Anyone into Chainsaw Carving?

[Alex Snyder]

I have been doing some carving with a grinder, die grinder, Festool RAS combo and am stepping up the game with a dedicated chainsaw once my order arrives. Over the past few weeks I've been trying to find a technology resource to glean knowledge from, but things are sparse. There is a community on a network 54 site, but it is horribly maintained .....not even close to being on par with Sawmill Creek for example. Trying to figure things out on that site requires reading every thread and post in the entire forum :eek:

So, if there are enough chainsaw carvers on Sawmill Creek would you guys have any interest in firing up some conversations here?

[Jason Ost]

Ive done some chainsaw carving off and on for a couple decades, it's a lot of fun and work. Met a lot of nice folks who chainsaw carve.

[Alex Snyder]

Thanks for posting Jason - how did you get started? It seems most are self-taught...

[Jason Ost]

I grew up in northern Minnesota so trees and chainsaws were always available. I chainsaw carved through junior college but when I moved to a university and an apartment I had to scale it back at bit (smaller hand carving). I didn't think the neighbors would like to hear a chainsaw next door, although an occasional sawzall action happened. After graduate school and getting settled, I started to do a little carving again but it took a little while to get the right tools to be efficient and for it to be enjoyable. I did carve with a guy that was very talented and he would help me when things didn't look the way they should. He also showed me some techniques and tools that helped a great deal. Took my carving to a whole new level. So, it was a combination of self-taught and watching others. It seems as if you can teach someone the basics but unless they have a feel for it, it's not going to work or look right. Now I just chainsaw carve for the fun of it, and for special requests.