First carving finished..."5 minute" owl

[INSilverado]

A while back I seen the 5 minute owl project for rookies in an issue of the WCI magazine (Fall of 2009). I thought that would be a fairly easy first project for a newbie like myself, so I cut some bass wood and made a 1"x1"x6" piece. Today I sat down and started carving, figuring it would take about a half hour being I'm a new carver. Well, my "5 minute" owl took me two hours. LOL! The pointed tip of the beak broke when my knife slipped and I could have taken off more wood to define the chest/body area, but I think it will do for my first carving. I do have a set of 4 palm gouges that a friend gave me, so I was able to do the "feathers" like the article said. I rubbed on some Tru Oil that I had in the shop to preserve it and give it some color. Nothing fancy, but definitely proud of it.

Lessons I learned you might ask? Well, besides learning how a stop cut works, I learned that using an X-Acto knife isn't for me and I'm going to purchase a real carving knife. I also learned that when you get impatient trying to rough stuff out with the X-Acto knife, that using a normal shop utility knife can take wood off WAY too fast. Then when you grab your trusty hunting knife, thinking you will use that to rough it out, you will learn that you should sharpen that knife and the blade is too big to work with when making small projects. I also learned that an 80 pound black labrador retriever looks kind of cool laying at my feet covered in wood chips. But he can also spill your cup of coffee when he gets up and bumps your small work table.

All in all, a fun project and lessons learned.

[INSilverado]

Oops. Guess I had best read the "thumbnail" instructions, huh.

[Mr. Chips]

Great first carving.
Sounds like you're hooked.

Randy

[Midnight Carver]

That's a nice looking first carving! Plus sounds like it was quite an event which will make it even more memoriable to look back on.

Eric

[gene-messer]

You learned ! most important .. we learn by doing .. excellent .. you did a good job BTW

Gene

[BullRunBear]

Congratulations! I just did the same project as a first carving and, believe me, yours came out much better. Mine was recognizable so I declared it a moral victory. :-) I learned a lot and will do it gain to reinforce the lessons. Besides, it was just so much fun.

If I can make a suggestion, I started with a Butz style knife but had better results with a plain old fixed blade utility knife. I think it cost 3 or 4 bucks at Lowes and came with 3 blades.

Jeff

[INSilverado]

BullRunBear, I just ordered a Butz style knife. LOL! Will see how I like it and if not, check out a utility type knife.

[BullRunBear]

INSilverado,

In my VERY limited experience, I think you'll find the more rigid blade and bigger grip of the Butz knife easier to control than the X-Acto. It's just that I have unusually big hands (the largest carving glove just barely fits) and the size and shape of that utility knife is comfortable.

For a chuckle: Many years ago I made extensive use of X-Acto knives. As a business and technical writer, we would literally "cut and paste" (actually used hot wax) sections of text before sending the documents to the typing pool. If you never had to do this, you didn't miss anything. Fortunately, by the time I was doing newspaper articles their word processors could handle those things.

Jeff

[jimmy joe]

The Butz knife is good but needs a good stropping I found . Nice job on the owl . Enjoyed the "lessons learned " story also . I think you will enjoy it more with a good carving knife .

[Thor]

It's always a pleasure to have another good story teller around here. I enjoyed your reflections, especially:
"I also learned that an 80 pound black labrador retriever looks kind of cool laying at my feet covered in wood chips. But he can also spill your cup of coffee when he gets up and bumps your small work table."

Your owl turned out really well. I do think you'll enjoy stepping up with the knife. Good tools make a huge difference.
Christina