Well, I don't know what to say except thank you all!
Now, as for a tutorial, I think I should point out I've only carved 8 of these so far! I learnt it from a book -
Wood Spirits & Green Men, by Lora Irish, Chris Pye and Shawn Cipa (on Google Books, see inside)
Shawn Cipa does a fantastic job of leading you through the process of carving a woodspirit walking stick with over 40 steps each with a photo. I really can't praise this guy enough. Go to the 15th page on the Google books link and you'll see the start of the woodspirit tutorial. It goes about 3/4 through the whole process on that link actually.
Now one thing with this is you're going to need at least some carving tools, not just a knife. Those suckers are expensive if you want something that will do the job right, or you can get cheap things that you'll spend an age getting the profiles right and trying to sharpen. The set I've got is by Flexcut and gives me 10 interchangeable blades and a handle and while they are quality tools they are not the best choice, you really want a good starter set of gouges you can hit with a mallet! So budget around £100+ for a good set. There's a tool list in the book too. The Flexcut set I have is only really any good for handheld work so I need to get the power handle for when I can finally set up a bench and pin the sucker down
then I can use a mallet on them as well. It does have all the tools I need though, apart from a knife. For that you want something with a blade about 1" long, straight bladed and narrowing to a good sharp point so you can get into the eyes for the detail. My knife's a bit on the bulky side really, I'd love a narrower and shorter one.
If after all that you guys really want me to take pics and write up something along the lines of a tute I'll try my best
Shawn does it better though!
