Whittling is a type of wood carving that is usually done with only one knife. Whittling projects tend to be small, in-the-round carvings. Even though whittling projects are usually simple some of them could be very intricate and some practical.
Whittling can be done with both “green” and seasoned wood. It is fun to pick up a fell branch during a picnic and quickly carve a fork with a pocket knife. I whittle small pieces of basswood that are left from other projects (aka scrap wood) and that are just too small to be used otherwise. You may read some thoughts about wood in my other post Carving Wood.
Let me share several very simple whittling projects below. I had a fun time whittling them:
Banana
Whittling a banana is a simple and fun project that I did in 2015. This project is very easy to paint. The primary yellow color of the fruit brings a lot of attention. I noticed that the banana is often the first project little kids recognize or grab from all the other projects on my table during woodcarving shows.
Once I shared a picture of some carving with my colleagues. The response was that I needed to add a banana for scale. So, I whittled a banana and I am now sharing it with a real banana for scale 🙂 The length of the carved banana is only 3″ (7 cm).
I used a wood burner to shade the brown streaks and lines. After that, I painted everything with yellow acrylic paint diluted with water. Since the paint was diluted, it didn’t cover the burned marks and I was glad with the overall look.
Pumpkin
Carving a pumpkin is a cool Halloween project. The nice part is that it may not be completely round as natural pumpkins may be oval. You may even carve a carved pumpkin with any cool pattern on its side!
I carved 12 grooves on the pumpkin body. I didn’t know that real pumpkins have only 10 kinds of slices.
This pumpkin is 1.5″ (3.5 cm) in diameter. The height is 2″ (5 cm).
Valentines Hearts
It is a very simple project. The only challenge in carving hearts is holding small pieces of wood in the hand.
Get a cut-resistant glove if you decide whittling at home. As my friend, Tom, pointed out otherwise the hearts could end up being stained in a natural color 🙂
Little Tree
I whittled and painted this little tree in an hour. It is only 2 x 2″ (5 x 5 cm).
I used my Mora whittling knife. The blade is 2 1/4″ (6 cm) straight. The Mora knife is made from good high-carbon laminated steel in Sweden.
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