Santa Set

I've been carving some Santas that are meant as gifts for friends. These are about 6" tall, basswood with wood burnt beards and hair for texture. There is a fourth Santa in the picture that was carved for me.

 Here you see them, each with a different design, but the same basic shape and face. My next step is to paint them, along with a couple of other Santas I started last year but did not finish.

The woodburner I used is the soldering iron type and the best tip available was the soldering iron tip. So I took a piece of copper wire the flattened it with a hammer. Once it was thin enough to fit in the knife cutter adapter, I shaped the end to facilitate texturing the beards and hair. While it did work the temperature did not stay hot enough to do as nice a job as I would like. Copper also gets soft when heated so maintaining a good edge was difficult.

In addition I turned a globe from WP and carved a bead design around the shape. Then I wood burnt the holly leaves and berries on the globe and it to is ready for painting.

Enjoy, and be careful of the cold.