Paddle

I am not a big folk fan, but a paddle could be a good task for practice. The material was shaped, I just had to do the carving. I searched a lot on the Internet for patterns and samples. When I had a larger collection of the patterns I tried to draw a composition of folk motives on the surface of the wood. This was the hardest part, the carving was much easier than I expected.

Finally I had this:

And the other side:

Glass Pads

After warming up with the wooden egg, my interest was focused on carving, so I started to collect some information about carving on the Internet (patterns, tools, etc.). Finally I found a local guy who prepares carving tools. I visited to this guy and bought some carving knifes. He was very kind and also sold me some pre-prepared material to start my activity. It was some lime tree and he told me that this is most suitable for a beginner.

So, I had the lumber and the tools. After some chip carving practice I decided to create some glass pads to our coffee table. I wanted a simple design of folk style and the result is the following:

Wooden Egg - The Beginning

One day a realized that I am spending too much time in front of the computer, especially after working hours. I started to look for a new hobby which is not related to the computer science. For a long while I have been thinking how good it would be to make things of wood. I did not have too much experience with woodworking and I also did not have any tools to try it, but I decided to create something easy. At that time the only usable wood at home was a piece of pine with about 5 cm x 5 cm x 10 cm dimensions. I wanted to create a small, easy object which did not require special tools and experience and could be done from the source material. So my plan was to make a wooden egg.

I did not have any special carving tools to get out the shape from the log. So firstly I had to research the whole house to find something usable for the task. The only suitable tool was a Swiss army knife.

I started to carve with youthful enthusiasm, but soon I had to realize that pine is not the best wood to carve and also the Swiss army knife has a very uncomfortable grip (at least I felt like MacGyver), but I did not give up. The result was something like an egg: