OK, belly carve and finishing up the arm carve,
Start by simply drawing a semi-circle where the belly carve will go. This is basically a circle with a 14″ radius.
Then, using the rounded end of my edge sander I slowly sand the carve into the body, sopping frequently to check on my progress…
Now that I have the cut roughed in I fine tune it using hand cut rasps
Starting with the body on its side, I use rasps to cut across the corner at roughly a 45 degree angle..
This leaves me with two more hard corners, or facets, but with less acute angles. Then I do the same again along each of the new corners, and then again until the edge is fairly well rounded over. then some sand paper finishes the job.
then I do the same again for the top edge where the arm carve is. I save this edge for when I do the belly cut because the lines of top and bottom edges need to flow
together
Voila! One belly cut
Note how the bottom edge and the top edge flow along the same lines together as the arm carve dips down
