Taking a rough piece of wood and carving something out of it that you could hang on a wall or place on a coffee table might sound like a daunting process.
Regardless of how difficult carving might seem to a novice woodworker, David Bevan, the Boundary Woodworkers' Guild carving instructor, encourages people to just try it.
“The number of people who have viewed my carvings have said, ‘I have always wanted to try that,’” said Bevan.
He has been instructing keen participants how to create something unique and handmade from a blank piece of timber at the woodworker’s guild for three years now.
Cheryl Ahrens was one of Bevan’s students and she created a hand carved sign for her vineyard and Ahrens had no carving experience at all before she took a class at the guild.
“Carving has always been on my bucket list, it was just something I had wanted to learn,” she said.
Now she is hooked and she encourages anyone with the slightest interest to just give it a try.
“It’s a very supportive atmosphere in the carving club, so you can really just learn at your own pace and express your creativity too,” she said.
Bevan said seeing what his students can achieve is very satisfying.
“Some of the work produced is quite exceptional, the enthusiasm that people have shown and the atmosphere in which the course is run, people are very encouraging to each other,” he said. “One of the 70-year-old ladies, produced for her very first carving an incredible leaf with dragonfly attachments on it, it was outstanding for someone’s first carving.”
Bevan offers his students over 100 carving tools, projects from beginner to advanced, instruction and encouragement.
“It’s incredibly gratifying to see people come from a zero level to an outstanding level in a couple of terms,” he said.
For more information go to: www.boundary-woodworkers.com/.