Pine Tree Studios of New England

 During the 1990s in the infancy of the use of the internet by the general public, an informal email list grew out of conversations on a USENET news woodworking channel. At some point some conversation turned acrimonious and in an effort to bring the group back on topic I offered an original relief pattern of a fisherman to the group suggesting we all have a go at it. The idea was more successful than I had hoped and the conversation turned away from the argument. Ivan Whillock https://whillock.com/ was part of the email list and sent me a private email complimenting me on the idea and offering a great deal of constructive criticism on the original design and my execute of it.  The email managed to both inflate and deflate my ego in just a few lines.  After a few days I returned to the email and read Ivan's guidance and found it was, like most of his writing, invaluable.  I adjusted my original design in my archives and re-carved my relief to incorporate Ivan's suggestions. To

 I originally published this tutorial online in 1997 on the New England Wood Carvers website and recently I have noticed versions of it missing the attribution.  The tutorial was removed around the time I turned the site over to the person who maintained it after me. Since the original posting, golfball carving came into vogue and this technique works with those as well. It's added here for the benefit of anyone to use.   Cut a 1.25" long piece of 1x1 in half diagonally for your blank. Use a coping or bandsaw to first remove the corners then to make two stop cuts to divide the face into thirds. From now on we will use only the carving knife. Take your knife and cut up to the stop cuts: First from the bottom of what will be the nose to the eyebrows, Second from the mouth area up to the nose. Now remove a chip from the forehead and the chin. Remove a chip from either side of the nose to define the eyebrow. Remove a chip from either side of the mouth to define the top of the mus