How to Make a Relief Carving for Veterans Day

This is a simple project for Veterans Day. I carved a silhouette of a kneeling soldier. This only took me about three nights to complete.

  Make sure when you are carving it is in a well lite area and it has your undivided attention; Otherwise, you'll end up with cut up fingers. Go slow never feel like your going to slow and have to go faster this can lead to accidents.

  Instead of trying to explain the different cuts and how to handle the knife I'm just going to redirect you to a really nice video on youtube. Click Here For Link This video explains everything really well.

    Tools you need:
Carving knife, I use a Mora Erik Frost 122,
piece of wood( any piece of old wood will do; mine is just a cheap board I used for breaking in Tae Kwon Do)
A printer or sketching skills.

Step 1: Find a Silhouette

The first step is to just find the silhouette you want to carve. I just googled, "soldier silhouettes", and printed out the one I liked. If a printer is unavailable for your use you can free hand sketch the silhouette onto your piece of carving material.

Step 2: Rough Sketch

After finding a silhouette you like, sketch it onto your carving material, and start to outline it and get a feeling for it's shape.

Step 3: Rough Carving

After sketching the silhouette out, start to carve the shape out. Remember to be careful when using the knife.

Step 4: Finish Up

Now that your silhouette's basic shape is carved just keep on carving till it looks nice. After you finish carving use a piece of sandpaper and lightly sand down the carving.

 Now you have a cool looking relief carving you can hang on the wall, or put on your desk.
Happy Veterans Day!