Can you carve Butternut wood?

[Boog]

Hey everyone. I am still enjoying my new hobby of woodcarving. I have just finished my trout and will start a project for a fund raiser at work for the Relay for Life. My question is, can you relief carve Butternut wood? I have been asked to do this project, and the wood will be given to me. I am getting 5 discs of Butternut with the bark still on with a 12"-14" diameter and roughly 2" thick. I have only done 3 other carvings but the guys at work are really impressed with what I have done so far and asked me to make a project out of this Butternut wood which I have never even heard of. I work with pine and I like it alot. I have a lot of it on my land. I also want to carve red cedar, is this a good wood to work with? Other wood that I have access to is Black Cherry and Walnut and lots of Poplar. Are these good woods to Carve? I can't wait for your feedback.

[jmischel]

Yes, you can carve butternut. I haven't carved it myself, but others say that it's quite nice to carve. A little harder than basswood, but not terribly so.

I have carved black cherry, black walnut, and yellow poplar. All are relatively easy to carve. You'll need sharp tools, and you'll need to strop them often. You might want a little steeper bevel on your tools if you have some particularly hard cherry or walnut.

My experience has been that black cherry is the hardest of the three, but I did enjoy carving it. And the finished product is beautiful. The black walnut will be harder than butternut, but I think it carves rather nicely. The black walnut seems to have a more open grain than the cherry, and will tend to split out on you if you carve against the grain.

You don't say what kind of poplar you have. I've carved a bit of what they call yellow poplar (also known as tulip poplar, and several other names). It, too, has a fairly open grain. But it's relatively soft and carves nicely. I have several spoons I made from yellow poplar. Lovely stuff, and a joy to work with.

[RUssL.]

Can I can carve butternut? Not any better than I can carve anything else! ;-)
Seriously, butternut carves and finishes very, very nicely.
Butternut is really a wonderful wood to carve, but getting harder to find and more expensive as a result.

Good luck!
Russ

[Mitchell]

Butternut carves nicely. It splinters a bit so relief may be an issue with smaller details.

If you have more questions about specific wood types, try the search function to see older posts. You can ask questions, but may get your answer that way also in less time.

[Bob K.]

You mentioned that you are going to be carving on 2" thick "discs" which have been cut from the tree. Unless I'm wrong the problem you are going to have there is that you are going to be doing all of your carving into the end grain of the wood, which is probably the worst case scenario for carving anything. It is going to be extremmely difficult to carve into the end grain.

[Buffalo Bif]

Just whittled my first butternut, fun to work with, open grain and color changes a bit of a challenge. Bob K prolly hit the nail on the head with his end grain comments- Yikes!

[carvingbarn]

Butternut is a great carving wood to me. I love working with it. but it is becoming harder to fined. As was said smaller detail can be anissue. keep your tool sharp.

[scooter]

We've all carved butternut, and are in agreeance that it's a beautiful and cooperative medium. But...

...the question was regarding relief-carving on butternut. In my experience, when relief carving on butternut, shadows and knifework tend to get lost in the grain and darkness of the wood (especially if you're carving say, a landscape scene). Generally, you want lighter wood to do relief carving, which allows you to see the shadows and details. And, as BobK mentioned above, if you're going to be carving end grain, you'll be met with additional challenges. Your finish will soak right in, and make your piece that much darker, further masking any detail you've carved. If you're going to go for it, I'd love to see the finished work!

My $0.02.


S~

[Hi_Ho_Sliver]

Butternut is terrific wood to carve..not much different from basswood imho...don't paint it tho! Its beautiful in its natural state with a bit of clear on it. Cherry too...altho a bit harder to carve, walnut also, both a bit harder than butternut.......all great woods! Poplar carves good, but the dust really bothers me....wear a mask in case. Just remembered another good wood "Kauri" wood from New Zealand.....gigantic trees that were buried, I belief in Noahs flood...they are digging them up and the wood is still good! Expensive tho....very pretty wood and not too much unlike butternut imho

[Old Scout]

End grain will give you a problem ,in this case, I love butternut. I find Red Cedar tends to split easy. As you carve a splinter will pop out , however I have seen some beautiful work using red cedar, it carves easy.