I find that every time I learn one new craft or skill, it leads me towards something new. Like sure, I know how to sew, but what if I also drafted my own patterns? Or I know how to knit, what if I made my own yarn? Recently, I’ve been thinking things like “what if I could carve my own spindle?” and “what if made wood blocks for printing instead of using linoleum blocks?” So, this was what was in the back of my mind when This Months Craft approached me and asked if I wanted to try out one of their crafting kits. When I saw that they had a beginner wood carving kit, I jumped at it! And in this post, I’ll tell you all about my first time carving wood!
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About This Months Craft
This Months Craft is a monthly crafting subscription box. And you all know by now that I can’t resist a good kit! Each box is intended to provide you with the tools and supplies needed to explore a new type of craft. This allows you to focus on the making process, rather than getting bogged down with sourcing supplies and project planning.
Customers can choose between two box options, Creative and DIY, for 36$ + shipping each month. Creative boxes tend to emphasize personal expression through crafts like embroidery and painting. The DIY boxes focus more on hands-on skills like wood working and sauce making.
While This Months Craft provided the box reviewed to me for free, it came with no obligations attached. The opinions expressed in this review are based on my own, personal experience using the product.
About the Beginner Wood Carving Kit
My contact at This Months Craft gave me a list of different kit option to try out. While some of the options were more in my wheelhouse (like the embroidery kit) I’m always trying to learn something new. So I decided to try out the Beginning Wood Carving kit.
The kit arrived quickly. The first thing in the box was a printed directions booklet with detailed photographs. This included a brief introduction to wood carving and a walkthrough of the project. There also was a QR code in the direction that linked to a short video. This didn’t provide any significant additional instruction, but was a nice touch.
When I dug deeper, I found the various pieces fit neatly in the box without a lot of excess packaging or plastic, which I really appreciate. There was a roll of anti-cut finger wrap, two copies of the cut plan, two basswood blocks for carving, six sheets of sanding paper in three different grits, a knife in a sheath, beeswax, a piece of leather, and stropping compound.
This kit contained nearly everything needed to do the project (I’ll go into details on what it was missing below).
Carving the Bird
The first step was pretty simple, just glue the guides onto the wood block. This was an easy step, but I did need to go grab some scissors and glue, as those weren’t included in the kit. I also took this opportunity to actually read through the directions and realized that I’d need a rag or two later, so I grabbed some washed scrap muslin I had laying around.
Then I taped the protective wrap around my fingers. This wasn’t difficult, and the wrap provided looked like it would be enough for several carving sessions.
Then I started carving. This… did not go as smoothly as I had wanted. Part of the issue was that there was just soooooo much bulk to carve off before getting to the fun part. I was only able to take off small bits at any one time, so the going was very slow. I might have just persevered, but I ran into an issue with the grain of the wood. While my second block had a perfectly straight grain throughout, this piece had a little swirl running through the bottom. This made it much more difficult to carve. And the way I’d positioned my pattern only made things worse.
By the time I noticed this, I was hours into the project and my hands were starting to get sore. I also wasn’t feeling super confident in my progress. I know that beginners of any craft often make things harder than they have to be, so I took a break to do some research.
First, I checked in with YouTube and found Carving is Fun, a great channel that answered most of my basic questions. I was able to learn a few different ways to use my knife and how to identify the grain direction. They even have a great video that shows a similar carving project (though this one uses slightly harder cherry wood).
I also realized, that after about two hours of whittling away, my knife was getting very dull. The strop and stropping compound wasn’t enough to revive it, so, I went in search of help. My father, who knows is way around a woodworking project, showed me to the knife sharpening section of his basement workshop and taught me how to use an assortment of sharpening tools to get my blade back to a useable shape.
Carving the Bird (Take Two)
One of the best parts of this kit is that they include two blocks of wood. So, if you totally mess up the first one, you get a do-over. So, I abandoned my first bird and started again with the second block wood.
After gluing the guides on, I took the block back to the basement workshop and used a saw to hack off the biggest sections. This only took a few minutes, including cleanup.
When I started carving again using my roughed out piece, I found the whole thing a lot faster and more enjoyable. I also upgraded to some cut resistant gloves, because I found it easier to work in short bursts when I didn’t have to fuss with the tape. While I still spent a good 4-5 hours carving, I could see the bird taking shape the whole time! I kept the project next to my work computer and would carve for 20 minutes or so at a time whenever I needed a break. While I could have kept refining and tweaking the shape of the bird forever, eventually I decided it was time to move on to the next step.
Sanding and Polishing
Sanding and polishing went relatively quickly. I took an hour or two to smooth out the roughest of the rough edges and do a little bit of extra shaping with the largest grit sandpaper. I found that I was able to significantly shape the beak area using this coarsest sand paper. This was nice, because I had found that area a bit difficult to carve. When I was happy with the shape, I used the remaining two grades of sandpaper to quickly smooth everything out.
Polishing the bird using the beeswax was simple and fast. The wax was softer than I expected and sank right into the wood. It gave the piece a nice, soft glow. It also made a few of my mistakes a bit more visible, but I’m just going to call those “character.”
Final Thoughts on This Months Craft Beginner Wood Carving Kit
This kit has potential to be a really fun introduction to carving. The end result is a nice, small decorative object that I’m proud to display. The bird shape was simple enough to be achievable, even for someone like me who hasn’t done any subtractive sculpting in the past. At the same time, it was an interesting enough shape that I didn’t get bored with it.
For the price, I felt that the kit was a good value. It took all the work out of sourcing and supplies and finding a good beginner wood carving project. And it’s in line with the similar kits, like this one from BeaverCraft. If I were a regular This Months Craft subscriber, I would have been really happy to get a kit like this.
However, I do think this particular kit needs a few tweaks. I would love to have more detailed instructions, a good estimate of the time the kit will take, and a list of the materials the user needs to provide. I’d also love it if the kit included a pre-cut blank instead of a solid block of wood. But overall, I had a good time and I learned a lot about wood carving and whittling doing this project!
If you want to try out a kit from This Months Craft, you can use the code “craft20” for 20% off.
Have you used This Months Craft? What about a different beginner wood carving kit? Let me know in the comments below or over on Instagram or Bluesky!