[BRIAN D]

Pete , I have several pull saws, I think threre excellent beautiful fine cut. In following the your posts, I think watching grian direction is critical for you, when planning your carving, as your going to trace your carving try to think ahead to where your weakest points are (thinest points) and type of wood you are using, basswood breaks easy across grain when thin, oak on the other hand definatly tougher, but some times harder to carve. Planning your steps ahead is easily said but sometimes hard to foresee. PS: Keep the glue handy! Brian

[Lynn O. Doughty]

If you look at my pieces closely you'll note that I don't spend too much time on hair, whether animal or human. I'll indicate it with just a few strokes. I use a very sharp box knife to show the flow of the hair, but not much more than that. If I'm doing something furry like a Buffalo Headress I use a stoning wheel in my Fordum to indicate this flow and then tie it into the surrounding areas with a burning tool. Naturally, if you're after a realistic effect then you face a different situation than I do. But here is an important thing to remember....When you reduce something from it's original size the detail of that thing becomes increasingly smaller the more it's reduced. So, lets say you're carving a racoon that's 6 inches long. Any fur on a raccoon that size carved to scale would be completely imperceptable. You could easily get by with no fur detail at all but just paint the surface to look like fur. If you concentrate too much on the fur on a carving that size it starts looking more like a stuffed toy than a rendering of a real animal.

In my opinion, and remember this is MY opinion and I am in no way trying to start an argument, people who carve animals, even the pro's, spend way too much time on the fur to the point that their product looks cute and cuddly or stuffed instead of how the animal would normally look. Sure, if they want to carve an animal that looks more like a teddy bear than a bear then that's their right. However, if carving a realistic animal they should apply a different standard...reality. An example of this would be the coyote. Coyotes are long and thin, or a better word...rangy. Definitely not cute and cuddly. Look at a painting or sculpture of a coyote by Charlie Russell and you'll see exactly what I mean. Of any artist he is the one who really captures the essence of what a coyote is in the wild.

Essence of coyote?? I'm rambling............