[stickman]

I was talking to a good friend last night and his analogy was mt. Rushmore .saying that the craftsmans that helped carve it used explosives and jackhammers .yet he still considered it hand carved.you still have to make the cuts no matter what tools you use. when you think of it like that I have to agree.

[artolver]

well seems like a hand carving is carved by one hand whatever tool you are using, power! electric, gas, yer own muscles only..... it has to be one hand and one hand only before it can be hand carving.. only one exception! Ron and other blind guys can use either hand for seeing.
.. art the bark guy olver

[jillsy]

Last night, I watched a "Modern Masters" episode of a man who "hand carves" animal spirits (owls, bears, wolves, etc) into doors and walls by using nothing but power tools, sanders mostly. His work was amazing. Could anyone else do this simply by picking up the tools? No way! It was his abilities to make the tools do this that produced the results. His hands and arms moved those sanders around to exactly where they needed to be to make such creations. I considered his work to be hand-made.

[Gergie]

I think it's a matter of perception. I visited with a guy that said his pieces were all hand carved. I took that to mean no power, I then asked him how he carved a fish so smooth so you couldn't see the tool marks. He showed me one of those little drum sanders you but with a foredom grinder. I also noticed he had a large set of small bits that are used with a nimsco(sp) detailer.

I use power to carve my ducks and to take out tool marks, so I'll say power is a part of hand carving.

Now you could associate traditional wood carving with just metal tools. But I wonder if the first wood carvings were carved by stone tools. so again it'a all a matter of perception

[Smee]

Maybe we're over intellectualizing this. Maybe when they ask if it is hand carved they mean" Did you make it your self?"

[Clifford_Parker]

To those who say "it doesn't matter what tool you use".

Does programming the coordinates into a CNC count?
Can a sign be sold as "handcarved" if it is routered?

There has to be a limit to what SHOULD be counted as "handcarved".

My mother makes beautiful quilts and quilts some by hand while she uses her quilting sewing machine for others. She would NEVER advertise or sell a machine quilted piece as "hand sewn".

[Kenny_S]

I guess it depends on if one uses their hands to program the CNC router. Eh. But then that is a whole nother area right. Did the hand do it by themselves or did the mind have something to do with it. Hand Carved can mean many different things as you can tell by the responses here. Those who are purist believ what the want as each and every one here believes what they want. In closing, It doesn't make a hill a bit of difference to millions of people. Bank on that.JMHO and to me, the only one that counts. Of course I do have to ask the little bride for it.

[mdallensr]

In an earlier thread, we also talked about "hand carved" as applied to gift shop items and even gallery art. When you're looking at 30 identical dolphins that are marked "hand carved", do you really believe they were hand carved? When you see a true ironwood carving from Mexico, do you really believe it was hand carved, knowing it's almost impossible to work real ironwood by hand? These are extreme examples, but they're the most common occurrences for non-carvers. Most folks who buy these items have a mental image of a carver making a unique item by hand, one at a time. I doubt they envision some guy running a cobbled up, multi-head carving reproducer in a mud-hut while his family squats on the ground nearby putting the finish on these "hand carved" items.

So, while we as carvers know what we do, and have no need to explain ourselves to others, there is a bigger world of carving that many of us care about. That's why we have shows and competitions, carving gatherings, clubs and classes, and even message boards! That's also why carving competitions have rules and categories for carvers, and our message board has categories. I think most of us have an intrinsic need to be with other carvers, to learn, to share, and to be with like-minded people. We do a lot of comparing (as painful as that can be at times), to see how we stack up with the rest of the carving world, and that requires some basis for comparison. Because of that, we're always going to have discussions about edge tools vs. power tools, original designs vs. patterns, rough-outs vs. carvings from your own harvested tree, one-piece carvings vs. Lynn's technique, etc.

I think we're also going to always have folks express their preferences, to the point of evangelism, since most of us seem to stick with our roots. "I started with a Helvie knife (insert Pfeil, Two-Cherries, Stubai, Lyons, palm tools, mallet tools, home-made tools, or you-name-it) and they are the best/only one worth having." It's natural, like rooting for your high school team 20 years after you left town. But, given those comparisons and preferences, we're always going to form opinions, and those opinions have sparked some of our best threads.

So what is "hand-carved"? IMHO, it isn't produced on a machine - no CNC routers, regardless who has their hand on the controls. IMHO, it isn't adding some finishing touches to a nearly-finished rough-out (I have a decoy "blank" complete with eyes that could be sanded and painted as a "slick" - that's not hand carving). Carving is not logging, saw-mill, lumber, or tree-planting, so getting a piece of wood to the point we can carve it has nothing to do with "hand-carved", IMHO. Beyond that, anything you can do to take that piece of wood to a finished carving, using your creativity, skill and your hands, is hand carving, IMHO. Mike

[artolver]

Originally Posted by Smee

Maybe we're over intellectualizing this. Maybe when they ask if it is hand carved they mean" Did you make it your self?"

Now that's a the best question so far......maybe a new thread ?

Art the bark guy

[Donald K. Mertz]

"Whittle," did someone say "whittle?" Now this is another can of worms to open because the best definition for "Whittling" is the carving of a piece of wood held in one hand and using only a "knife" as the cutting tool in the other hand. "Whittling" is the true "carved by hand" carving. To use any other cutting tool, be it a gouge, V tool, skew chisel, riffler, sand paper, draw knife, scorp, or spoke shave is to carve the wood and not "whittle the wood." A "whittling contest" that allows any additional carving tools along with a knife, becomes a "carving contest" rather than a "true" whittling contest. Whittlers can carve but carvers do not whittle if they use any tool other than a knife. Whittling was one of the first folk art endeavors that carried the reputation of "hand carved" carvings of whimsies, ball-in-a-cage, wooden chains, fans, small figures, birds, animals, love spoons, chip carving, canes and walking sticks and initials carved within a heart on school desks or tree trunks. "Hand carved," "Power Carved," Chain Saw Carving,"Sculpture Carving" and "Whittled" all have there place but in my opinion the common perception is that "Hand Carved" implies the use of hand tools. Have I "whittled" away your patience yet?