Take a block of wood...

 

One of my goals for this trip to the cottage is to whittle-carve a few wee birds. I tested my ability to saw a block of wood using hand held saws before I left home.  Over the last couple of days I have worked on my first cottage bird and by this afternoon I had got the bird to a point where it needs a bit more fine sanding and oiling as you can see in the opening photo.

The following photos show the process of sawing a wedge of birch.

Once I had cut a couple of blocks to the required size I marked up one of the blocks and used a cheap and dodgy coping saw the cut a rough bird shape. I have ordered a quality coping saw for future bird projects.

After giving the rough form a sand I used one of our wood carving knives I brought over from our Maleny home to carve a better shape in preparation for hand sanding.

As I said in the opening paragraph my next steps are to finish the sanding the bird in the opening photo and then oil the bird.