# Does anyone actually carve/whittle?



## pizza (Apr 4, 2008)

Are people using knives and whittling, or do most here use the term "carving" to mean sanding, filing, and shaping by any means other than a knife, etc. Even when I start with pre-cut generic blanks, it still seems to take forever to sand them to the desired shape. I couldn't imagine how long it would take to whittle out the general shape a lure from a block of wood. So, when do you bust out the knife and actually carve, if ever?


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## vc1111 (Apr 13, 2004)

Piz, carving or "hand-carving" is a term that generally means you didn't use a duplicating machine. Some guys do actually carve the details of the bait by hand. I've done quite a bit of it on the head area of the bait. Its time consuming, but usually very rewarding. I use an Xacto knife to cut lines straight down into the bait and peel back the wood from one side of the line. Then you've got to sand the body of bait to remove wood stock and give the impression of gill plates. It can be tricky to dupe the cuts on the other side of the bait so I lay that out in advance in pencil.

I start by drawing the gills and other details on one side of the bait. The I lay tracing paper over the pencil lines and trace them. After removing the paper, I use the pencil and make the lines darker. Next I flip the bait over and lay the traced lines on the bait and rub the backside of the tracing paper so that the pencil lines are pushed onto the wood. That gives you a duplicate pencil pattern on both sides of the bait before you start the carving.


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## whittler (Feb 10, 2008)

On crankbaits I don't do a lot of hand carving but on ice decoys it is almost all hand done. Usually bandsaw the blank then with knives or a Foredom do the bulk of the shaping.


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## vc1111 (Apr 13, 2004)

Whittler, I looked over your gallery. Wow! Very nice work!


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## Swede (Jan 17, 2008)

I roughly cut out my lures using a bandsaw after that i sketch up whats to remove with my snapblade knife .I use the snapblade knife for all shaping until i need to sand & thats done using 80 grit paper ,second paper is 320 grit. Then i slot my lure for thruwire using the dremel.Glue in wire .Dip in sealer 15-35 times for the sealer/basecoat .Paint & clear install lip & its off to tune it


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