Wood Carving for Beginners and Kids : Pocket Hedgehog

A great first project for beginners and kids. It is achievable enough to keep them motivated and cool enough to be proud of it. It can easily be carried in a pocket for show and share or used in a fairy garden or keychain.

1" x 1" x min.2" Bass Wood

Safety Gloves

Pencil

Whittling Knife

V Groove Carving Knife

Wood Stain

Bees Wax Wood Polish (We get ours from here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/163746436/swarmlovin... )

Draw a rough outline sketch of the hedgehog with a triangle for its head and a 'U' shape for its body. It doesn't have to be perfect. You basically only need to know where the triangle starts and where the circumference of the 'U' starts.

For safety, we use the following rules:

1. Use safety gloves.

2. Extend your arm out and circle it around. Make sure no person, thing, or part of your body is in that perimeter at all times.

3. Carve outwards not toward yourself. Or as I have heard others say "towards your buddy, not your body".

Carve the part of the sketch that is the form of a triangle outwards. Carve it all around the block's sides to a round point until it resembles the tip of a pencil.

Carve the body's edges until they are rounded and the back 'U' shape all the way around until it becomes a semicircle and detaches from the rest of the block. Carve any bumps from the point where it was detached.

Draw your eyes with a pencil. To carve them, push the tip of the knife into the eye mark and twist 360 degrees.

Dab the back and sides with wood stain and let dry.

Step #6 and step #7 can also be done with a wood burner. Instead of staining, use the woodburner to mark the quills to the back part of the hedgehogs body.

With the V groove knife, carve out lines in the back for the quills. Start from the head side towards the back.

Rub bee's wax wood polish all around to protect it.