How to Carve a Detailed Wood Spirit with Just a Dremel

Hi guys, I had this block of bakkoti and was wondering what to do with it and thought it'd be cool to make another demon wood spirit like this one I made a year ago. I'll film carving it step by step if you'd like to follow along. We'll start by drawing the design onto the corner of the block. I'm using the corner so that the nose is more pronounced right off the bat and also because this block of bakkoti is split in color since the heartwood is dark and the sapwood is light so I thought the split would look cool going through the face of the final product. I'll split this video up into chapters if you want to skip the time lapses so feel free to navigate it through either the bio or the red timeline below. I generally only draw out the really rough head structure, eyebrows, nose, mouth, and cheekbones when I'm making a wood spirit that doesn't have a beard since most of the smaller details will get lost anyways while you're carving. Now that we're done drawing we can get to carving. I'll be using my Dremel 4300 for this project at 25,000 rpm with the Cutsaw Xtreme Flame Burr accessory. Let's start with very rough shaping between the horns of the wood spirit and above and below the nose to give it a bit of structure. The Xtreme Flame Burr wasn't going fast enough so I moved on to the Dremel 561 for the bit just to round the entire block and get a nice groove between the horns. I then went back with the Xtreme Flame Burr to further shape the horns, also dig in a little for the eyes and make the nose bigger and get some mouth and eyebrow outlines. I usually keep the nose as big as possible and I also don't touch the eyebrows or cheekbones for a while so that they stick out more in the final product. I bring the mouth in further so it's well separated from the nose and I get a little groove at the bottom of the face to make a little bottom lip. Here we have the very rough structure of the face. Everything is pretty mapped out but at this point the Cutsaw Xtreme Flame Burr is a little too aggressive and leaves a rough finish and I want a smooth finish on this wood spirit so I'm moving on to this spherical tungsten carbide carving accessory to get most of the carving done. I'm going slowly with this piece so I'm still going at 20,000 rpm. I start with shaping the eyes, the horns, and the outside of the mouth. So at this point I really screwed up filming. I actually fully finished the piece with all the detailing and sanding and oiling before realizing the footage was all messed up. So I went in with the spherical tungsten carbide cutting burr and I carved out all the detail work I did so I could do it again on camera. I used the Dremel 191 engraver to make the nostrils and I'm about to use it to sharpen the mouth a bit and create some wrinkles underneath each eye to give the face a little more detail. I then went in with the Dremel 111 which is great for detailing since it can make thin deep cuts. So I used it first to create some lines for the teeth. I then used it to create the eyes. For the eyes I just cut out circles and then made the outsides of the eyes a little bit larger for the gaps than the gaps in the insides of the eyes. I used this flat top tungsten carbide cutting burr to create hair for the eyebrows which I did through plunging the corner of the bit just a little bit and dragging it to the side. I made several lines on each eyebrow. I then used the Dremel 84922 to grind away some of the roughness on the piece. The 84922 isn't a sanding piece but I use it similarly to one in really tight places such as between the teeth and within the eyes since you can't really reach into those places with sandpaper or polishing wheels. At this point I thought it looked good so we were ready to finish sanding. Keep in mind I didn't film sanding with the EZ Twist sanding discs so for those I used 220 grit sandpaper at 15,000 rpm. Next to wrap up the piece I used polishing wheels to get a really fine sanding. So I'm starting with this orange polishing wheel which is probably about 200 grit or more and I polished at 10,000 rpm. I then finished up the polishing with this black 400 grit polishing wheel. So it's sanded to my satisfaction so it's time to oil. I used this lemon oil polish. I would normally use mineral oil since it's food grade and colorless but I ran out so lemon oil it is. You can use whatever you have but I wouldn't use anything with wax in it since the wax will collect in the detail lines such as in the eyes and in the teeth. This wouldn't be the end of the world though since you can just dig out the extra wax with a toothpick if it collects. Here's the finished product. It's super shiny and super smooth and here's the reference piece that I modeled it off of. I'm pretty happy with this carving and I love how these guys turn out. Thanks for watching guys. I hope this video is informative and I'd love to hear your input. I'm trying to get a bit more audience interaction so I can change the material or the video editing accordingly. So if you have any questions comments or advice please leave a comment below and if you're not already subscribed please check out the rest of the channel to see some more carving videos and tutorials. See you next time!