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Creating these one-of-a-kind pieces takes time and attention to detail.
A typical piece may take 20-30 hours of "roughing-out the piece" work alone before a carving tool
ever touches the wood. As you can see in the pictures below, the entire process from start to finish is multi-step
and requires the use of several essential power tools. Using one of my chain saws, I begin roughing out the bird. (A
friend once told me... "That's easy, just remove everything that doesn't look like a bird!") The next step
is to use a hand grinder to continue the sculpting process. Each roughed-out carving is allowed to dry thoroughly before
moving to the next stage. After hand-sanding each piece, I finally proceed to carving with hand-held
carving tools. Click on my hand carving page to view the many steps each piece goes through to become a Wilflife in
Wood creation. The featured bird shown in the hand carving process is a Barred Owl carved from Butternut. This piece
was completed in early spring of 2009. Click on Barred Owls to view more images of my newer carvings.
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| Step 1: A chainsaw makes the first cut to size the bird in the log. |
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| Step 3: Locating the tail of the bird with a deep cut. |
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| Step 5: Basic wing cuts are made into each side of the bird. |
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| Step 7: Legs and feet are roughed-out. |
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| Step 9: A final round of careful chainsaw work adds more shape and removes hard edges |
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| Step 11: Less aggressive grinding wheels smooth the shape. |
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Wildlife in Wood
Carvings
by B. Benecke
St. Germain, Wisconsin ~ 715-542-3627 ~ bwbenecke@yahoo.com
 
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