Unfortunately it broke right before I finished! I did my best to salvage it so I think all things considered it still turned out alright. After the break are a couple more pictures as well as some info on the “fool-proof” method I came up with for doing these.
I have no idea how most people do egg carving, but the way I came up with to “cheat” (and I’m sure others have also done this as it’s an obvious solution) was to take an empty/hollow egg and fill it with wax. My thought was that the wax would provide backing and keep the egg from cracking. As you can see in the “finished” photo below, it worked perfectly. I drew the design on in pencil, and then carved it all using the very smallest engraving tip on my Dremel.
Unfortunately I had the bright idea to melt the wax out by using my head gun. I was a bit too ambitious with it and caught my egg shell on fire! Ack! Not only did I wreck the lower jaw completely, but I also made the entire shell so fragile that it was cracking like crazy and it took all my meditative abilities to keep my hands steady enough to avoid destroying it. If I try this again I will keep my brain turned on and just use hot water instead.
2 Comments
Look around and see if you can find something other than chicken eggs, like goose or duck eggs. The shells are much thicker, and likely much easier to carve without breaking.
Could the carving be done using an acid, rather than a Dremel (?), which might be easier to ‘control’ ?
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