The wood decides most of how a carving goes. A soft, even-grained blank cuts cleanly in any direction; a hard or wild-grained one fights every stroke and tears where the grain changes.
Start with basswood
Basswood (lime or linden in Europe) is soft, pale and almost without figure. It holds crisp detail, does not split along growth rings the way pine does, and takes paint evenly. Nearly every whittling and relief kit uses it, and blanks are sold in every size from an inch square to slabs. Butternut is the next step: nearly as easy, with a warm colour that looks finished without paint.
When to go harder
- Spoons and bowls are carved green (freshly cut, still wet) from birch, cherry, alder, sycamore or maple. Green wood cuts like a hard cheese; the same wood dry is far tougher. The carving dries after shaping and hardens into a durable utensil.
- Fine detail at the scale of chess pieces or netsuke needs a dense, fine wood such as boxwood, pear or holly that will not crumble at a thin edge.
- Birds and decoys are traditionally carved from tupelo, which takes thin feather edges and burns cleanly under a power burner.
- Lettering and architectural relief use oak, cherry or mahogany, worked with gouges and a mallet rather than a knife.
The carving woods database gives hardness, grain and the usual uses for each, and links to the fuller wood species entry where the species also appears in the woodworking library.
Reading the grain
Wood is a bundle of straws. Cutting "with the grain" means the blade runs along the straws and slightly downhill into them, so the fibres ahead of the edge are supported and shear cleanly. Cutting "against the grain" lifts the fibres and they tear out ahead of the blade. On a rounded form the grain direction changes every quarter turn; carvers learn to reverse the cut at the crest of each curve. A blank with straight, parallel grain gives fewer surprises than one with a knot or wavy figure.
Moisture
Kiln-dried blanks are stable and ready to carve. Green wood must be kept in a bag between sessions or it dries and checks; finished green carvings dry slowly over a week or two. Basswood is normally carved dry.