Carving the Little Guys: Easy Techniques for Beginning Woodcarvers

By Keith Randich

This skill-building beginner's guide reveals the secrets of capturing humor and expression in caricature carving. Learn to transform small blocks of wood into expressive little people with illustrated cut-by-cut instructions. Basic woodcarving information is included on wood, tools, sharpening, cutting, safety, finishing, repairs, and more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fox Chapel Publishing
• Release date: May 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781607659006

Keith Randich

Keith Randich is the Information Technology Director for the city of Atlantic Beach, Florida, but in his spare time likes to carve wood. He has published several books including Old Time Whittling and Carving the Little Sailors, and has written and been featured in many popular woodcarving magazines such as Wood Magazine, Popular Woodworking, Woodcarving Magazine, Weekend Woodworker, and The Router Magazine.

Book preview

Introduction

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This text is written with the new carver, or someone looking to try carving, in mind. The instructions, with accompanying photographs, take the reader cut-by-cut from a small block of wood to a completed Little Guy. Experienced carvers should expect to move through these steps fairly quickly, adding their own ideas to the figure as they go. There seems to be no shortage of books in print showing how to carve cowboys, hillbillies, Santas, and hermits, so it is my intent to use an occupational study that most of us are more familiar with on an everyday basis: the executive. If your boss is a great person, you could carve a caricature of him. If not, I’m sure psychologists everywhere would agree about the therapeutic value of a knife in one hand and a representation of your authority figure in the other. Just be sure to keep track of your thumbs. But anyway, with a little change here or there, the executive can become a soldier, hunter, fireman, doctor, fisherman, Native American, and so on.

I’d like to add a disclaimer here before we get going. The book is about carving Little Guys, but please don’t think I have anything against carving Little Gals, or Little Girls, or even Little Women. Some of my favorite carvings are females, as are my favorite wife and daughter. My intent is simply to avoid a text full of he/she, his/her, and Guy/Girl. Thanks for understanding.

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Before We Get Started

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Before we get into carving, here are some of the basic things you need to know.

Wood

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Clockwise from bottom left: tupelo, basswood, cedar, pine, jelutong.

In general, any straight-grained, relatively soft wood can be carved into a Little Guy. I’ve been successful with basswood, pine, cedar, cottonwood, tupelo, catalpa, butternut, and even a piece of spruce split from last year’s Christmas tree. Because the figures are so small, you can get away with carving a harder piece of wood than you may