Thread: Getting Started.

Mac: will this be a one shot deal and you walk away from carving? If so, it will be mighty expensive.
1. Woods and finishes/paints, etc I shop in one wood store where today, they had a bin 3' x 3' x 3' deep in mahogany boards 1/8" x 4-6" x 24". With steely nerves and superhuman effort, I walked right past it.
2. It's hard to get wood to hold small detail. Anybody who says otherwise has been at it for years. The fool that I am, just dropped a wad on a 4" x 6" x 60" clear beam of Yellow cedar.
3. I'd start with scroll-saw rough cuts and finish with Palm tools (Drake, Flexcut, etc)
Then, you'd better learn fast what "carving sharp" means and how to do it. More tools & supplies.
4. If you have to hold the piece in one hand and carve with the other, that scares the bejeezlies out of me.
5. Major craft and wood stores have very wide selections of precut, unfinished items that could be "reworked" and brightly painted for the babe.
Good luck with it. Have you got 6 months to get ready???? Tell her to wait.

Maybe you could find a local wood carving club where you could get some tuition and pointers in the right direction. As mentioned above, expensive for one off item if that's all you are going to create. Good luck with it anyway.. Oh and welcome to the forum.

Alright. I get it. It's going to cost a lot.
What are the few basic things I'll need? A couple of chisels? A few knives?
Where do I start?

What Robson has told you is very important. What I am about to tell you has to be taken in the context that i have only been learning to carve for twelve months and i have no tutor or mentor except some guys in Forums who have been particulary helpful.

If you are on your own then maybe I can give you some advice. The number one thing I have found in carving ,until you get sorted out is the Wood. If I have read your whereabouts correctly you are in the States. If that is the case than basswood is your go to wood.

If you just want to use what you have lying around and for your Mobile that should be fine. But then you will more then likely have to go the power carving way with a Dremel or clone rotary tool with some burrs. You will not need a set of carving chisels. Now the purists wil cringe when i tell you when getting started try the minimum. eg a sharp carpenters chisel with the angle sharpened down to about 15 degree from the regular 25 will get you by.

Then, if you wanted to round over some of the animals a gouge will be useful. The reason I say tto get the minimum is if you take to carving,more then likely what you first thought you would like to do may be ta totally different place in twelve months.

How do I know?

Pete

ps.

As Robson said. Learn to sharpen. Without sharp tools this carving ain't no fun.

This is a bit like indigestion = things keep coming up.

1. munruben makes a great suggestion: find a carving club, if you can. Hopefully, you will see several styles of carving and the different tool selections for each. Most artisans are quite willing to talk about their style and what they do.

2. STAR says find the wood first and basswood is a starting point. It carves easily and holds fair detail. Heineke (sp?) is the best mail order place in the US. I am looking at a piece right now: 1/4" x 3" x 24" $4.18 each from a major "wood" store (Windsor Plywood.) They have darn near everything. If you had $8k+ to drop on a slab exotic hardwood table top, that's the place to pick through the pile.

3. You might track down a professional wood carver that you could buy some advice from. The guy who taught me the basics is so busy now, he won't answer the phone for $50/hr. I've even taken watercolor painting lessons from his mother, no less!

4. In your PM to me, you have sharpening skills already. That puts you 3 or 4 steps ahead of the game. While the techniques are a little different, you know what needs to be done.

I am the only carver of wood (that I know of) in my little mountain village of 600 people.
One carves stone, never met him. Two are power carvers, one in cottonwood bark, the other in Ostrich egg shell, antler and house doors. Two others carve cottonwood bark, I've met one but we have little in common, the other has a reclusive reputation.
That's it.

I carve western red cedar, a nightmare for splitting to most. Most essential to make a cut in one particular direction only. Rarely do I have pop-outs any more. I split what I need from actual cedar log pieces, so I have some quite large & "bash-worthy" tools.
I have a couple of really elegant little carving knives for detail, all the way up to a sculptor's adze with a 3" wide edge. My smallest piece so far was 9" tall, the biggest will come out of 3" x 12" x 30" pieces.

At the end of the day, it's up to you. My free advice is likely all it's worth.

Depending on the complexity of the mobile pieces, I'd try to get along side a whittler and get some pointers from him/her. Whittling is big in the US so that shouldn't be an impossible task.

Basswood is good and plentiful your side of the the pond. A good 3 or 4 bladed pocket knife properly shaped and sharpened is all you need for tooling. If you have sharpening skills this isn't too great a challenge either.

I can post a short WIP on how to shape/sharpen a 3 bladed knife if that will help, but how to use it is more info than a simple WIP can provide. Get a 'step-by-step' book and do the project. Even if its not what you want for the mobile, it will get you started in how to use the knife/tools without removing your digets.

This process doesn't have to be complicated or expensive. It all depends on how detailed you want your work to be and a great deal on who you choose to teach you, as you will almost certainly follow his/her advice and techniques, at least at first.

If you were closer, I'd invite you over for a 'barby' (BBQ) and an afternoon of whittling but Oz is a bit far away....

Thanks for all of the advice, everyone. I think I'm going to seek out someone around here that has experience. I know first hand that having a teacher to help you learn a skill is invaluable. I'll start looking.