Post #697862 by Secret Squirrel on Tue, Oct 29, 2013 8:03 PM

Thank you. Adding decorative carving to the head and other areas is something that I've been debating on. Due to this wood having difficult carving qualities I'm afraid that trying to detail carve it would be a bad idea. I tried some decorative carving on that test piece of wood and even with super sharp chisels it wants to tear in softer areas and chip on curves in hard areas. I would really like to put a flower or grass pattern on the forehead but I would hate for the wood to tear out. I have already had that happen in the main carving. To avoid those problems I used shallow cuts and stop cuts along with sanding. I won't be able to fix problems like that in areas that have detail carving.