Newbie From Louisville

[RYAN IN LOUISVILLE]

Hi, I'm Ryan, 29 years old, originally from Ohio, home is Louisville, KY, but currently camping in Atlanta for at least 6 months for work. I am getting back into carving after a 15 year hiatus from it. Had other hobbies, other woodworking, etc and with camping I needed something to pass the time here so I decided to get back into it.

I used to do small birds in Jr high school. I had a teacher in Ohio who carved a lot and he was willing to teach me some skills. I have 1 knife (dull) from then and plan on buying some more along with a glove and some wood to play with. I am wondering where in Atlanta to go to get these? Woodcraft is too expensive IMO but it's all I can find. I plan on stopping at Smoky Mountain Woodcarvers on my way back down here on 7/5 to pick some things up and to get some advice.

I am going to try to do country bears, small birds, tiki gods, and some Santa’s. I know, it's a strange combination of topics but interested in all of them. One thing I don't see topics on is painting. Is it really that self-explanatory or does everyone give it the voodoo fingers?

Thanks and happy carving

Ryan

[Ashbys]

Hi , welcome.

I would check littleshavers. com Rick should be able to help a lot. You will find if lurking somewhere on the boards. Nice to have ya join us.

Ash

[squbrigg]

Hey Ryan, welcome aboard. Great seeing young carvers joining the gang here. You'll find them a pretty friendly and helpful bunch. Happy carving.

Bob

[Donna_T]

Welcome Ryan,

As you will find from reading past postings, there are as many ways to finish (Painting) a carving as there are techniques to sharpening our carving tools. Do some surfing back in postings from throughout the past year or so--using painting as the topic for the search--and you'll get lots of advice that will give you choices on how to accomplish the look you want.

The best thing I can tell you is to use several coats of very thin acryllic paint to get the look you want without completely covering the wood and making it look like plastic! By thin, I mean dilute it about 5-10 parts of water to 1 part of paint. If I'm going to mix my paints to get a specific color, I really like water colors because when the water dries out, you can simply add water back and keep the mixture true. I start painting a carving by doing the lightest colors first--face, hair, beard, fur on santa's costume--then going on to darker colors. To keep your adjoining colors from running into the next area, you can do a really shallow stop cut along the color lines and it will miraculously stop the flow.

Then, there's the issue of whether or not to "antique" a painted carving...But that's another issue that has been discussed previously, too. And we've talked about animal painting here. If you can't find it, let us know and we'll add our 2 cents on that issue too.

I think your carving interests are cool--I seldom carve on just one kind of carving. It's not unusual to have a santa, a bird, an animal, and various other carvings all in various stages of completion.

Good luck. And, again, we're glad to have you join us here.

Donna T

[Whiskers]

Ryan

Welcome to the forum Ryan from louisville, I too am from the louisville area PRP to be exact. You will get tons of good information on this forum, many different answers for your questions (that's a good thing in my opinion).

There is a knife shop in you neck of the woods Heimerdinger cutlery on Shelbyville Rd. He is selling his carving tools at 50% off, I don't know what he has left, he carry's Henkle, Dastra and Buck Bros. knives. The address is 4207 Shelbyville Rd. He also sharpens carving tools.

The website is heimerdingercutlery.com.

again, welcome
whiskers