[Woodcarver] Class Report

[Sandy Holder]

Hi Alex,
Thanks you so much Alex for sharing your experience with beginner class 
projects. We for one have done the 5-Minute Owl for beginning carvers and 
they are really happy that they can get something done the first time they 
come to a club carving evening. The rest of your suggestions are great, we 
will be trying some of them. Thank you for sending it to the list, this list 
is very helpful to a lot of us.
Sandy - Evart MI

7th Wood Carvers Roundup - Evart MI June 15-18, 2005
Spit & Whittle Weekend - Evart, Sept 9-11, 2005
http://www.woodcarversroundup.com
Michigan Wood Carvers Association http://miwca.com
See my carvings at http://www.picturetrail.com/sholder

>From: "Alex Bisso" <albisso at bresnan.net>
>Subject: [Woodcarver] Class Report
>
>Since I got so many good suggestions for teaching a 2-day one-on-one
>beginners carving class from the list, I thought you might like a brief
>report on the class.  First, I again want to say thanks for the input.
>Because of it, I have no doubt that my student enjoyed the class very much
>and really learned a lot.  After beginning with a discussion of types of
>carving tools (with demos), safety, carving woods and sharpening (with lots
>of demo/practice as she had factory beveled set of palm tools that needed 
>to
>be properly shaped and honed), we began to carve in earnest.  We did the
>following:
>1.  The 5-minute owl (ours was a bit larger than the pattern and took quite
>a bit longer than 5 minutes but it was easy and fun and she really enjoyed
>it - a great way to start.
>2.  A simple relief carved flower pattern from www.carvinpatterns.com - for
>this we actually used the instructions provided for this beginner project 
>on
>the web site which were supplemented by clarifications and demonstration.
>This was quite a learning experience but also very enjoyable.
>3.  A very easily carved Christmas tree ornament which was a reindeer that 
>I
>had cut out on the band saw, about 3/8" thick and which only needed
>additional shaping, rounding and details such as a collar, eyes, ears and
>mouth.  Some details were also burned with the wood burner.  She really 
>like
>this one and it too had some very educational elements (especially rounding
>the antlers which were curved and required closely watching the grain
>direction.
>4.  Lots of work on a study stick - first an eye and then a basic face with
>beard.  There was plenty of repetition on this and it was hard work but you
>could really see the benefit of repeating the steps.  This was great
>preparation for the final project.
>5.  Ol' Joe's spirit face key chain.  We did this in a 1" x 1" x 4" piece 
>of
>jelutong that was very easy to carve.  The previous hard work on the study
>stick really helped to make this a do-able task.
>In the end she was very pleased with the instruction and amount of
>information she had learned.  She joined the Montana Woodcarvers 
>Association
>to take advantage of our woodcarving library (here at my house since I am
>currently the librarian) and took a couple of books, a video and a study
>stick home to help her continue her carving.  We also spent quite a bit of
>time looking at carving magazines, supply catalogs and web sites and she
>made a list of contact information for later reference.
>	I think the most difficult thing to convey (might have been more difficult
>since she was left handed) was proper way to hold the work and carving 
>knife
>or tool to have control, power and safety.  Often it was necessary to make
>corrections to keep her anchored to the piece and achieve the control 
>needed
>for accurate and safe work while removing enough wood to get the job done.
>This required patience and persistence in making corrections to unsafe
>methods.  I found it to be very important to closely watch the student so
>that coaching and demonstration could be interjected when needed. It seems
>to me that this would really be hard if there were many students and I was
>glad that I had only one.
>Alex Bisso
>Billings, MT