Product Description

Learn to create delightful wooden Santas destined to be treasured family heirlooms. With a combination of over 280 color photographs, a minimal set of carving tools, and easily followed instructions, Paul Bolinger carefully guides the reader step-by-step through rough and detail carving techniques. Camille Bolinger, Pauls wife, demonstrates the oil painting techniques used to bring the carved Santas to life. The text is followed by a gallery of the Bolingers heirloom Santas destined to fire the imagination of every carver who sees them. Novices and old hands alike will enjoy this book.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #635091 in Books
• Published on: 2000-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 64 pages

Customer Reviews

Not for the novice, but well presented
I am on the finishing details of the featured santa project in this book, so I write from first-hand experience. This book describes (with both photos and captions) techniques to do highly detailed and stylized Santa carvings. You definitely need more than a benchknife and a v-tool to do these projects. Nevertheless, the progression of steps in the project is logically laid out, and if you have some carving experience under your belt, you'll do all right. One criticism I have is that most of the sequence photos on the project are in color. For me, color is actually distracting -- clear B&W photos reveal much more the sense of depth in a carving. There is a very good color gallery of other Santas, however, that should inspire. Painting technique is a bit complex, but yields distinctive results. One final thought...Bolinger's preface story about leaving his software executive job to carve full-time can be a strong temptation for a lot of us who like to work with wood!

Not for the novice, but well presented
I am on the finishing details of the featured santa project in this book, so I write from first-hand experience. This book describes (with both photos and captions) techniques to do highly detailed and stylized Santa carvings. You definitely need more than a benchknife and a v-tool to do these projects. Nevertheless, the progression of steps in the project is logically laid out, and if you have some carving experience under your belt, you'll do all right. One criticism I have is that most of the sequence photos on the project are in color. For me, color is actually distracting -- clear B&W photos reveal much more the sense of depth in a carving. There is a very good color gallery of other Santas, however, that should inspire. Painting technique is a bit complex, but yields distinctive results. One final thought...Bolinger's preface story about leaving his software executive job to carve full-time can be a strong temptation for a lot of us who like to work with wood!

A simple (but large) project with excellant painting tips
I would reccomend this book for someone looking to carve a larger european style Santa. The project detailed in the book is not diffiuclt, but it is time consuming due to its size. The painting techniques contained in this book are among the best I have found.