JasonKoivu

Great ready to have your socks rocked off! ...Not by Wood Carving, mind you. I'm just advocating sock awareness and safety in general.

Wood Carving by Freda Skinner will not blow your mind. I didn't expect it to. What I did expect was more practical, hands-on tips and techniques for basic how-to, as in hands-on instruction as how to carve wood. This is not the book for that.

Skinner carves out the craft in-the-round. Of the 150+ pages, only about two dozen are devoted to wood carving practice, while the rest discusses wood that is best suited for carving, the tools, the workshop, suitable adhesives and gluing, texture, finish, color, enlarging or reducing scales, attitudes to wood carving and a relatively lengthy history of the craft. So what you end up with is a very well-rounded, if still a tad rudimentary, knowledge of wood carving as a subject.

Certainly it is well worth a read, but if you need help with the how-tos, as in how to dig a grove, pressure on the tool and wood, angles for digs, etc…you're better off looking elsewhere.