Post #705594 by Secret Squirrel on Fri, Jan 24, 2014 5:25 AM

I started doing some carving on this blank yesterday. I have to say that I bit off more then I can carve with this one. I'm up to the challenge of carving hard woods but this one is to hard. It has an interlocking grain that never stops. It's like trying to carve hard frozen ice cream with a spoon. It's a very strange wood. It's not overly oily but the wood chips even stick to the chisel at times. The other hard woods I've been carving would at least carve with a sharp straight chisel with the grain or at a diagonal without a mallet. You can't do that with Quena. I do almost all my carving with mallet work but some hand chiseling is done. I think I'm going to have a change of plans and carve a different wood with a new tiki design. About the only thing this wood has going for it is that it smells good.