Thinking of starting wood carving as a hobby? Many people have asked me how I started carving, what were my first projects, what tools do I use and how did I sharpen the tools and how often did I sharpen the tools so I thought I would share some of these answers with anyone thinking of starting wood carving as a hobby.
What I would suggest to people looking to start carving is to start with carving spoons out of kiln dried basswood. Each spoon becomes a mini-project that you can start and finish within a couple of hours which is great for a beginner. I will be doing up some blanks and plan on adding them to my Etsy website soon so that you can use the same blanks that I started with. You can even copy them and make your own! With these blanks, you can gradually go from a simple spoon with plain handle to a spoon with a hand fitting design and then graduate up to a spoon with a relief carving in the handle. Limitless designs from one blank. When you really get good, you will be able to start carving 3 dimensionally such as carving a Christmas tree in the spoon handle or maybe the profile of a Santa or gnome in the handle. The best lesson before starting is to understand what you will need to begin carving and I will describe in detail what I used and discovered. Whatever kind of spoon you decide to carve, crank up your favorite tunes (like Burl Ives’ Holly Jolly Christmas if you’re carving Santas) and enjoy yourself! Just watch out for the sharp knives and chisels.. Oh, and by the way, to make a food safe spoon, just treat it with mineral oil.
The Tools
You can relax, this hobby is not strenuous on the pocketbook to get started. You will invest way more time than actual tool value. That is to say that wood carving has a high time to cost ratio so you will need more time than money to start and perfect your carving skills. Let’s just pause on that- more time and less money- you can buy as many tools as you want but until you spend the time learning to carve all the tools money can buy won’t matter! I don’t golf (no time) but if you do you will understand that the best clubs don’t always help the worst golfer do they? It takes time and patience to carve just like learning to play golf. Ok, so what tools will you need to start carving spoons?
I like Flexcut and Pfeil tools. Flexcut offers great starting kits of tools that are extremely cost effective and come (as most tools) perfectly sharp from the factory. Pfeil tools are Swiss made and I use their tools for roughing out a carving. How do you keep them sharp? Truth is, you will spend more time honing than sharpening. What’s honing? More on that later but here’s the kits I bought when carving spoons. I use the devil out of these sets in the Santas and other carvings I do and so will you as soon as you learn carving spoons!
Firstly, this is what I still use to hone tools. Honing is perfecting the factory razor sharp edge after you use the tools every time. This kit has a flat leather side and on the other side it has a rounded leather side that you can rub some rouge (very fine abrasive) on and pull a gouge on at (about a 25 degree angle). If I use the tool for 20 chips at whatever I am carving, I will hone the gouge 20 or so times to keep that razor edge razor sharp.. (click image for more details)
For the tools to work on the spoons, here is what I have used. First, a good flat knife like this one (click image for more details); 
So for less than $150 you can get on your way to carving and have the ability to hone your tools as well! The final question you may ask is when will you actually sharpen- not just hone- your tools? Yes, eventually you will get a ‘duckbill edge’ on a tool and you WILL have to sharpen them. I carve frequently and after about every 3 months of carving continually and honing I will have to sharpen the tool and for that I use something called ‘Jooltool’ . This wasn’t cheap. There are other options out there to sharpen tools as well as books like this that can help (click image for more details); 
-Frank