{"id":1673,"date":"2010-12-05T16:32:56","date_gmt":"2010-12-05T20:32:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/?p=1673"},"modified":"2021-09-19T18:52:20","modified_gmt":"2021-09-19T22:52:20","slug":"woodcarving-get-busy-already","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/woodcarving-get-busy-already\/","title":{"rendered":"Woodcarving &#8211; Get busy already"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>OK. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/?p=1590\">Enough<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/?p=1614\">talking<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/?p=1638\">about<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/?p=1664\">woodcarving<\/a>. Do something.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/woodcarved_balls.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-1674\" title=\"woodcarved balls\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/woodcarved_balls-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"a neat pile of 4 3\/4 inch wooden balls\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>Well, actually I did &#8230; some months ago. Somewhere along the trail of elebenty million web pages about woodcarving, I came across one carver&#8217;s advice. He says that every time he gets a new knife, he gets used to how it handles by carving a round ball on the end of a stick. Having acquired a few new knives (more about tools next time), I took his advice. I bought a big block of basswood several decades ago and used a\u00a0minuscule\u00a0part of it for some model ship building. I found that block and ripped off a few 3\/4 inch square sticks and started carving. Carving round balls, as opposed to almost square balls, ovoid balls, kidney shaped balls, and other odd shapes is indeed a good way to get the feel for carving. One can learn very quickly about working with grain, &#8220;carving downhill&#8221; as the carvers say.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/woodcarved_no-see-ums.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-1675\" title=\"5 No-See-ums\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/woodcarved_no-see-ums-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"photo of 5 caricature faces with no eyes\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>No, I didn&#8217;t carve any balls in cages. Did one of those in teenage years. I moved on to caricature faces. Don Mertz, the &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/woodbeecarver.com\/\">WoodBe Carver<\/a>&#8221; featured <a href=\"http:\/\/woodbeecarver.com\/?p=825\">an entry on his blog<\/a> by a fellow carver named Don Worley. Worley uses &#8220;No-see-um&#8221; characters as a way to teach beginners to carve faces. These characters don&#8217;t see because they have no eyes, sparing the newbie the need to learn delicate details at the very beginning. Learning to carve those 5 characters was very enjoyable. I&#8217;ve found carving to be one of those activities that is almost zen like. Pick up the knife, start making chips, and lose track of time.<\/p>\n<p>Since then, I&#8217;ve carved a lot more &#8220;no-see-ums&#8221; characters, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/?p=1567\">most of them &#8220;seasonal&#8221;<\/a> for the time of year that approaches in about three weeks. That old block of basswood is nearly gone and new stock has arrived. Guess I&#8217;m hooked. \u00a0I&#8217;ll show the &#8220;seasonal&#8221; carvings after they are in the hands of the intended recipients.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OK. Enough talking about woodcarving. Do something. Well, actually I did &#8230; some months ago. Somewhere along the trail of elebenty million web pages about woodcarving, I came across one carver&#8217;s advice. He says that every time he gets a new knife, he gets used to how it handles by carving a round ball on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-woodcarving","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1673"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8171,"href":"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673\/revisions\/8171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bob-easton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}