When I first joined Woodland Ways my carving skills were somewhere between challenging and challenged. So, this blog is encouragement for anyone who feel that they have a hopeless chance of achieving a specific skill or just to know that wherever your starting point is and however difficult a skill may seem, with patience, perseverance a willingness to keep returning, eventually you can and will improve.
I had first attempted spoon carving when I was 19 with no instruction. It did not look like a spoon at all. Over the years I tried several further attempts also without instruction and in the end, I concluded that this was something I didn’t have natural talent in at all!
When my children were small, I did a short course in knife safety and carving techniques. It was useful to aid my children’s safety, but my carving skills didn’t improve. I was left with kindling and some rather amusing results… despite trying. I even tried to follow various YouTube tutorials on very simple projects.
Roll on in time and I joined Woodland Ways. My skills had improved a little but not much. There are so many skills in bushcraft that rely on having some basic carving skills and knowledge about different woods. I was slow and sometimes imprecise when carving notches in hearth boards for use with a bow drill. My tent pegs were slow to make and I felt unconfident making them. My feather sticks for lighting fires were slow to make and doomed if someone was watching or I got distracted. At that time, I was only good at splitting wood, making kindling and preparing firewood with a little battening skill to boot (when you split wood lengthways with a knife and a mallet). I had become good at this because it was my main source of heating for many years. My recognition for which woods came from different trees once it was a lump of wood was almost non-existent. Conifers, oak and other woods was about as far as I could go. So, what happened? How did I get from being so challenged to loving carving? I decided to focus on skills with wood craft at the centre for a year.
Progression of skill in making butter knives
Initially I learnt how to make butter knives from one of the other instructors. Then I made many butter knives. I started teaching others how to make butter knives. I was still not particularly enamoured with butter knives or carving and I knew that the next thing I needed to learn was how to make was the dreaded spoon. I watched other instructors teach this and was given some pointers and soon regardless of my trepidation a spoon appeared out of the wood. It actually looked like a spoon and was usable. I was astonished. I started making spoons with my Mora Companion bushcraft knife and a spoon knife, all on sycamore, it is a nice easy wood to start with.
Jay teaching a carving course
My first usable spoon that didn’t turn into firewood
A short while later I was apprenticing on a spoon carving day run by Jay. He is pretty passionate about carving and his enthusiasm rubbed off. Once I got home, I started wondering what I could actually carve (with my kids cheap and very poor-quality carving knives). Fairly soon I started getting creative.
Experimenting with a spoon handle
Spatula with different angles so can use in many different pots
I still have many part-finished items, some of this is because I have carved out the rough shape whilst green and I have left them to season before carving more detail. The next few months I had to pace myself to prevent myself from getting blisters. I discovered 3 days of straight carving from waking till sleep meant I couldn’t use my hands for a week. A couple of hours a day means I can carve everyday if I choose to. I had got the carving bug. I put down my leatherwork and for 3 months I carved every day. Wood chippings were always being found in random places around the house.
Examples of leather carving
Last summer I made the connection between carving leather and carving wood. I have carved leather for some years but never seen the correlation between that and woodcarving.
Carving lesson with Giles Newman
I treated myself to a lesson with Giles Newman and I experienced using a really sharp carving knife and my understanding developed of what was possible with the wood and how the piece of wood and the grain within guides you to reveal what is hidden inside. I finally understood what I had heard so many successful carvers talk about. Carving really is removing the excess to reveal what is hidden within.
I didn’t have any knives decent enough to continue the standard of work I was now able to achieve. Some weeks went by. I longed to get back to wood carving. Then a dear friend gifted me some beautiful knives and the world of carving really started opening up.
Confidence building to have a go at carving a small rhino toggle for a leather bag
A spoon inspired by an avocado plant with a hook on the back so can hang on the edge of a honey pot
I have started carving different woods, learning more about the trees, the grain and recognising what species lumps of wood were. I have carved green and seasoned wood. Learnt through experimentation about the ways different wood responds to seasoning. I also learnt more about the uses and qualities of different species. I see the grain and the dense fibres in a new light and this has given me new insights into how the wood will burn.
Challenges in wood carving
I have so many new carving projects I want to try out this year. I look forward to them with enthusiasm rather than dread. A little knowledge opens the door for a whole lot of exploration into the subject. It is what I love about being part of Woodland Ways, the level of skill and the level of passion is so infectious. Even the areas we are most challenged in, can be opened up to become something we love and have some skill at. My only regret is that I burned my first spoon disasters as firewood so I don’t have a record of how far I have come. Two years of focusing on a skill and keep returning again and again I can finally say I have some level of competence and now I am hooked
Beginning of a project cloaked spoon
To summarize:
- Take heart and keep persisting
- Break things down into smaller steps
- Go on an in-person course
- you will gain the knowledge you need
- use of the correct tools for the job
- have someone to correct your errors so you improve quickly
- the opportunity to ask questions when you don’t understand something clearly
- Then practice, practice, practice. The satisfaction of mastering to some degree, a skill that initially seemed impossible… well there is nothing quite like that feeling
My utensils roll