Carving a Shell, with Frank Klausz 

I am 67 years old. I both make furniture and wood carve, and I can assure you this is a true master craftsman from the old country. The shell to me is the pinnacle of ability. Wouldn't you just love to spend a day with him in his shop. I would! Thanks for a great job, sir.

Frank Klausz has forgotten more about woodworking than most woodworkers will ever know! Thank God, he came to America!

I loved it when he said he wanted to do everything on his lowboy.. I started out as a marquetry maker and I to wanted to be able to do everything. I even went as far as bronze casting so I could make my own fittings.. Frank is a great craftsman. You can always tell because he doesn't mess around. He knows exactly what he's going to do and gets on with it..He knows where things can go wrong before he gets there.. A joy to watch.. I know those block front federal pieces and have done my own version with a marquetry fan. I might have a go at carving one after watching Frank..

I've never even considered doing this type of ornamental carving on my projects until watching this. While it doesn't look easy, it does look possible. Thanks, Frank!

Mr Klausz may not consider himself a turner or a carver, but as my Dad (a cabinet maker) once told me, the measure of a craftsman in not how he arrives at a destination but where he ends the journey. And no one can dispute the fact that Mr Klause is a true Master Craftsman.

Sir, you certainly are a pleasure to watch and learn from, I truly envy anyone that was lucky enough to have shared your knowledge. By the way, no wood carver or anyone would be of sound mind to criticize your work. God bless you Frank and thanks again for sharing.

New bucket list addition; spend a day learning carving from Frank Klausz

Watching and learning from a master gives my life purpose.

"A sharp cheesil leaves a shyknee surface".. true words of wisdom. I always enjoy a frank clausz nugget of wisdom

I love your new shop Sir . Is there another shop on your property for bandsaw,thickness planing,etc. I studied many years back (1972-73) under the guidance of a European cabinet maker (Helmut Gude) and realize now the methods you demonstrate are exactly what I was taught. Mr. Gude always made me feel I was a failure but I crossed paths 30 years later and he informed me I was the best student he'd ever had. He has since passed and I feel fortunate and blessed we had our final meeting. Thanx to the net you remind me of my mentor from so many years ago. Thank you Mr. Klausz as you bring back memories of how old school woodwork really works and it has been refined to the point, at least by hand, there is no wasted steps or motion. I would love to meet you as you inspire thousands thanks to the internet.

Many thanks. I just started taking a local evening class so that way I can learn and carve my own furniture. Just about to start ball and claw feet. Then onto the clam shells.

I love to watch these videos of Frank working. Beautiful. Thank you ॐ

This gentleman has a great lesson for life, saying “I’m not much of a… but I’m going to do it”. And look at the marvellous results of this work of art!

Love watching your videos. Mr. Klausz. You have so much to teach us and such a pleasurable way of doing it which makes one eager to watching more of your videos. Thank you for taking your time to share with us.

Best demonstration of fan/shell carving I've seen.

I cannot begin to imagine the tens of thousands of hour required to obtain such an amazing level of skill and knowledge! Thank you for sharing your craft and skills.

I am fascinated with Your craftsmanship as well as the specific accent which makes watching Your videos a real pleasure.👍👍👍

It's always a pleasure to watch you work Mr. Klausz

Wow. Great video! And the explanations of Frank are both clear and complete. Easy to follow for someone like me that is starting in carving. Thanks!

Wow! Thank you so much. You are a good teacher. My Grandpa taught me some carving when I was small. He was also a natural teacher.

Beautiful work!

Looks very nice! Thanks for showing how you carve! Thanks again.

Brilliant, watching a craftsman at work, thank you.

Hands of a master craftsmen and a true gentleman ~

thanks Frank I have been following you since the mid 70s

frank really knows how to teach! one of the best videos on wood carving i have ever seen

To watch any Master at his lifes work, Is a PRIVLEDGE and should be seen as a few i a lifetimes event Thank you frank for sharing your passion with us all.

An absolute joy to watch. A true master. he did it his way.

This is very helpful definitely experience speaking thanks for sharing your knowledge and doing a good job of explaining what you're doing

Frank Your techniques for carving this shell carving were excellent. The end result speaks for itself. NO 3 D ROUTER SYSTEM REQUIRED WITH THIS. GREAT JOB FRANK.

EXCELLENT video and excellent work sir. You are a true craftsman. A please watching you work and you have a very comfortable voice to listen to. Thank you for sharing.

Fantastic patience..... Loved it... Thanks

Fantastic work! True artisanship and a craft that is quickly being given over to machines.....Thank you!!!

Amazing craftsmanship! Thanks for sharing.

Sir you are amazing humble person and a very good teacher. Thanks for the good work you have been so informative.

Great video Frank. Thanks

What artistry!

Very interesting video. I'm a hobby woodworker and this has greatly enhanced my knowledge.

2 minutes in and a take-home already: using a sharpened piece of steel in place of a pencil in the compass! Genius.

That is brilliant, thank you. You have a way of giving just the right amount of instruction and information so I could understand what you were doing and why you decided to do it that way. I'm a serious novice, but that's everything I need to have a go and as you said, you aren't a wood calver either but have a go anyway. Thank you 😊

Beautiful. Thank you.

So very nice Frank!

A master craftsman at work a pleasure to watch

Gyönyörű munka, Uram.Köszönöm!

Frank, thank you!

AWESOME!!! I TRULY ENJOYED THAT VERY MUCH!

master genius great work

Beautiful and wonderful work

People lament the passing of time and how we've lost "the good old days." With technology today, we're able to capture Frank and others so we and our children and our children's children can learn from not only a master but someone you'd love spending time in the shop with.

Wow you make it look easy sir thank you for the instruction!

Last week I bought and antique box. It has no carvings on it so I sanded the old finish off and was looking for a pattern to put on the box and I just found it. Came with instructions and all ! ! ! Thanks for you demo. Mr Klausz can you suggest some good wood schools in Hungary?

Hello and thank you for your tutorial . it is awesome .

Great video. Thank you.

Such a beautiful work, Thanks for sharing it. After step by step explanation it seems, well doable. May try it as well :)

Masterful. Thanks for sharing.

Thank you for sharing. Great video!!!

Thank you ---this was terrific .

An artist!

Wonderful!

Great video, went to my shop and actually carved a Fan on Pine,first try mind you ,and it was passable . Need better tools and some fine tuning but instruction was spot on . Cheers and Thanks

Verry nice work

Be nice to shine light across the carving, to see the contours as they develope!

Good evening teacher. My name is Antonio. Im from Brasil. Is beautiful your work, cogratulations..

Great video.

Frank Klausz reminds me of Laurence Olivier. Two truly amazing artists. It is easy to buy a finished product often mass produced, but only an artist knows the patience and skill that that is necessary to accomplish a beautiful hand crafted end product. I, like many others, just watch in awe since his skills are sadly not mine.

He is old but you can just see all the years of experience with the tools in his hands.

beautiful

Frank it was so great and relaxing to watch you, please list all the size gauage you used for example when you cleaned out the tips you used one gauge then you finally used one to clean it out and what gauge did you use to do your circle thank you

I totally agree that the maker must do the entire piece or don’t bother to take a bow at The End!

Excelente monsieur!!!

“A good wood carver will say I’m not much of a carver” T. T. Top is probably among the very best in the whole world I’d imagine...but I don’t think even he would be eager to take on curly maple. That stuff is a tuff one no matter who you are. “I’m just a cabinetmaker” Coulda fooled me ! 😁😂👍🏽

Complimenti !!!!!!!

Master Teacher thank you.

It's wonderful how it comes out from the wood you're shell... or peacock tail... :-) I like that you don't measure much... just ask the wood with a push of a chisel and he answer to you showing the path to follow. A grate artist say once... "the statue are inside this rock... I just remove the excess" applies to you to Mr. Frank.

Frank is awesome! He reminds me of my.grandfather

Beautiful project Frank. I couldn't help but notice that dark mallet on the bench behind you. Would you mind telling me what type of wood you used to make that? Or if you didn't make it, do you know what kind of would it was made with? Thank you. Can't wait to watch more of your videos.

Sweet video

I think it's likely that this is not a shell. The city I live in was under Austro-Hungarian rule for quite a while, after being pretty much completely destroyed by the Turks, and rebuilt to a large extent under that rule. Thousands of buildings from that time survive. There are two symbols repeatedly appearing on those buildings: the bee hive (less frequently) and the peacok. The peacok symbol is almost identical to the carving in this clip. Frank Klausz is of Hungarian origin. I think that's the symbol he brought with him, and carved - or at least, there's a very good chance of it.

I will like to see from you Mr. Franz little bit of tool maintaining. Sharpening, how you "custom" shape your chisels. You have an amazing set of tools, present them per category please. Present your magic saw you cut your dovetail, the one switch from vertical to horizontal cut. I can tell you it will be very much appreciated by us all, I'm sure.

Very nice sir

Yep, not much of a wood carver as you say. Look at all the carving chisels you own. I like the way you are so humble 😉 it takes a life time to assemble such an amount of high quality tool that one isn’t about to make a hobby of. So what would you say is your first 3 chisel type and size to purchase.

At 5:15 you use a piece of card to mark the shell, you could've inverted the half round on the card and used the pin on one side of the dividers through the other end of the card at the correct radius and used the card like a compass to mark out the shell.

Is there a depth gauge I could use, a Swedish scraper perhaps ?

"Oops I slipped and came too far here" Who hasn't? That is what a damp cloth and hot iron is for.

Watch this to the end SNOOPYThis blokes a genius.

Maybe the first woodworking shows I watched (ie, before YT video became commonplace) was Tommy Mack carving a shell for his epic high boy build,,, since then, who on earth put such things on furniture in 2017?

You dont comb your hair this way.. best explanation ever.. instantly made sense

Does someone know which is the radius of that gouge. I mean I know it's a fraction of a circle but how it is numbered in the gouge radius scale?

I'm happy when the back and bevel of my chisels have a mirror finish, but his whole chisel is a mirror!

Trammel points might be better than a compass for stability.

How can a carver receive Frank Klausz's patterns for personal use?

nice

he is teachin' and he is preachin'

Why? Because that is the size of my tool. Wonderful. His sense of economy is very good. Don't design something that you cannot make with what you have on hand.

At 19:43: wow, now that's a knife!

Poor camera work and unfortunate lighting. The white surface of the wood washes out much of the detail. Needed more carefully arranged low-angle key illumination with dimmer ambient. Camera work needed to focus on the hands, not the room. They are called GOUGES, Frank. And the source of your problem is that you have too many fans in your shell design. It's too busy. As a result you couldn't cut the grooves between fans deeply enough to allow for fully and gracefully formed domed tops on each fan. You could have used a trim router on a radiusing jig, with a 1/8" bit, set to the depth of the scoop in the middle of the fans, to establish an even scoop depth over the the entire 180° of the shell. Then you could have enlarged the scoop more easily by working outward from either side of the 1/8" router cut with #5 and #3 gouges. Love that beautifully handled big skew knife. A 1" straighr skew gouge is much the same.

jedi most def... thank you sir

Dear Frank, your table looks painful to work with your back haunched over to get down to your work. Would a higher table be be better to use or is it important to be able to get on top of your carving and push down, something only a low table could give?

I’d love to have a go. What sort of chisels are they?

Or wait for 100 years for a natural patina...lol I'll go with the dye. More than likely in 50 years someone will slap some paint over it anyway.