Christmas is over, I'm back

  I wrote about carving knifes in a previous posting so I thought I would show you a strop and a diamond stone. Both of these are used to keep your carving knife sharp. A sharp knife is very important, a dull knife is more dangerous then a sharp knife, with a dull knife you naturally use more force to make your cuts. A sharp knife will cut through the wood like a stick of butter.

  The picture below is one of my strops if you strop on a regular basis you won't have to sharpen on the diamond stone as much, and if you strop instead of sharpen your knife will last longer. My strop is just a piece of leather glued onto a piece of wood. If you look at my strop I have some of the leather overhanging the wood this is so that you can strop your gouges. When you strop a knife you should keep the knife flat on the leather and lift up without flicking your wrist, when you flick your wrist you round the blade changing the angle of the cut.

Next you have a diamond stone for when your knife is just to dull to strop. You can tell when a knife is dull when looking at the blade if you see a smooth spot like a butter knife your knife is dull. This picture is 2 of my diamond stones I have more it seems like woodcarvers are also collectors, I have diamond stones, water stones, ceramic stones. I have 20-30 knifes, 30-40 gouges, I don't know if I will ever use all the stuff I have but I will try. Anyway I got sidetracked these diamond stones are great the one on the right is an extra fine which is the one I use the most the one to the left is a fine occasionally I use this one but my knife isn't usually that bad. If you put a little water on the stone when you sharpen it will stop the knife from getting clogged with the metal shavings.

Well that is enough for now I got to get back to carving. Happy carving!!

Can't carve quick enough

 I figured I'd take a little break from carving, so here I am! Today I will try to stay away from the insert key. It is hard to believe that this is December 1st, I get so involved with carving that the days fly by. This has been my best year since I started carving I have carved 172 carvings so far this year. My best year before this was 142 carvings. At the rate I'm carving I should it is about one carving every other day. I am getting faster and I think my quality is going up also. The more time you spend carving the better you get, but in my opinion there is always room for improvement.
 Just like in live you can keep trying to better yourself but there is always room for improvement. If you think you are the best that you can acheive well guess what you are at the best that you can acheive and you won't ever get better. If you know that you can get better then you will find ways to improve. You should always have goals for yourself. In carving I am trying to carve more movement in my carvings also put my carvings into mini scenes with 1 or more carvings in the scene, I don't want to carve realistic I want to keep the carvings caricature style but maybe carve a scene that is funny and accentuates whaever feature maybe enlarged or shrunk on the caricature.
 I don't know where I am going with this post, since I started carving 19 years ago it seems like my mind wanders all over the place something on the radio triggers a cerebral reaction, next thing I know I'm envisioning a future carving in my head. I don't know if the last statement I used is even written correctly nor do I care you get my drift. My imagination is always going wild I wish there was a way I could take a picture of these creations that appear in my head so that I could carve some of these.
 My goal for this blog is to maybe inspire some people to try carving or do something creative, in future blogs I will incorporate some easy patterns and some pictures and try to explain how I get from a simple drawing to a finished product. It isn't easy to explain my thought process as I'm carving because I get ideas as I'm carving then I go off on all these tangents. That is why all my carvings even if they start off with the same pattern sometimes look tremendously different from each other. Carving is a great hobby but really doing anything creative gets these creative juices flowing, whether it be writing, woodworking, painting, drawing, whatever you choose to do or have a desire to try. If the desire is there it doesn't matter how good you are at it, just do it, is that the Nike line, Just do it, I might have to send them a penny for using it. But anyway try doing something creative if you aren't to good at it then looking at the positive side you have plenty of room for improvement, take a class or talk to people, your people you will be surprised how many people may have a desire to do the same thing or might be doing it already. Today is as good as anyday to start your journey, letting your creative juices flow is a journey unlike any other. Soar with the eagles! Don't let anything or anybody steal your dream!!