Capital City Carvers

How Wood Helped Forge New Frontiers

"In a new world, a person could head into the forest and make a go of it with little more than an axe slung over his shoulder and wood-headed determination.

"If you were smart enough to settle in a mixed hardwood forest near a stand of conifers, your task was made all that much easier. From the pines you could craft a log cabin. From the cedar you could rive shingles for roofing and boards for a door. From the hickory you could craft solid hinges and locks. From that same hickory you could build chairs and a bed, and weave the bark into chair seats and rustic bedsprings. You could chop birch for firewood and use the bark for kindling, all burning warmly in a clay-lined log chimney. You could fashion a maul of hickory, and then use it, along with locust wedges, for cleaving cedar logs into rails to create split rail fencing for domesticated animals.

"You could split basswood into thin sheets, score it, and bend it into boxes. Wagon axles and wheels could be gleaned from hickory. If you needed dye, you could make deep brown from butternut and dark yellow from chestnut oak. From white oak you could make watertight barrels, tankards, and churns. With the bark of the oak you could extract tannins for making hides softer and more durable. From willow you could weave baskets for storage, and from the iron-like persimmon you could make shuttles for weaving. From maple you could make an indestructible chopping block for butchering and chopping.

"You could use sawdust to make ice blocks last well into summer, and fireplace ashes to turn animal fat into soap. Fruits could be dried and nuts stored to stock a hearty pantry. And when the day's work was done, you could smoke a fine cherry pipe while whittling a butter scoop out of apple wood. All of this you gleaned from the forest with a simple axe."

This quote is from A Splintered History of Wood by Spike Carlsen.

Life on the frontier was unrelenting work. Yet some people found time to use wood to make toys for their children, cooking utensils, decoys for duck hunting, and maybe even a decorative carving for the home.

A Call for Some Sharing

Here's another opportunity for participation and sharing your thoughts. Jot your thoughts on this topic down on a piece of paper and give it to me at any meeting or send it to me by email at carvermann@yahoo.com. Tell me whether or not you want your name attached to your contribution. The deadline is December 2 and all contributions will appear in the January newsletter.

THE TOPIC: What wood carving has taught me about life.

An obvious example for most of us would be patience. I would say I learned a good carving takes patience to get it the way I want it, and I apply it by recognizing a lot of other things in life worth doing take patience to be accomplished.

So get your thoughts down on paper and to me by December 2nd. Thanks! Barbara.

Websites for Patterns

Some of these are free; others are not.

www.carvingpatterns.com/
www.woodcarvers.org/articles_patterns.htm
www.deepwoodsventures.com/patterns.html
www.norahall.com/
www.littleshavers.com/FreePatternProjects.html
www.stillerpatterns.com/
www.roughouts.com/

Website for Free Videos

www.ask.com
then in the "Find Answers" box (the search box) type "free wood carving videos"