Recent Comments

Hello Mary,

I enjoy your video lessons very much. I first became interested in wood carving when I was stationed in Japan back in the early 1970's admiring work I saw there and thought someday to try my hand at it. Now decades later, I have become a weekend dabbler at relief carving, and since having recently retired I plan to devote more time to it. I have been using fairly inexpensive Japanese gouges, which seem smaller than those produced by Pfeil or other major brands. I recently was given what seems to be a very good set of Japanese gouges. Would you know if there is a difference in the techniques for keeping them at their sharpest?

What size is the pineapple

Very nice!

Which direction does the grain run? Will the add on piece have the same grain orientation?

OK I'm ready to start this project. Have the perfect place to mount it. Planning on hanging it over an outside front window. Used to have a hand painted door crown there but it eventually deteriorated over time.

Being a large project requires a good sized piece of wood. My buddy and fellow carver Roger, he also has a saw mill, decided that we needed to go and visit a friend of his who just happened to have a large bass wood tree come down in a storm last year. So we cut off a five foot long log from the 2 foot diameter tree,loaded in on a trailer and took it to his place. Two days later he had it set up on the bed of the saw mill, locked in place and ready for the sawing.

When I got to his place I had a chance to operate the saw mill and slice off two, one inch thick, two foot wide by five foot long boards.

Got the pattern enlarged at my locale library yesterday and am ready to cut out the owl and get carving.
I'm that just because i got 2 boards from Roger that he doesn't expect me to carve and owl for him.
Ian