First time with cottonwood bark

[Newsome Road]

Hey y’all! We hit the busy season at work so I’ve been MIA for a while. But I’ve finally found a little time for some carving therapy. This was my first time using cottonwood bark. I spent about 20 minutes on it, a far cry from the amount of time that goes into most of my carving! But my 7 year old was wanting to learn to carve, so I was guiding him through how to use a sharp knife on his basswood while I tried to get a feel for cottonwood.

This might be my least impressive work in years, but it’s a memory that I’ll hold forever.

[woodburner807]

Great work and I'm also trying to teach a kid wood carving, with an emphasis on safety, gloves, and thumb guards.

[Mark N. Akers]

Great job on the bark, always a good thing when teaching kids this craft.

[Eddy-Smiles]

I love the color. I've never tried to carve cottonwood but have observed a lot of others tackle it.

[Claude]

Nice work!

Claude

[sappy]

I like the simpleness of it. It makes a person do a double take, very nice!

[Newsome Road]

I love the color. I've never tried to carve cottonwood but have observed a lot of others tackle it.

I didn’t really like the way it felt on my knife when I was roughing away the outer bark, but the inner bark was very easy to carve. It’s kind of brittle so details might be a challenge. There are also cracks and splits and layers that you find as you go that you have to adjust to work with, but I enjoyed the experiment.