In wood you have chosen one of the most beautiful, but also one of the most exacting media.
If you are carving a design in which you are interested, if your tools are sharp, and the wood is moving smoothly away from the sharp edge of the tool like silk, wood carving is sheer pleasure.
If, on the other hand, you are uncertain of your design, the tool is blunt, the wood splitting and ragging, and you are faced with a shapeless lump of timber, wood carving is then, without doubt, sheer misery.
My main objective, therefore, in writing this book is to help you to design, and advisedly I put design first, and then to carve your designs in such a way that you create something really your own.
It is important that in these days of mass production we do not lose sight of the inborn ability to use mind and hands together in personal creation.
Continued...From the wonderful wood working book "Wood Carving" by Freda Skinner.
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