Carver’s Room.
A place to learn the skills you need to carve your own wooden stories.
Let’s carve.
Welcome to the Carver’s Room, a place where you can learn how to carve the things you envisage. Below you will find a range of free video tutorials covering the basics you need to get you started. A wider range of videos will be available to accompany the books we release through the Library of Modern Slöjd.
Axe basics - cleaving.
This video is all about greenwood logs and axes. It covers how freshly-cut greenwood dries and how to use an axe to prevent the log from cracking as the wood dries. This is the first video in a series of four, where I’ll show you how to carve a Swedish butter spreader, using just an axe and knife and a few basic techniques suitable for beginners.
Axe basics - carving.
Get the lowdown on how to carve safely and efficiently with an axe. They can be pretty intimidating to the first time user, but axes are by far the most efficient guzzler of wood. They can quickly turn an ugly chunk of firewood into the beginnings of a beautiful carved utensil. Also covered in this video is how to carve with the grain.
Knife basics - the braced knee grip.
With the axe work done, you can now start refining the shape of your butter spreader using a sharp knife like a traditional puukko, or the superb Morakniv 106. The braced knee grip I’ll show you here is safe and powerful, capable of removing long and wide slices of wood. A great technique for quick shaping and removing axe marks.
Knife basics - the thumb lever grip.
This is probably the most versatile of all the knife grips. It can be used as a power grip for removing fat slices of end grain, or a super-fine finishing cut that turns your knife into a tiny wood plane. It can take a while to get it right, as it looks deceptively simple, but a little practice and watching this video will get you on track.