Woodcarving Basics: Session 1

After searching the various woodcarving videos available online, I found very little to help the absolute beginner. From my experiences teaching Woodcarving Merit Badge to Boy Scouts, I remember the importance of the four basic cuts every woodcarver should master: the push cut, the paring cut, the stop cut and the V-cut. I thought it might help some beginners to show these and present a simple project to practice the four cuts. I like a letter opener as a beginner project. So here's a video with both. enjoy!

It's About Time: Big Santa Finished!

Back in the early days of this blog (Oct.-Nov. 2010) I was working on a project I called Big Santa. He has been carved for some time now and sitting on a shelf, patiently awaiting a paint job. Well, I finally decided to focus on getting that done. He is now finished and I wanted to share some photos of him. I still plan on adding a base of some sort, but he's done! On to the next big project!

unpainted

Carve Your Face Off: A Makeover

Happy New Year everyone!

I covered quite a bit of new ground last year and looking forward to even more in 2012. I decided to look back over some of my not so successful pieces and see if I could do anything to "fix" them. Normally, I would leave what I've completed alone and chalk up the less than successful ones to experience and a reminder of where I have been. But, in this post, I will explore what maybe can be done to fix a carving I'm not happy with and maybe offer up a video show how I did the makeover.

So here is the original pattern and a photo of a finished carving by Will Hayden.

Here is a photo of one of two of these that I carved. It's really not that far off from the original design, but the face isn't right. At least i did not like the way it came out. And no one else did either, judging from the fact that it did not sell over two Christmas seasons on Etsy.

So I decided I didn't have much to loose if I tried to give him a bit of a makeover. I felt the body and feet and skis were fine, so I just wanted to fix the face. Since I left him with quite a large nose, there was enough material to work with. I also decide, since it was to be a Christmas ornament, I could simplify the face by carving the face smooth, simplify the nose and paint on the eyes and mouth.

And here is the result. A very much improved and cuter version of the skier. I now have the confidence to give one or two other carvings a makeover. of course, I'll still leave some of my older carvings alone. It's good to look at them and see how much I have improved in a year.

As I mentioned, I had made two of these and the other one isn't to cute either, so i plan to show the makeover in a video post. later...