Books or guides on whittling?

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davide

Joined
Apr 5, 2009
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I'm interested in learning how to whittle. Do you guys know of any good guides for learning how? Through searching online I've found a couple guide books but am not sure which ones would be best.

Or if there's a whittling/woodcarving club in the NYC area that I could drop by that would be good too.
 
Get the softest pine you can and a very sharp knife, also don't cut towords yourself, i do whittleing as a hobby and if you have soft straight grained wood it goes faster. i recomend starting with pine trim wood(can get this at lumber stores anywhere) you can carve it into wooden knives which is my favorite time-passer. Have fun, and have a lot of band aids handy.:thumbup:
 
Pine wood you say? Thanks, I was assuming balsa, but again, I'm going in this with no background.
 
I forgot to mention.. Pitch = Doom. WD40 is your friend for knife cleaning, and a swiss army knife with a saw can save a lot of time:D
 
Books:
The Art of Whittling (Walter L. Faurot)
The Little Book of Whittling (Chris Lubkemann) - this one's pretty good, better than most, IMHO.

And kind of a cool, sort of funny one I just discovered: Man Crafts: Leather Tooling, Fly Tying, Ax Whittling, and Other Cool Things to Do (Popular Mechanics)

Start small & simple. I started cutting Christmas ornaments, and moved up from there. My son helps occasionally now. I use the driest, longest cured wood (pine, usually) that I can.

thx - cpr
 
Old men used to sit at the courthouse square and whittle wood into shavings. The only thing they tried to do was see who could make the longest, thinnest shaving. Red cedar was what they liked and it was quite a social event, more about the shooting the bull as anything. This thread reminded me of those old men, with their Case, Boker and John Primbles, that are long gone and haven't been replaced.
 
davide said:
Pine wood you say? Thanks, I was assuming balsa, but again, I'm going in this with no background.
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I am trying my hand at a Ball-in-Cage, and I am using Basswood. You can use Balsa, but I think it is too soft. So far the Basswood is hard enough to stand up to handling, but cuts real nice. I haven't tried Pine yet.
You should be able to find Basswood prepared for carving at a decent hobby, or arts and crafts shop.
 
jill jackson said:
Old men used to sit at the courthouse square and whittle wood into shavings. The only thing they tried to do was see who could make the longest, thinnest shaving. Red cedar was what they liked and it was quite a social event, more about the shooting the bull as anything. This thread reminded me of those old men, with their Case, Boker and John Primbles, that are long gone and haven't been replaced.
Click to expand...

I'm not an old man yet, but by the time I am I'll hopefully be good at whittling and will have attracted some friends to it too.

Orca--I'll check those books out, thanks.
 
I have the art of whittling too by faurot, usually I use basswood and a medium stockman. Just take your time and dont rush it!
 
Here are a couple done from scap lumber.

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Balsa is too soft and too weak to do this sort of thing. A tiny slip and the project is ruined. The scrap I was using was a bit on the hard side, so it took longer, but my little blunders didn't do much damage. Basswood is supposed to be very nice for this stuff, but I've never tried it. I just use whatever I find laying around.
 
I spent a lot of time whittling "Tramp Art" projects a couple of years ago. Stuff like the ball-in-cage pictured above, as well as interlocking chain links and pliers made from one piece of wood. I didn't use a book, but just looked for pictures of stuff on the internet and tried to make what I saw. Here is one page with a few different things: http://www.tramp-art.com/whimseys.htm

I mainly used pine, but I understand basswood is the best for whittling/carving.

Golf balls are also easy and a lot of fun to carve. Remove half the cover and carve the composite core and paint them.

I ended up getting a cheap set of carving knives, but still used a pocket knife for everything but the pliers, which I just couldn't do with a pocket knife blade.

Have fun- it's a great way to kill time when you are somewhere you can leave a pile of shavings without causing a problem. And, like another poster said, have plenty of bandaids ready. My hands stayed covered with nicks and cuts!
 
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