|
|
|
Here's My Woodcarving!
By Ray Leger
Memramcook, NB, Canada
|
|
|
I am self-taught at carving and woodworking. All that means is I took twice as long and paid twice as much as those who went to school to learn woodworking!
My interest in woodworking goes back a long time. I saw a relief carving in a gallery window and thought "I'd like to try that!"" With the cheapest set of carving tools I could get locally I started carving. The results were not good and I learned the lesson "you get what you pay for." Because of the poor first attempts at carving I turned to building furniture instead, and as it turned out I was good at it.
A few years later I was at the library looking for woodworking info. I found a book on carousels and inside was a photo of a carousel horse that had been stripped of paint. Looking at just the wood, the joints, and seeing the whole idea of it being made by hand was overwhelming! I knew right then I was going to build one for myself. Back then information was so limited that it took months to gather the resources I needed to attempt my first horse.
That first horse I ever made was to be mine, or so I thought. I was still building furniture at the time and a client came to the shop to pick up a blanket box. My horse was in the corner of the shop covered up and her sister, who I didn't know was with her, lifted the sheet off the horse! She wouldn't leave until I gave her a price for the horse. A week later I delivered the horse, and that was now forty years ago. Since then I've spent thousands of hours carving lions, tigers, giraffes, ostriches, seahorses, and way more horses than I can remember. I've also carved rocking horses, eagles and bellamy style wall plaques. All my carousel carvings are done the old way, using 2 inch, kiln-dried basswood and hand tools, no power carvers!
I have invested thousands in top of the line carving tools and it's been an adventure of learning and doing that which I will forever be grateful for.
I have been fortunate enough to spend ten years teaching woodworking to inmates in a maximum security institution, I am now retired and enjoy my shop time more than ever.
Ray can be reached directly via email at
rayll1@hotmail.com
.
Return to the
Wood News Online
front page
|
|
|
|
|
|
Carving Submissions
Would you like for your carvings to appear in this column? We invite you to
SEND US PHOTOS
of your woodcarving projects along with captions and a brief history
and description of your woodworking. (Email photos at 800x600 resolution.) Receive a $50 store credit redeemable towards merchandise if we show your carving in a future issue.
Click here to submit
your carvings
|
Show Us Your Woodcarving
Archive Gallery
Want to see more carvings? Check out our gallery of past Show Us Your Woodcarving columns from previous issues of Wood News Online.
Click here to view our archive gallery
|
|
|
