Feb 2, 2011

Carving Staves

When I first became a scoutmaster I was introduced to Bill Birch and Chuck Loveless who were always telling stories and carving bolo’s while telling them, they could keep boys spellbound for hours. Anyway I decided that I wanted to learn as well and so one day began carving and much to my dismay it looked nothing like a face that they would carve, but through perseverance I began doing a pretty good job especially since I used one of theirs to copy the first time after that failed attempt. Later though after making over a 100 of those faces I decided to try doing ones on a stave. I had wood burned staves several times but had never carved on one. However the things that I had learned with the small pieces still applied here and I was able to have as much fun with them as with the others. I ended up carving over 30 staves and possibly more. I would give most of them away to the leaders that were helping me. I often have people whom I have given a stave tell me that they still have it and I often have forgotten that I had even given them one. I carved one stave with animal faces since we had been living with a bear near camp that year. My first face however was done because of a bad day that Tia was having at girl’s camp. Marie had gone to camp that year with her and I took Loren and Brittany and we stayed near the area in a motor home that had been given to me by Dave Nemelka. I took both of them into camp with me each day and would help the Sister’s with whatever they needed. Britt loved it but told one of the girl’s that Tia was her secret friend and that ruined it for Tia. Well that made Tia mad and she was mad at me so I went to the road where I had seen some wood that had been pushed over as they cleaned the road earlier that year. I took a long one from the group and stripped the bark from it. It was a very hard wood and not like the aspen that I had been carving to that point which was quite easy. I went ahead and carved it anyway. She liked it and it made a hit with the other girls and leaders so for the next 12 years as I attended girls camp each year I would do several staves and give to the stake leaders. It was a lot of fun.

Second Version

Carving Staves

Having been involved in scouting for many years I have had the opportunity to see many talented men at work making life interesting for young men and consequently their leaders. Two of these men were Bill Birch and Chuck Loveless. They would have a booth and sit there carving faces out of wood. It seemed so easy watching them that I had a great desire to do it as well. I had seen samples of work that other men in the council had also done after seeing Bill and Chuck. So I tried it and needless to say my face was not very good. So I set out a plan for how to accomplish this goal. I figured that if I took the one I had received from Bill for a training day that I had attended that he was teaching on how to teach scouts then I could copy it and learn to do it that way. Well that worked and I soon had discovered that my problem the first time was in not making the cuts deep enough. I then began doing my own often being asked how I decided what to carve. My answer was simply “I carve until I see what was in the wood and then I am finished. It seemed that as I carved certain characteristics would emerge from some of the cuts and that would direct my next slice. It was really quite a lot of fun. I did over a hundred of these faces including one of my Bishop B ray Anderson that I did on a ward campout. We were sitting around the campfire and I started carving and one slice reminded me of one of his facial characteristics so I looked at him closely and completed what seemed to be a fairly good likeness. I had done quite a lot of these often carving while sitting listening to lessons at camp and while watching soccer games. I also cut myself several times before I learned how to keep my knife sharp and the blade away from flesh. After a few years I was out in the woods looking for a suitable stave for the week and after finding a good one went back to camp. (I would go out and find Aspens that had fallen during the winter and cut off branches for a stave.) That way I would have fresh wood to work with that made for easy carving. I would do the same for wood to carve the faces from while at camp. This particular year however after having removed the bark there was something in the wood that made me want to just carve a face in it instead of cutting off a piece. Well that led to several years of carving staves. I ended up carving faces of people or animals or other things like bear claws and scout symbols in the staves. Then at the end of the week would give it to an assistant scoutmaster or the senior patrol leader. I ended up even doing this at girl’s camp after doing a stave for Tia the second year that she was at girls camp. I have done well over 30 such staves since learning to carve and have really enjoyed watching what came from the wood on each stave.