Post #697853 by Secret Squirrel on Tue, Oct 29, 2013 6:14 PM

Hello everyone. I'm new to wood carving but I've done other woodworking most of my life. My interest in the tiki culture started when some of my family went on a trip to Maui Hawaii. They brought me back a hand carved tiki from a Tongan carver named Mani. Several years later I made my first trip to Hawaii and have been slowly building my tiki collection when I go to Hawaii or when my family travels to the islands. I recently decided to try and start tiki carving. My approach to carving was to use basic tools. Just like the carver that I get my tikis from. Instead of buying wood carving mallets I made my own out of lignum vitae. Then I started buying some basic chisels. For my first tiki carving I used a basic set of five flat chisels, and two good Swiss V-parting chisels. A 12/20 and a 12/6. I also have a small five piece set of palm micro chisels that my dad gave me. Here's a picture of the mallets I made. I made three of them to have different weights available. The two larger mallets where made from a solid block of 12X3x3 lignum vitae. I use the medium size mallet and the stick mallet the most.

[ Edited by: Secret Squirrel 2013-11-17 21:02 ]