Carving - For New Boxes and Maintenance

For the last week or so I have been doing a lot of carving. Thomas and I have planned for a long weekend in the Silver City area. So I decided that I would carve some stamps to update a couple of my letterboxes and hopefully plant some new ones.

Remnants of My Week of Carving

By the time I finished carving I had seven stamps, two to update boxes and five for new boxes. So once I had the stamps carved I started working on logbooks and putting the letterboxes together. As you can see in this picture I had a lot of remnants of rubber from my carving. I really do enjoy carving. It is relaxing and makes me feel creative. Carving is a pleasure but I always have a hard time getting started. One reason is I am very picky about the images I use and another reason is just getting all the tools and stuff out and ready. But once I sit down and make my first cut it is pure joy. Maybe now that I have carved a few stamps I might be motivated to continue carving for boxes I have been wanting to plant. Just as a note, you can see an exacto knife and two gouges in the picture. I use the knife for the majority of the carving and the gouges just to remove large areas of excess rubber. I find I get sharper corners and make less mistakes with the knife than with the gouges. Maybe I just need more practice with the gouges but I feel comfortable with the knife and my carving has improved over the ten years I have been letterboxing. So stay tuned for new letterboxes from me.