Greetings from Illinois!

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Hello all, I'm new to the site as well as woodworking, i wanted a hobby while I was out of work and figured, hey I'm surrounded by forests, so why not pick up carving/whittling/woodworking! I'm hoping this is the place for me, i have a lot of questions, mainly involving what types of wood are best for what. I'm eager to start woodworking as well as meet the community!

if anyone could direct me to which section of the forum would be best to post questions about different types of wood i would be very grateful
 
Hi David welcome to the clubhouse. You come to the right place. I have just begun carving and whittling and to get started made some of my own whitling knives by buying spare blades from other tools used for carving sold by Lee Valley. Works out cheap and gets one whitling fast.

The best wood to get hands on for carving is bass wood. Its pretty cheap as long as you buy it from a lumber yard that sells hardwoods. Its a softwood but its not the kind of wood Home Depot or the likes would carry.

I am on my mobile right now so cannot find a post I did a couple months back on carving a wood spirit ( more whitling than carving:) ).
There is a link in that post to a guy showing how to do it on you tube. Do some searching and you will find all sorts here. Enjoy and ask lots of questions there are some very good carvers here especially one guy called errrr Toni i think ;) from Spain. Be weary of him omce he gets you going on the carving well you end up with your wife doing it too. :)
Enjoy your time here.

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Welcome aboard!

I am on my mobile right now so cannot find a post I did a couple months back on carving a wood spirit ( more whitling than carving:) ).
There is a link in that post to a guy showing how to do it on you tube. Do some searching and you will find all sorts here. Enjoy and ask lots of questions there are some very good carvers here especially one guy called errrr Toni i think ;) from Spain. Be weary of him omce he gets you going on the carving well you end up with your wife doing it too. :)

I believe its this thread here: http://familywoodworking.org/forums/showthread.php?30551

Toni's work is indeed very impressive, well worth checking out.

You can carve plenty of different kinds of woods. Bass is nice as Rob noted because its soft and easy to cut but still holds its shape fairly well. Most of its kind of obvious, if the wood is easy to split it'll split easily (when you don't want it to). If its high in pitch, it'll put out a lot of pitch when you're working with it, and so on. Green wood cuts easier than dry but it may split later as it dries - a lot of folks make spoons and what not (try searching "treen ware") out of green wood and have good luck because if you take it to an even thinness it'll warp and not split to much.

Best book I've found for whittling (as opposed to furniture or architectural carving which is related but generally more complicated) is: Whittling and Woodcarving (Dover Woodworking) by E. J. Tangerman
 
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