Resources

 

RESOURCES

 

 

Books

If it looks like whittling  is a craft your want to take up and actually do the following classics 
are highly recommended  .The investment is so small  and the value got huge in relation  to what 
information and manuals and or software etc costs in today’s  worlds.  These are available immediately ex stock and delivered overnight.
   
The Little Book of Whittling by Chris Lubkemann.

This is virtually the little bible for beginners. It is a great book for novices.
 Lubkemann’s focus a lot is on whittling branches and twigs. This book has a great
 guide on how to carve very basic object and has many very basic projects listed 
and literally walks you through from the very beginning . This is such a good instruction manual
 and helps to build confidence for the novice from the absolute start so that they can go onto 
producing eye popping works later. Lovely examples of wood carvings in this book

The Art of Whittling by Walter Faurot.
 Go for  this book immediately when you feel you want 
more after working the project from books like the one above.  
 there we move on to advanced projects. It’s filled with detailed patterns for projects like
 ball in a cage, some simple puzzles and a continuous wooden chain with moving links 

 

Creative Woodcarving for Beginners by Budeker, Hill, Mazrek and others.

This book has everything you need to cover all aspects for the  Woodcarver. It is richly filled with color photographs throughout. The indexes are very detailed and covers the subjects of wood, carving techniques, surface finishing.

It incorporates many project ideas and scaled templates for these projects which can be scaled for the intended work to be carried out. Some of these projects are traced from inception in a step by step layout with photos to lead the carver or sculpture throughout to the end. It has a section for kids projects. It is a high quality publication reference format        [144 pages]

Thumb Guards and Protective Gloves
To work safely and with ongoing confidence you must think of hand safety. The knives and chisels are extremely sharp and one slip can cause a very bad cut that will put you out for days if not weeks. You may even have a serious injury which will need stitches and cost some time at the doctor. So getting organized with a hand safety set up makes sense.

Whole Hand Protection
Get a pair for Kevlar gloves with the micro PVC dots. these are great to protect the whole hand when whittling or woodcarving as Kevlar is knife resistant and the plastic dots are great for grip if smooth surfaces. Also the Kevlar breathes well so you don’t get sticky hands 

Finger Protection

Here protection of individual fingers when whittling and wood carving by  very items like thumb or finger guards keeps up the safety and confidence when working. You can get individual finger and thumb guards in different sizes and the god ones are mane out of 100% cowhide. Good for whittling with. Remember there is nothing worse that worrying if you are going to nick your self with a whittling knife half the time . It takes away from focusing on the wood carving side

Profiled Honing Block

Honing Block or Strops

For fine honing of the cutting edge it is important to get what is called a keen edge to the whittling knife or chisel. Here there are a lot of resourcesfor the carver or wood sculpture around. There are many that are leather based on wooden blocks with and without hand grips. Some are single faced while others have even four sides to the block and include profiling for sharpening say Vee shaped wood chisels. These should come with rouge compounds of various micron grits. It is important to get one that is user friendly to you and gives the result. An idea is to get two, one for the in house wood carving or whittling workshop and one that is smaller and more portable for you to carry around when you are traveling so you can whittle on your journeys