Welcome to the Basswood Carving Magazine website. My Nickname is “Carver Guy” and what was my intro to wood carving. I have now been carving for about 2 years and by no means do I consider myself an expert. In fact, if you ask any wood carver I think they will tell you “they are still learning”.
I learned about carving after searching for whittling videos on youtube. There were only a couple woodcarvers on youtube at least that I could find. My inspiration came from a gentleman who was a flat plane carver. After scrolling through the videos on his channel some were uploaded 10 years ago. That man was Gene Messer. Gene creates quite a few videos geared for beginners and explains his style and methods quite well.
Grabbing my old pocket knife from my Grandpa I started hacking away on a small block of 2×4 pine. Hacking away on this piece of wood I created what I thought to be a Tiki.
Now I say “hacked” because I didn’t know any of the proper cuts used by carvers. Creating something from a block of wood and a old pocket knife was definitely addicting. This was the start of my intro to wood carving or as sometimes called whittling. Doing more research on the Great Google lead me to tons of resources for learning how to wood carve.
Even though you can learn some things on Youtube there’s nothing like having a teacher that you can ask questions and show you the techniques. I set out to find a teacher and low and behold a class for wood carving right here in my hometown. The wood carving community is a very inviting group of people to the beginner carver. Whether you’re looking for a club to join or on going classes the members are very accepting.
Now you might say why another carving website or videos when there is already so many out there, well this all goes back to Gene Messer. Gene made a video about starting a youtube channel and encouraged other carvers start posting their own videos and carvings so to Gene I say a BIG “Thank You” for inspiring me to carve and to also encourage me to start my own channel. I hope you enjoy, stay tuned and subscribe to my youtube channel and website if you like what I’m doing.
Thank You for Visiting and Happy Carving
Carver Guy