The WOOD BEE CARVER is primarily a whittler who carves with knives in a style he calls WHITTLE FOLK ART. Often I am asked what is my favorite carving knife and my response is always, “The knife I am using at the time.”
The reason being that I have always loved pocket knives and whittling on a piece of wood ever since I was a boy growing up on a small farm three miles south of Poneto, Indiana (which is south of Bluffton and further south of Ft. Wayne and west of Berne.) During those formative years every boy carried a pocket knife, even to school, and if a boy has a pocket knife he is prone to whittle on something. In my case, even though I whittled often to make toys and “boy stuff” I did not really know what I was doing, did not know how to sharpen a knife nor what was good carving wood nor have anyone show me how to carve. Still the carving urge persisted as I grew older occasionally whittling on something and drawn to wood carvings that would be on display in stores or magazines. Read the rest of this entry »