Elma Waltner

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This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface.We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Elma Waltner, Crafts Designer from Hurley, South Dakota, has put together a series of specific instructions that will enable even the amateur, using the simplest tools and materials, to progress easily from raw wood to an interesting hand-carved animal. All that's needed is a small block of two-inch wood -- redwood, white pine, sugar pine, western pine, basswood, cottonwood, or any other soft wood -- and a simple pocket or carver's knife. Inexpensive watercolors or enamels, shellac, and varnish are perfect for decoration and finishing.Each step in the carving is made absolutely clear through photographs and angle sketches. There are profile patterns (to be traced on the block) for all of the 24 projects, ranging from Bolivar Bull through Casper Camel to Sammy Stegosaurus. Horatio Horse, Gulliver Goat, and Esmerelda Elephant serve as teaching pieces, with complete instructions from start to finish for each. Once these have been mastered, the same methods are easily applied to the rest of the projects, and special steps in the carving of these are again shown in photographs.The poses and animals represented here are only a beginning in animal caricature, and the hobbyist will soon find himself developing other animals and other poses of these familiar friends to add to his wooden menagerie. They will find in these and in their own projects an almost inexhaustible source of gentle relaxation and delight.