How to Make Wooden Gifts: Trim a Mushroom Figurine

In this blog post we'll show you how to trim a wooden gift after you've finished the rough shape.

Continuing from the previous post, we have completed most of the work on the mushroom figurine. As you can see from the drawing, the four points of the mushroom umbrella have the highest, second, third and lowest heights in that order.

The excess beyond these four points we can then cut it off, in the form of one side sloping downwards. Then the center of the mushroom umbrella we want to make convex, so the wrist makes an upward chipping cut on the way down, but it is still cut off. Please be careful not to skim hard to make a concave shape, in fact a straight edge is not the best carving knife for this step, get a razor blade, it is better suited for this kind of work.

You can see in the back of the hand to do the pull cutting action when the path of the knife, along the edge of the knife want to go to the position of the chip, do not hard gouge, this is very hurtful to the knife, the knife is prone to chipping.

We now see that the mushroom is still far from what we want, and then again to observe, the edge of the lowest part of the edge is very thin, but there is a little bit on both sides of the place slightly turned up, because a little bit thicker, our mushrooms are still too thick, which means that it can also be further down for some cutting.

For different shapes of wooden gifts, we can experiment with different carving knives to make us more efficient when trimming. Now let's find a curved blade knife and try again. Because this knife is a single-edged knife, the angle of the inside of the knife when you use it back in your hand is much more flattering for this inward concave shape.

We can slowly narrow the top part of the mushroom to make it a round shape, just from the perimeter to the center, in fact, it has been slowly tightened. During this process, please try to avoid unsmooth friction, that might just be hurting the mouth of your blade and try to avoid making a sound like that. If it makes that sound change the angle, reduce the amount of sharpening, or cut less.

We've been doing a pulling cut from the outside to the inside so that we can create a concave curve.

When sharpening small wooden gifts like mushroom figurines, the knife we used is great for that job. Of course, if you don't have this knife, a curved one or one with a narrower blade will work. With a narrower blade, it's more flexible in its movement through the wood, it's back of the knife doesn't get blocked by the wood and creates a lever that it can move through very smoothly.

Now that this raised part in the center has a little bit of a rounded look to it, let's look at the drawing again and we can see the umbrella edges on either side of the mushroom, it can get a little bit bigger, our piece now looks a little bit smaller, indicating that we can proceed to sharpen it inward using the knife with the sharp edge. You can find your own rhythm, at first you can go a little slower with one cut, if you feel that the size of the root is about right, you can slowly trim the top of the mushroom.

Trim the top of the mushroom to give it the rounded shape you want. If you don't want to follow that drawing and want your own idea that's fine, you don't have to follow the drawing, it just has to look good.

Let's look at the drawing again. It's a good habit when carving wooden gifts to trim as you go. The top of the mushroom has been almost trimmed, look at the sides, we can see the curves on both sides of the mushroom umbrella, they have a very clear boundary line, we are now doing this step is to eliminate all the boundary line, so that it will become a rounded feeling.