Okay, awesome. So now your design is on your block, which means it's time to get carving. So first a little anatomy of the linoleum cutter. So this is the number one set. And if you jiggle it, you can hear that noise inside. That's because all of those blades are kept in the handle, which is pretty handy.

Get it. So you can see inside, there's five different blades and you can pour those out onto your counter, which I'm going to do right here and then I'll lift them up and show you. When you look at each of these blades. On the back of the neck, you can see a small number and that's indicative of what size blade you're using. So you'll notice that all of the blades have this neck with a number and this rounded part that has writing on it. It says linoleum speed ball cutter.

So that's not the blade part. The other end is the blade. The sharp part is the blade part so be careful. And you can see that each is a little bit of a different shape and also a different width. So depending on the different areas you're carving on your block Whether it's fine line, or really big spaces that will determine what type of blade that you're using. So, going through them, there's this really thin one and I get questions about this all the time.

And I'll tell you right now that actually with the linoleum we're using today, I don't use this much at all. I use this with harder linoleum, I don't really use it on these blocks because they're so darn soft that if I use such a thin line, I've found that the ink just seeps in there. So I don't really use that in this case. And then moving on up, move on up. Number one, you have this thin kind of V shape. I love this tool, because this is really tiny and still big enough that you can get those lines and get nice details.

I really love using this. And then you have the number two, which is this bigger v gouge shape. So that can be good going along lines carving out larger areas. Doing some side work around lines where you want a little bit more open space. That won't be inked. And then we have number three, which is kind of more of a you but still in that little V shape.

And then the five, which is a really wide gouge, and that's really good. If you're carving away like huge areas of linoleum, you don't want to be using this tiny thing because you'll be there for weeks. You want to use the wide gouge so you can just get rid of that strip it away. And that's a really useful you'll notice there's no number four, there's another set of a linoleum Carver that comes with the number four. And that's a square gouge. Honestly, I've actually never used that blade and we'd like to at some point, but that's a different set.

So that won't be in the ones that's on your materials list. So now let's talk about how to get that blade into your tool. So you've picked one out and you can put the rest of the blades back in the handle or leave them to the side of where you're working. So I'm going to start with that number one because that is my favorite. That's the one I use the most you We're gonna look at this little neck of your main tool and loosen it. Now the temptation is to loosen it all the way.

And what happens then is that this whole thing comes off, which is actually perfect because this was put back together incorrectly. So I'll show you that. So if you unscrew it all the way, you'll see that this next comes off. And these two little inner parts fall out. And if you're not careful, they'll fall out and maybe lose them. So just be really mindful of that.

And you'll notice that they come apart. So there's these two little pieces, they come apart. And if you examine it, there's a neck down at the bottom. You see that? Yeah. So you want that down.

You want that down, resting into this when it's all together where that neck is, because the top has the ball and you want that ball facing up. So you want to put the two pieces together where the neck is matches up so line up the neck and have the ball pointing up so when you put it back into this neck piece, that ball is in the top. So this wider bottom, you slide the ball in there, so the ball is in the top, not in the bottom. Make sense? Okay and then you take this and you screw it all back on. So, if you have a new tool, you probably won't need to undo the whole thing.

So just don't go through the trouble. All you need to do is loosen the neck just about halfway. And you can see that it jingles and that those two pieces inside separate a little bit. You want to put your blade, the neck of it with the writing on it, not the blade part but the neck. You want to put that neck in between those two pieces inside that are starting to separate. You have this kind of con cave, concave part of the neck that fits around the ball.

You slide it in, and make sure that the neck is all the way in, like you're covering up the writing on the neck completely. And then you can tighten it back up. kind of feel, make sure it's stable, it's good to go, it's not gonna loosen up on you. Now a little thing, I absolutely love the number one blade. However, it gets stuck in this tool all the time with students with my own practice. And there's always a question of how the heck do you get out.

And what I have found to work is if you're in the process, and you've loosened it all the way and it won't slide out, and it's just stuck, there's something going on in there. I like to just jiggle it around quite a bit, kind of loosen up that inside ball component, and then sometimes it'll slide out that way. If it's really stuck. Sometimes I'll take the whole neck all the way off, being careful not to lose those two inner pieces. And then I'll jiggle it around that way and that usually eventually loosens it out of there.