Wood Carving by Charles G. Leland

Wood Carving

by Charles G. Leland

Coles Publishing, 1980, 162 pages, b&w illustrations and plates

Very Good Condition paperback

A detailed guide to manual wood carving, including information on tools, materials, and technique. 
Complete with simple, step-by-step instructions and detailed illustrations and diagrams, ideal for those with little or no experience and makes for an invaluable addition to collections of woodworking literature. 
The chapters of this book include: Woods, Tools, and Sharpening; Indenting and Stamping; Cutting Grooves with a Gouge; Flat Patterns made with Cuts and Lines; Cutting out a Flat Panel with a Ground; Cutting Simple Leaves Carving with the Left Hand Modelling or Rounding Shaded Patterns and Modelling Progress Towards Relief; and much more. 

'The author has endeavored in these pages to treat wood-carving not merely as a fine art, whose chief aim is to produce specimens of fancy work for exhibitions, and facsimiles of flowers, never to be touched, but also to qualify the learner for a calling, and what nine-tenths of all practical wood-carving really consists of, that is, house and other large decoration, and of work which is to be perhaps painted, and exposed to the air.  There is no reason why the artist should not be prepared to undertake figure-heads for ships, garden gates, cornices for roofs and rooms, dados, door panels, and similar work, as well as mere drawing-room toys, which should have no finish save the delicate touch of the cutting tool.'