Capital City Carvers

Carolina Mountain Reefs: located in N. Carolina this is a company dealing in chip carving designs and patterns. They also have basswood plates, plaques, trivets, coasters and more. You can find them at www.carolinamountainreefs.com

Other suppliers are: www.woodcarverssupply.com, www.Treelineusa.com, www.gregdorrance.com, www.stadtlandercarvings.com, and www.bigfootcarvingtools.com.

Interested in the Renegade Woodcarving Roundup? Here is a review.

This is a call to all carvers to come and enjoy a week of good, fun woodcarving, meet old friends and make new ones. The five days are filled with instruction from the (5) five master carvers who instruct and provide correction as necessary. You have a day with each master and are shown some tips and tricks they use to make their carving more expressionistic or more pronounced as a caricature. They all bring their own styles and carving ideas, some easy to follow and others a little more difficult. The nice thing is you can choose what you like or dislike, building onto your skill set or discovering something to steer clear of. The other carvers come with all kinds of experience from beginners to quite advanced. All are treated equally and afforded the same instruction time.

Each day you start with a rough out from the master carver you will have that day. They assist from the first moment you arrive to carve until the day is done. Some carvers will have completed their carving by days' end while others may have some work to be done at a later time at home. You are carving at your own pace and no one is pushing you. Everyone wants you to succeed. Help and assistance comes from many corners, the neighbor sitting next to you to the casual observer wandering around looking at what others are carving. All criticism is constructive and seems to lead to positive outcomes and better finished carvings.

If you are looking for more than a carving experience, they have it. There is a class on tool sharpening; knives, gouges, vee tools. If you have it, you can learn to sharpen it. For those interested in learning to become a better painter, there is a class for that. Then, there is the clay class where you are exposed to modeling in clay. When your model is completed, it is then baked. You have a hard model that you fabricated. A number of folks use the models as a go-by for their next carving and I must say, some of the ideas are very interesting and unique. Each of these classes come at an additional cost to the student.

There will be some vendors dropping by to market their wares. This year we had three knife providers present along with a supply of carving wood of various sizes. There were a limited number of high quality carving tools as well.

So, when the carving bug bites you, go to sbrownwoodcarving.com, look up Renegade Woodcarving Roundup and get signed up. It is twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall. The number of openings is limited, so if you are interested, start planning and sign up early. You will not be unhappy with this experience. Good Carving.

Black Cherry - Robert J. Settich, Woodcraft Magazine, Issue 115, 2022

The popularity of black cherry lumber in North America goes back to the earliest Colonial times, when it was often called "the poor man's mahogany." It was also adopted for the clean furniture designs of the Shaker sect, which began organizing while General Washington was commanding the Continental Army. In an unbroken line since then, woodworkers still prize black cherry as a premier wood for cabinetry, furniture and a host of items ranging from boxes and bowls to smoking pipes and even smaller projects. One key to its popularity is its distinctive color: a light pinkish-brown when freshly milled but darkening over time and with exposure to air and sunlight into a reddish-brown patina. The sapwood offers a distinct contrast with a pale yellow hue that doesn't significantly darken over time. Sapwood is no longer considered a defect and can often be abundant within a batch of lumber, so you'll pay the same price for it per board foot.