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>I find carving is a very nice escape.

It sure is. I forget any issues or worries I have while doing it.

What kind of wood do you use for carving?

I have used pine in the past, e.g., I once carved a spoon out of it. One advantage of pine is that, having resin, it has a good scent.

Currently I am using old teak, a piece which a sawmill shop guy gave me for free, and which I was pleasantly surprise to find, was soft enough to carve with my knife. I would have thought that it would be too hard to carve, because I have heard that teak is a strong wood, but maybe that kind of strength is not the same as hardness, in terms of physical properties of materials. I need to read up on that topic.




I use basswood, I have family who use it for firewood, so I can get big already dry pieces for free and then I cut them down to workable size with a hand saw.

It's cheaper at my local lumber store than online as well.

I haven't been very adventurous with other woods because of that.

Basswood is light and easy to carve, but it doesn't finish as well as other woods.


I googled basswood, and found this article about it, and its parent site, the Wood Database, both of which are interesting:

https://www.wood-database.com/basswood/


This might be the coolest site I've discovered on Hacker News in a while. Thanks for sharing!


You're welcome :)


I didn't know about that site either, the comment section is fantastic, it's full of users who both try different finishes and report back how it went


Cool, I will check that out. I only read the basswood entry so far.

We need more sites like these on the net, instead of the garbage piles that are much more common nowadays.


Thanks.


>pleasantly surprise

surprised, typo




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