| Turning a block of wood into a work of art |
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| Wednesday, 07 October 2009 | |||
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Staff writer To pass the time in his retirement years, Leon Mager of East Bethel spends many hours hunkered over plain pieces of wood, carving them into works of art. His interest in wood carving spurred off from his grandfather’s love of carpentry and not from any ambitious desires for commercial gain.
You will not be able to buy any of Mager’s work because he does not sell. He usually gives the figurines away as presents to family members and he keeps some to display at shows. Selling his artwork to help subsidize his hobby never crossed his mind because he does not want to mass produce any carvings. Each figurine is unique. At the 2009 Minnesota State Fair Mager won a blue ribbon from the American Swedish Institute based out of Minneapolis for the high quality of his flat-plane carving technique, which is a popular Scandinavian technique in which a carving knife is used to cut wood in large flat planes and very little if any rounding of the tool marks is done. When he was in his working years, Mager had a small workshop in his home. At one point, he thought about making furniture, but he did not have enough space nor the tools for this endeavour. Instead, he chose to focus on wood carvings, and he stopped by a hobby shop to buy Xacto blades, blocks of wood and an instruction book. With anything new, it takes time to learn what you are doing before you get good at it. He became discouraged and quit. Five years ago after he had already been retired for five years, Mager found out about local wood carving clubs, which host classes that direct participants on everything from what type of wood and tools to use to the different techniques. The clubs also loan wood carving books to members.
During some weekends, Mager has even traveled outside the metro area to take part in what are called carve-ins, where participants bring one or more projects to work on during a camp. At most of these weekend events, there are between 120 and 150 students, Mager estimated, but classes are broken into smaller groups based on what wood carving technique you want to work on. Mager personally likes doing character carvings because there is a lot of forgiveness in being able to exaggerate a body feature and to be creative. Many wood carvers do character carvings, so Mager likes to attend these weekend camps to learn from others. Some of Mager’s favorite character carvings are cowboys, mountain people and angels. Through his time at the wood carving clubs, Mager has learned about a few different wood carving techniques. Flat-plane carving shows the wood cuts because there is little to no smoothing of the ridges made from the blade chipping into the wood. Relief carvings are done on a flatter piece of wood. He uses this technique when making Christmas ornaments. In the round is the technique used on a round block of wood. There are wood carvings that are sanded smooth and then painted. He also carves wood spirits, which are the faces of wizards or sea captains cut into fallen wood such as bark or driftwood. They can also be cut into the head of a walking cane. Another type of carving he has not tried is chip carving. These are very intricate geometric carvings found on the tops of jewelry boxes or on wooden plates. “It turned out to be a very enjoyable hobby, a very cheap hobby,” Mager said. Eric Hagen is at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it |
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