"Complete Starter Guide to Whittling" by Fox Chapel Publishing. A Quick Review

 

Fox Chapel Publishing has compiled several short articles and instructions from various authors and presented them in a glossy 96-page softback, "Complete Starter Guide to Whittling: 24 Easy Projects You Can Make in a Weekend". This manual is ideal for starters and newbies, experimenters, and those who have launched out on their own and spent some time attempting whittling and carving. 


This manual begins with the basics. It covers safety, four types of carving/whittling cuts, sharpening knives, and the different cutting-edge pitches that distinguish normal knives and carving knives. I enjoyed this part since I didn't realize that there are different pitches of cutting edges. It helped to explain why I was having difficulty when using my normal pocket knife. Though most of the book is for using simple pocketknives for whittling/carving, yet some of the projects clearly used other carving tools.


The 24 projects in the book range from extremely simple to a bit more advanced. But the step-by-step pictured instructions make it all very easy to follow along. I'm looking forward to trying out several of these projects in the near future. Other examples described in the book have already aided me in figuring out where I was making things harder for myself on projects I've done in the past. It's a delightful little book, and ideal for whittlers and carvers, young and old, new and not so new. I highly recommend the book.

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