Madagascar Waltz, Part Two: Power Carving

In this second part of the Madagascar grebes demonstration, I will shape the grebes into the round from the hard lines left by the band saw. Then I will carve in the feather groups—in preparation for laying out individual feather detail—set the glass eyes, and carve the bills. I am carving these two birds out of a single piece of wood, which offers its own set of challenges. It took a while before I got used to a second grebe always tagging along when I picked up one to work on.

Because both the male and female are so similar, I marked the gender of each (“F” or “M”) on the bottom so I could easily check which was which and avoid confusion. I found myself surprised more than once while working on this piece.

Read the rest of this article in Wildfowl Carving Magazine’s Winter 2015 issue!