Thread: Some carved stick & cane heads

Very nice carvings! And welcome to the forum.

Good to have you along to the forum Mike!! A big welcome!!!

They are great carvings and something very different for walking sticks.

Bloody brilliant mate! This is very close to my own interest but very different to my style. Love em all. I don't suppose you have photos of other angles and/or the completed sticks?

Thanks for your kind comments gents - much appreciated. No I'm afraid these are the only photos I have left after carving hundreds of these , I regret it now & wish I'd took a load to remind myself if nothing else. These photo's are of very early ones & I wish I had some of some of the later more sophisticated cane tops I did but before the finish dried they were sent of to be sold in he high end European collectors market.
I no longer make them, using these rock hard fruit woods the constant stress on my hands after a couple of years or so became too much, also I got creative burn out & felt I'd said everything I had to say in stick heads. These factors plus the money being way too low after he middle men had their cut was the final straw - I ended up selling all my carving tools & not carving at all for years !
Nowadays I am rediscovering the depth of the challenge & joy of woodcarving ,keeping it for pleasure, restricting myself to using knives alone & choosing my own projects.
Although I've been involved in a wide variety of art & crafts all my life, I still haven't found any challenge or satisfaction to come close to that which woodcarving (especially with a knife alone) -in joining this forum it is my hope to both share & learn, to give any assistance where requested & to promote our unique craft.
Cheers Mike

Welcome to the forum Mike, very nice work. I have a set of 4 Flexcut knives which I must confess don't get used much when I'm carving except maybe the smaller detailing knife. What brand of knives do you use? how long have you been carving?.

Hi Rob, thanks, I been carving for 32 years with the odd year out here & there.
Yes I had some flex cut palm chisels when they first came out & liked the steel ,if I didn't have enough knives I could be tempted by their pelican knives as it looks like my kind of blade shape. Over time I've come to believe that a woodcarving knife should definitely have a curved shape & preferably scimitar or bow shape, that way it is able to perform smooth gouge like cuts as well as requiring less force & leaving a burnished surface with its slicing motion.
Below is a photo of what is nearly my entire kit but in the past I've had extensive collections of various makes of gouges & use high speed burrs etc, nowadays I just want to enjoy carving & for me there is nothing more meditative than knife carving, sure there's easier more efficient ways of removing wood - for me it's the difference between going for a walk & taking nature in as you go or just catching a plane to get there as quickly as possible.

Welcome Mike.
You must be a part-time magician, too.
The mouse. Apple wood. Not cracked.

I'll stuff the ballot box = one vote for each of them.

I've only been at this 11 years but I've talked to a lot of carvers in that time and you are the first to emphasize the importance of at least one blade with a sweep or curved shape. I couldn't agree more with you about that shape being necessary to be able to mimic some gouge-type cuts. Its essential in my opinion for any carving of any complexity at all... and yet time after time we see offerings from manufacturers (who should know better) of so-called 'whittling' knives with no curved blades.

I also see you've got a few modified pocket knives. Best tool ever in my opinion, provided the steel is good. Blades modified just so... all the sharp bits fold into the handle and you can carry around 3 or 4 carving blades in one handy packet. I just don't understand why more people don't get this....

Thanks for posting this thread. I don't feel I'm quite so far out in the wilderness now....

You have a good selection of knives there Mike. I've been carving for a bit over 2 years, a mere novice but it's just for enjoyment and I love the challenge. It will be good to see what you come up with now your doing it for fun rather than money.

Hi Whittling, Yep you're definitely right about the major so called "whittling knife" manufactures having missed a trick .Like you I prefer to use a folding knife to carve too.
Recently unearthed archaeological evidence shows that it is not just us two who value curved knife blades to carve wood - The first pic is from Norway & no doubt were used to carve those wonderful long ships' prows circa 10th C. & the blades in the second picture are English from around the same date. Interestingly both finds were tested for Rockwell hardness & the best reading was 54 -barely adequate you would have imagined to carve some of the intricate work which still survives this as proof of their skills !

There's a U.S. whittler ,Don Mertz who espouses the merit of using a curved knife blade & quite a few small independent knife makers on his site offer his well thought through blade design shape also read the "soft carving" article where he talks about it. It's an interesting site for a knife carver to be aware of anyway if you are not already - http://woodbeecarver.com/