pilot Santa

Well I should start from the beginning, I have somewhat changed the size of the carvings I do now. I used to carve from 1 ½” corner cuts but now am carving from 2” instead. The roughouts I buy are equal to a 2” corner cut as well. You wouldn't think that this would make that much difference but it does seem to give me just that extra bit of wood to add in better details. At one time I carved from 1” blocks and got some nice carvings from that not that I can see how now that I have carved larger pieces. I have to say also the first roughout in the larger size I totally messed up and partly because the larger size really felt awkward in my hand. One factor could relate to my tool upgrades. Back when I was carving with 1” square pieces I was mostly using X-acto knives. Even though many of my tools I have would work fine on 1” some of the tools would be too large to let me use them the way I have recently been taught.

So I have re-carved a design I had carved back last spring, the pilot Santa but this time on one of my larger size roughouts. There is a lot I am happy with but there is one area that stands out every time I look at this piece. More on that later for now here is the newly carved Santa pilot with a new and improved goggle design carved in.