How to Make Wood Easier to Carve - Whittling and Wood Carving Tips for Beginners

Hey everybody, this is Brian from Carving is Fun and in this video I'm going to be helping some of you beginners make your wood just a little bit easier to carve. There's a lot of different ways to do this and I'm pretty sure if you uh if you're just starting out you might run across some wood that may be a little bit harder to carve and it may be a little bit discouraging to you. But there's ways around it and ways to make it easier for you. Now the first and most important one that you're going to want to keep in mind of is keeping your knife sharp. Just having a regular pocket knife with the factory edge, like this one, this Raid Oldtimer 330T, this has the factory edge on it. And to me, I mean, I think it's pretty dang dull. I can rub my finger on it, and it won't cut me. If I do that to this one, yeah, it's going to cut my finger pretty dang good. But you can see, like this is a piece of kiln-dried basswood. It cuts through the wood, but it's a little bit hard to actually cut through it. Now like I said, this is with the factory edge on it. Most whittling knives, you're going to want to actually sharpen it. This one, I can barely make a little roll of wood. But if I use my Opinel carbon steel that I've been using for a while, and have a really nice sharp edge to it, I can easily take off a lot of wood. And if I need to, I can take thin, thin sections of the wood off as well. That's because I have a really nice thin and sharp edge to it. So that's just, that's a major difference between just the edge grind right there. So like I said, this is with the factory edge. I can barely, I can't even make a roll on it right there. It's a very, very dull edge. When some of the knives come straight from the manufacturer, they are quite dull. But you actually get a good wood carving knife that comes from a reputable manufacturer, or if you put your own edge on it, it becomes Really, really sharp and becomes a very useful tool. That's going to be your number one priority when actually making it easier for you to carve wood and whatnot. Also, you're going to need a leather strop and the proper sharpening tools in order to make sure your knives are properly honed. Without doing that, the long-term sharpness of your blade will be minimal and you're going to start having a harder time carving later on. Now, some of the things you're going to also want to keep in mind of. ...is knowing what kind of wood you are carving. Some woods are harder to carve than others. Like this one is a piece of magnolia that I have from the backyard. It is not necessarily an easy piece of wood to cut, especially when compared to that of basswood. Basswood is much easier to carve than magnolia. It's just a denser wood. And then if you go to something like... This is Purple Heart right here, which is a very dense wood. It's going to be even harder to cut through and you're going to want a nice nice sharp knife in order to cut through your Thank you. denser woods like that. So keep in mind that some woods are going to be harder to cut than others and then you're going to run across another thing that you may see. This I usually see with basswood itself. It's the difference between the same kind of wood, same tree But it's how it's prepared. This one right here is kiln dried and this one is air dried. The main difference between these two is this is actually put into a kiln or like an oven kind of deal and it is rapidly, it removes this moisture much more rapidly, more rapid pace than you would with air dried. This can be like matter of Hours to a couple of days to get to the right moisture content in the wood for carving. This could be months to maybe even a year to get the log ready for preparation to cut and turn into carving wood or any other sort of crafts or lumber. Usually the kiln dried wood is going to be a little bit harder to carve than your air dried wood. And that's sometimes because when it's put in the kiln, the fibers become much, much Much more. Weave together and become really tight but the air dried wood will not only not be as the fibers won't be as tight but it sometimes also retains more moisture in there. So this one might have like a between a seven to ten percent moisture content compared to the kiln dried which it may get down to like even three percent. So this the kiln dried is usually a little bit harder to carve than the the air dried and the air dried is just It's like carving butter. I mean it's so easy to carve, especially when you have a nice sharp knife. So if you have access to air dried versus kiln dried, I'd highly grab that. I get mine off of my air dried wood off of eBay. Great wood, I really like it. It's not as nice and refined as some of the, the cuts are not nice and refined as some of the kiln dried ones, but you know what, it carves really nicely. Another choice you have is some of the more premium woods like this one is Treeline USA's practice block. It's their basswood. It's kind of like right between both the kiln dried and the air dried. It's a really, really nice smooth basswood to carve and it just looks good. The wood grain is nice and even and uniform. It's just a really nice piece of wood to carve. So if you have access to the Treeline USA's Basswood give that a shot you it's good stuff. Now some of the other things you can do as well I've seen some other people do this and I've done it myself in the past and that is to soak your wood in water or spray water on it. Usually when doing this it is ideal to put mix the water with a little bit of Rubbing alcohol. You can use the 50% to 90% doesn't matter. You can use it most any ratio you want. Some people use half and half. I personally do 75% water and then the remaining 25% rubbing alcohol. The main reason why this kind of works instead of just water is when you're adding the rubbing alcohol in there It helps remove the surface tension of the water so it helps with wood penetration Going through the grain so when you just it's like if you pour water on top of the wood You'll see like a little bead of water on there if you're using I've been using... Water with rubbing alcohol in there It'll most likely disperse and I'll help and I'll start going through all the little itty bitty cracks in there So using rubbing alcohol in the water will help. with wood penetration. Now you don't have to spray it on there, like this is just a mist bottle that I had lying around. I use it every now and then. You can just spray it on, let it sit for a little bit, and then the water will go into the wood, and you can go ahead and just start shaving off that spot. This is good for spot treatments, like if you're gonna just carve one small area. You don't want to just use pure rubbing alcohol, because what's going to to happen is the rubbing alcohol may actually evaporate much faster than You're actually going to carve it, so the water actually allows the moisture to remain in the wood instead of just dispersing into the air and evaporating. So you usually want to mix it for that reason as well. You can soak it in the same kind of mixture. I usually don't like soaking my wood for too terribly long, otherwise it kind of absorbs It absorbs everything up like a sponge and it will expand a little bit. And in doing that you run the risk of the wood cracking when it dries out and shrinks back to normal size because once it absorbs the water the fibers are going to kind of like expand and start separating from each other a little bit. So it's just like when you expand and contract something too many times you'll start seeing stress cracks all along on it. Wood does the same thing. I usually don't advise doing this unless you really absolutely have to. If your wood is really really hard you can soak it in some water for a little bit and it might help but keep in mind if it becomes too soft then you're not gonna be able to put details in there and it might also dry in a funky way where it'll warp or you'll get cracks in it. Now another thing that you can do and this is going to be We're going to be primarily regional. And that is like for me in Florida I can leave some of my wood out like either in the garage or outside for a little bit and then let the humidity actually rehydrate the wood. So if the wood's really really dry all I have to do is leave it in my garage sometimes or just put it on the back porch and it'll be hydrated within the next couple of days. Again that's not going to be useful to someone that lives in a very dry climate so I'm sorry but that might not work for you. Unless you had like a humidifier or something like that, I guess that could work as well. But you want to also make sure you're not allowing the wood to absorb too much water or you're going to run the risk of, again, it'd be almost like letting it sit in a bucket of water for too long. It's going to expand and once it dries out to normal conditions, like inside your normal humidity inside your house, you might start seeing some little cracks or warps in there. So that one's going to be something that you have to keep an eye on if you're going to do it. It might take some trial and error for you as well. All right now finally if you are going to be using any of the water methods you are going to want to make sure you clean off your blade because obviously a lot of our knives are going to be high carbon steel blades and carbon steel and water do not really do so well. You get corrosion, you get rust. So make sure you take care of your blade, so wipe off your blades of any moisture and then give them a little coat of 3-in-1 just to make sure that they stay nice and clean and rust free. If you're going to be storing your knives long term, it's still a good idea to put some oil on there just to make sure your blade is... nice and doesn't corrode or anything while you're taking a break from whittling. Now if you found that video useful go ahead and hit like and subscribe. I have a bunch of other videos on the channel that helps beginners find their way into this wonderful world of whittling and wood carving and allows them to have a little bit more fun along the way. Alright, thanks everyone for watching and have yourself a good day.