[Woodcarver] Teaching Children to Carve?

[Victor Hamburger]

"Classic Carving Patterns" <irish at carvingpatterns.com>

 > I had an interesting question in the e-mails this morning concerning a
 > young person (8 years old) wanting to learn wood carving.  Now I have
 > never taught children!

Susan,

I was just reminded last Sunday about a product, sign foam, that would be an 
excellent medium for a child to learn to carve.  http://www.signfoam.com

This is a dense (actually, three different densities available) foam, with no 
grain to it.  It can be glued up to thick carving blocks, is dead flat, and can 
be painted after a coat of thin gesso or similar product.

The downside is that it is expensive, but a supplier might have smaller cut offs 
that they could sell, or a sign shop would very likely have smaller cutoffs that 
they might sell/giveaway.

The advantage over wood is that the child can learn tool control, and keeping 
hands out of the way, etc, without having to deal with grain and too hard a wood 
to begin with.  Once the basics are learned, then you can move up to basswood to 
learn about grain.

This will also carve well with a simple Exacto set of wood carving knives or 
linoleum tools, so the cost is reasonable.  Hope this helps!

	Vic H, who started learning at age 10 with a Millers Falls palm tool set!