap sometimes soap comes in different colors and then you could have a colored piece of carving too now remember that when you draw out around your soap the UM the outline of the soap here is going to be just a little bit larger than the soap itself and then you want to put your drawing right inside the square so and i'm going to make approximately the same drawing as I did when I card that first piece of soap so that you perhaps we'll be able to see a little bit better the different steps that were used in carving that first piece of soap that we looked at today now when you have your pattern drawn and you see the bigger the better and the simpler the better cut out the pattern not just around the line that you drew around the soap but around the pattern itself now my fish is going to be on a base the base is running along the bottom we must remember to keep a fairly large base and whatever it is that you are carving so that it will have a little more body to it especially at the bottom where it will be standing then we'll cut around here and then with thee with a pencil with a blunt instrument and of a pen that's what I'm going to use we'll take our pattern and we'll trace it on the soap here there and I'm going to use the blunt end of a pan here's the point down here and I'm using the other end to go around the pattern outside and also on the lines here on the inside because we'll be able to press through the pattern into the soap you want to be very sure that with one hand you're holding the pattern of the soap down or of the pattern here in this case of the fish down on the soap so that it won't be slipping around here around there and that should do it now during that Lee we can see this pattern we have drawn so if we take this is an orange stick that on I'm using well etch over the outline of the pattern so that this way we can see a little bit better just exactly where we're going to do our carving then we're not through yet has still something else to do here's the eye there you can see then the pattern of fish right here in the front there's the lower lip and the upper lip right in the center and I'm going to draw these lines as straight as I can cross the front edge of the soap here and then using my pattern only this time turning it over the way it was before placing the center of the lips exactly in the same spot there I'm going to do this tracing and I'll do it exactly like we did it on the other side I think this time in order to work a little bit faster so that we can finish carving a little bit more of this fish I'll just use the orange stick and see if we can't just kind of speed things up a little bit here now you have to use the pen no one goes through the pattern again and mark on so sometimes there is a ridge on your soap or some time there is letters on the soap telling you the name of the soap and if that is the case then it's a good thing I think to take the knife and scrape off most of those ridges or most of the letters before you start carving because they're going to come off sooner or later anyway now then let's start chowing where to start we want to start in a corner in the biggest empty corner that we can find and it seems to be on this piece right up here and if you notice I'm not trying to cut in the first cut that I make right down here at the forehead what I suppose would be the forehead of the fish I started way up in the corner and I'm taking off to some little pieces at a time that saw that I won't crack a great big chunk off of the soap and another thing you notice I'm pulling my knife right straight across like that instead of just taking off the edge pieces I'm going right straight across you want to be careful in using the paring knife too so that you don't cut yourself and then after we get fairly close to the line that we made with the orange stick we can start a carving motion with our knife still keeping it flat across the edge of the soap then every once in a while we'll want to stop and check the other side to see whether or not we're following exactly along in the same place where we made our indentations with the orange stick let's continue on over here now and take out the small piece up here for the fin indents a little bit and the next one gets shorter and I think we can take off quite a bit back here now but still not too much at one time lower the barrier not in any hurry to finish and especially be careful when you turn the knife like this so that this back piece here where the pressure of the knife is applied doesn't just snap right off for you I think we're going to have to hurry here in order to even get the outline of this old fish carved out how are we coming along there in the front I'm kind of having a hard time seeing sometimes if you're living piece of soap down on it broad side here and cut right straight down it will help keep the edges a little bit more even and perhaps it will work a little bit faster to take this piece out here map and turn it all the way around twist yourself around so that you can take the pieces off of it very easily and you can turn it in any way that you that you want to in order to make it a little bit easier first for yourself they are not i think we couple more little pieces here I just about got the fish carved in an outline and there is the outline of the fish still on the base of course but the other thing is we want to make it into a three-dimensional object so that the fish we looks around he still looks like a flat fish you look like a fish from the side just because the outline is there but look if you look at it from the front looks just like a bar of soap so we want to do now is to round off the corners of our fish only we have to be careful you can leave his mouth sticking right out there we can work on it a little bit later or we can trim some of it off right now too but using the point of the knife and drawing back on it like this take off some of the thin up here because the thin is is really in the center of the fishes back isn't it and we can really trim the fish down we're just working on one side at a time but we're not forgetting this other side anyway taking it rounder and rounder and some of the pieces now on the mouth on this fish look terribly large sticking out there definite but by the time we finish working with the mouth of the fish the time we get that far and we put a little to be in the very center of the fish as it should be instead of way out around the corners of all the edges by the time we get that far get it off whittle down it won't look oversized at all it's better to have something too big and be able to cut it down that it is to cut off too much and then have it be too small at the very end when I see I'm cutting in towards the tail of the fish right here because the fish is smaller the tail he's beginning to take on a rounder shape now and that's what we will continue doing until this side is finished and then we will work on the other side so that when we are finally through our fish will really look like a fish on all sides on both sides from the back from the front and when you're finished carving the big pieces take your knife and just rub it back and forth and smooth it off a little bit and then you can take your finger and very lightly rub the fish and give it a satiny finish try some soap carving will you it's lots and lots of fun bye you