The first thing you have to do when preparing to make one-of-a-kind wooden items is find one-of-a-kind chunks of wood to work with! After that, you’ll need to know the basic tools and skills required for making the projects in this book. There are several steps or procedures common to many of the projects. Rather than repeat these in each step-by-step set of instructions, we’ll just make a general statement and then let you apply it to where it fits.
Most of the whittling/carving/woodworking I’ve done over the past 40-plus years has been largely with hardwood species, whether I’ve been working with a twig or branch from a tree or bush or making something from a piece of milled wood. However, many of the projects illustrated in this book aren’t nearly as fussy in the kind of wood they call for. While I’ve used hardwoods for most of them, some could have just as easily be done with softer woods, even pine! The selection of wood for a given project will depend a lot on the nature of the project itself and what purpose it will serve. For instance, if you’re going to make a large coat rack that will hang on an entryway wall, use a strong species of wood, both for the branch that will serve as the rack itself and for the backerboard to which the branch will be attached. Coasters for drinking glasses, on the other hand, can be from slices of almost any kind of wood, hard or soft.
WOOD
COMMENTS
Birch
Excellent. Among my all-time favorite woods.
Maple
Any maple is worth trying. Swamp maple is one of my favorites.
Cherry
Both domesticated and wild are quite good.
Beech
Can be a bit brittle, but if you’re careful, it works fine.
oak
I’ve made some nice pieces from pin oak, live oak, and water oak. Red oak is not particularly good.
holly
A very hard, close-grained wood that produces beautiful pieces.
Citrus trees
