Volumes have been written about woodcarving by a whole host of authors, so far be it for me to do any coaching or hand out any "tips and tricks" here. Sorry if that's what you were expecting to find. All the tips I know came from a whole bunch of other good carvers so I doubt that I'd have any new innovations to add to the pile.
Carving is something that I've come to late in life and having just started in early 2003, I still consider myself a beginner. I certainly don't feel that I've developed any great expertise yet, especially not when I compare my work to the work of others that I've seen at carving shows. I'm just a guy that has finally found a challenge that he enjoys and wants to share his successes on a website. And hey ... it keeps me off the streets!
So here are some photos of what I've been up to and what I've had to say about them. If you're really interested, click on the pictures to get a closer view.
Enjoy!

The first bird I carved was done mainly in a one night a week class over about 12 weeks in early 2003. It didn't take long to start a tool "collection". It was absolutely amazing how many tools I purchased to get that little bird carved. But it was worth it. And that's the interesting thing about figure carving. It takes a wide variety ot tools to get started and turn out well done carvings in a reasonable amount of time, but, once you have your tools, you get to use them over and over. So the long and short of it is, carving can be an expensive hobby to get into, but unlike some other hobbies, it's not expensive to keep it going once you've acquired your tools.

Deciding it was time to "get serious" about my carving, I enrolled in a three day class with Roz Daisey, in Newark, Delaware. From start to finish, Roz took the class step by step, giving us first an "over the shoulder" demo of each step and then checking up on our efforts to accomplish them. While I have to say that under her instruction, my knowledge of carving techniques took a tremendous leap forward, it seemed that doing it all in three consecutive days was a pretty intense way of achieving a higher level. So for those of you can't find three days in your schedule, or you can't make it to her studio in Delaware, on her website she has five books available for you, that with their step by step format, are the next best thing to being there. So here's #2 for me. And even I, my own worst critic, must admit "it's not too shabby."

I've also gotten involved with chip carving and spoon carving as well.