Carving is an art form and art in its various forms is basically an “interpretation” of the imagination of the artist.  Woody of Toy Story is a cartoon figure toy who became the subject carving project interpreting Woody as a caricature figure. In 2011 Jesse of Toy Story was carved as a caricature and now Woody has been carved to join Jesse as a caricature figure.

Both Jesse and Woody were carved out of basswood blocks that were purchased in 1978 from a fellow carver in Tidioute, PA who has purchased a large quantity of 2” x 3” x 12” basswood blocks from a lumber company going out of business. Needless to say, these blocks of basswood have aged in hardness over the years.  But following the old carver’s rule of “leave no wood uncarved,” it was imperative to use this aged basswood.  To make the story even more interesting, a good friend who is a knife maker of the Deep Holler Knife company made a knife out of premium steel to be tested.  The Serpentine Scimitar blade is a design of the Wood Bee Carver and was used exclusively to carve Woody as will be seen in the photos.

The photo gallery begins with the finished Woody in several photographic views.  The second series of photos will be the progressive journey from the block of basswood through the carving to basic form stages and then the detail carving stages.

The progressive stages below of the carving to basic form begins with carving the hat and face portion into a dowel shape and then guidelines are drawn within the Rule of Three for Body Proportions to show the position of the arms, hands, legs and feet.  Using these guidelines the carving to basic form removes the excess wood progressively carving the basic form to its appropriate shape to receive the detail carving procedures.

To remove the wood between the legs (front and back) is to use slicing cuts of the curved cutting edge portion of the Serpentine Scimitar bade on either side of the inside of  the leg to eventually slice an opening and then continue to slice to widen the opening.

To complete the story for comparison click on JESSE CARICATURE to read the posting about Jesse and the same information applies to Woody.