As part of my seemingly endless quest for new things to try, I stumbled upon wood carving. It’s a lot of fun, except for the sharpening of the gouges. That part is pretty tough to do well (at least by me), and dull tools are truly frustrating (not to mention a safety hazard). Well, anyways, here’s some of my efforts. I’ve actually used some of these tools and techniques for other things, like carving pumpkins and sculpting hideous heads for Halloween … but that stuff has it’s own section anyways, so no need to repeat it here.
This a totem pole carving I made out of some scrap wood from a skid (I think it’s fir). It started out as a practice effort to do a head (the top one), and I just kinda kept going. No plans or drawings, I just did it free-style. Took me a solid 2 weeks of obsessive effort. Got sore wrists and forearms, but it was fun.
These are some “tiki” sytle heads that I carved out of wood from my firewood pile. The one on the left is my first attempt.
This is a carving of a puma from Christmas 2002. It’s made from mahogany and finished with tung oil. Surprisingly (at least to me), the oil didn’t really change the colour of the wood, but added “depth” to it. Rather than using a solid block of wood, the designer (not me!) suggested using three 3/4-inch pieces glued together. This allowed each section to be scrollsawed to rough shape prior to carving. Clever idea!
