civil war soldier carving a.k.a. lemonade

Ever heard the phrase “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade”? How many people get this phrase any more considering most lemonade is made from a powder nowadays. This is a topic for another day, to the phrase; my civil war soldier would become case in point. Let’s go back a day or so…….

I had decided after finishing my pilot carving and being fairly happy with the results that I would carve a civil war soldier. For my pattern I would use the one supplied in issue #33 of the Carving magazine written by my good friend Mark Akers. On a side note this issue as many others are available on back issue, worth checking out.

http://www.carvingmagazine.com/backissues/

I had carved this soldier before from a 2” block of bass wood. Earlier this summer I had gotten used 12" band saw so I wanted to carve it full size as in the magazine. On another side note, if you had read about two or so posting ago you would know I went a good portion of the summer without carving. So I was still dusting off the proverbial cob webs but after my pilot carving I was getting back in the swing of things. So as I  always do I began with carving the head, more directly the face. This will determine how to carve the hat and impact the body type as well. I had carved the details of the face deciding on a basic beard, not getting to fancy with the cuts and curves of it. The two inch carving I did had squinting eyes but I wanted to do open full eyes for this one. I got the carving done the evening before and by morning and at the point of this photo I would have to say, I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing. Things can and would change in an instant……………..

to be continued