What wood for carving?

[Coletti]

I'm in the process building a stock of timber for carving. I already have in excess of 600kg of elm and I have some corsican pine lined up. I was just wondering what woods people would class as the better/best woods for chainsae carving? Any suggestions would be gratefully recieved

George

[dervishcarving]

mainly we care what we have

I love carving Elm and being based in NE scotland i still get a lot of it. Its bloody hard though! Some of my recent pieces have taken a lot longer than they should have simply due to how hard the elm was

Ash i like to carve but i prefer to use it for turning

oak is a dream to carve but kinda hard to get hold of big pieces

Sycamore is ok, has a lovely creamy finish due to its soft grain. i find it dosnt hold edges so well though

Beach is lovely but also horrible I find that when its slightly green the dust is so fine it clogs the chain/groove a lot and so you spend a lot of time clearing the bar. If you run the saw for a few seconds after each cut (when not touching teh wood) it helps a bit

 

As for softwood, my faveorite is douglas fir which i can get quite easily (i work for a friend a few days a month in his forrest, lot of wind-blown douglas and i get the buts). after that, they are all of a muchness to be honest. it comes down to the individual pieces and how knotty they are

sorry for the poor typing, im still 1-handed after my operation

also very very bored and frustrated. a week+ without bveing able to carve is tedious, looking at another 2-3 weeks of that is very frustrating

good luck

[FriarsGorse]

Sweet Chestnut is my favourite .... maybe because (as Dervish said) that's what I have most of. I love carving some hard Oak ... and after that I enjoy carving some softer Sycamore ... and after that some hard Oak.

Variety is the spice of carving .... I think !

[Coletti]

Cheers for the advice guys, will take it all into consideration. I realise it'll all split to some degree but is there any way of preventing/minimalising the amount it splits? Also, ideal how long should it be seasoned before carving?

[dervishcarving]

pain the ends of the logs and it will seasons with less splits sometimes gloss point will do the job. as for seasoning... well, if you can let it seasons a year then great, if not then you carve it as it is Im doing a few stump-carvings these days, those are often not very well seasoned at all.

[Coletti]

Ahh okay, that's food news to me. I was lead to believe it had to be seasoned for a while before carving to get the best results

[Coletti]

*Good. I've had a few by this point haha

[gobbypunk]

Hi Coletti I like carving beech ,elm ,oak but they can vary so much I had a small but of spalted beech I started a bear but it was so f------ hard my saw was struggling to cut it so I just sent it to the firewood pile yew is a nice wood to carve but can get quite bitty unless your chain is propper sharp hope this is some help but in the end its just what wood you like best yourself good luck

Cheers Mark

[dervishcarving]

seasoned is always better than un-seasoned but sometimes beggars cant be choosers