Whittling Tips - The 8 Basic Cuts to Master

Everybody this is Brian from Carvingisfun and I wanted to go over a couple of quick and easy cuts for you guys to learn Especially if you're beginners so that you're able to cut in your wood a little bit more efficiently and know how to control the blade A little bit better. So you have a overall safer experience I am gonna be using a slice resistant glove, which I do recommend for beginners just prevent yourself from hurting yourself I also have a thumb guard Which helps when you're pushing on the back of the blade and as well as when you're doing like a paring cut So you don't accidentally cut yourself Obviously, you don't need them, but I'm just gonna do it just for purpose of the video Alright, so starting off your most basic cut It's a rough cut. Most of you guys are gonna know how to do this because you did it as kids You're basically just taking your blade and you're just like having at it You're just push pushing the knife all the way through the blade. Notice that when you're pushing all the way through there's No regard for what's over here. You can hit it on anything over here Whether it be finger another person or something. You just don't want to cut it and damage You can also damage a blade if you hit something hard This is not normally ideal, especially if you're doing whittling But it is common if you're removing large sections or wood really quickly I just mind where the blades flying but the more controlled version of that is what's called a push cut now for this We're gonna hold the knife in our Dominant hand and this is just gonna be our control with our off hand that's holding the block of wood here all the pushing I'm doing is done with my Left-hands thumb. So I'm literally pushing it through and I'm also rotating and controlling the blade with my right hand this allows the blade to slice through the wood and Gives you a better and cleaner cut instead of just like like pushing your blade through and like Bullying it through now. This is a much safer version to doing like a rough cut because when you're pushing it through notice this is as far as I'm able to This is the maximum range of movement of this knife and my finger is out of the way So it's not very likely that I'm gonna cut myself. It usually ends up with a nice and like flattish Cut an alternate version to this is what I've been calling like a sweet cut or I've seen other people call it You you're kind of cutting more downward Angled into the wood and then you kind of sweep forward and you create like a little a J pattern So I like to push into the wood and then I kind of flatten it out and then I Create this nice little sweeping cut right there It's great for adding details in there or if you just want more like an organic look to certain curves or something like that so you're just you're pushing in and then you're rotating the blade to go along with the The wood grain and take advantage of the wood grain going up and down very easy little cut I like to use it a lot Another very useful cut that you're gonna use a lot is what's called a stop cut Essentially all this stop cut is is you're taking it and you're pushing the blade Right into the wood and you create this little wedge right here What this does is when you when you combine it with a push cut here The blade will go up to that stop cut and stop you'll feel it stop And then what it gives you is a nice little ledge right there So this is very useful, especially if you're creating like a face you can see right now I have the start of the nose. That's just two cuts right there. Well three cuts include the stop cut So literally three cuts and I have the start of a face which is very useful and quite efficient Usually you're gonna be doing a lot of stop cuts It's a very useful way to add detail and control where your blade is gonna go into the wood Another popular option that a lot of people do is what's called a paring cut So your normal push cuts you're pushing away from you But a paring cut you will have the blade coming towards you and this is fine I know a lot of people in places like especially in Boy Scouts. They don't ever have the blade coming at you That's because usually kids are just taking the blade and they're Pulling it towards them. That is not what we're doing here We're creating a very controlled cut with the blade coming towards you Now what I'm doing here is I'm having my my thumb which is kind of like the brace for my hand Putting in the spot where the blade will not be coming out I'm putting the blade on the wood and I'm taking my hand and I'm just squeezing it Like all you're doing is like you're squeezing All you're doing it's like you're squeezing your hand shut that's all you're doing for a paring cut and it's very controlled You can see that it will not come anywhere near me it's not gonna come at me the range of movement of this blade is limited and You're seeing that the blade is missing my thumb because it's out of the way We don't want to start doing paring cuts where you're just banging the knife right up against your thumb Even if you have a thumb guard it builds bad habits and then especially for you if you're gonna be doing whittling on the go, you're probably not gonna have a Thumb guard like my go-to Whittling kit that I carry on my hip is just my pocket knife and a leather strap. There's no guards. No hand gloves No thumb guards nothing. So building good habits while you're carving even with protective gear is Ideal for long-term success and preventing yourself from getting hurt Next one we're gonna do here is a V cut and I see this in two different options First one is basically like two angled and opposing Stop cuts creates like a V wedge right here. And this is useful again for making faces You'll also see it for like a lot green little geometric patterns You can do V cuts all up here and you create a neat little pattern effect going on there Another version of the V cut is creating like a trench in the side of the wood So this is very much like chip carving and stick the blade in at an angle and kind of just like drag it towards me and then I'm gonna flip it around and I'm gonna mirror that cut and hopefully get my Blade edges intersecting and then you can see that the wood just comes off and it creates a neat little trench in there I see this is great for a lot of like floral or vine patterns or anything like that You can create looks of leaves that are indented into the wood. It's a great extra Method for cutting the wooden or in a controlled cut. Finally the last one we're gonna do here It's called a stab cut or a pyramid cut But basically we're gonna take the same thing that we did with the V cut right here that goes along and creates this little trench But we're gonna create a centralized cut using multiple cuts So I'm gonna do it with this one with three and it's gonna kind of turn out to look like a inverted pyramid when I'm done here so Three cuts going straight into the wood and then at the end you can see that this part kind of comes off as a chip and It looks like a small pyramid Going on there and then you have here like it an indentation. You can do more Sides like four to eight or something like that and you create more of a rounded look I see people doing this with creating irises for like eyes and whatnot So it's another great option adding detail into your wood and it's very simple very much like chip carving It'll help you create nearly anything that you want to do to create extra patterns But those cuts there are the basics for whittling if you master all those cuts You can literally carve anything you want with just your knife It is very easy to do super simple and I do recommend you guys practicing them whenever you get the chance All right, as always thank you for watching everybody and hope you have yourself a great day