I Am Feeling Chipper

This weekend I drove to a Woodcraft store in Toledo, OH to take an intro to chip carving class – and it was a LOT of fun! We did not make a project, but did learn the basics of chip carving including sharpening and made plenty of practice cuts. The instructor’s name is Kent Cartwright. Kent is very knowledgable and maintained an excellent pace. I late found out that this was likely because he used to be a teacher. 😉

There is plenty of information on the web about chip carving so I will not go into the details. However I did find out just how important it is to have the right knife. There is no one knife out there that is “the best” but there will be a knife that is best for you. The small differences in blade and handle size and shape make a huge difference in the carving from one person to the next. Out of the 6 people in our class (including the instructor) no one liked the same knife. If you do not have a knife that fits your hand well, you will have to work a bit more to get the chip to pop out cleanly and it can make it much more of a challenge which of course is going to drastically reduce the fun. 🙂

If you get a chance give it a try. I had more fun this weekend than I have had in a long time!