The guy was my first attempt at whittling. He was actually loosely based on Bill the Cat from the Bloom County comic strip, minus the lolling tongue, asymmetric eyes, flyaway hair, "ACK"ing, etc. I made him for a friend of mine who is a cat fan. Turned out she was also a fan of Bill anyway, so I probably could have made a more "realistic" Bill carving. I had tried some other harder woods before settling on the ubiquitous Basswood for the carving - the others looked like they would be a huge amount more effort to work on. There was not much fine detail in this guy anyway, so the softer Basswood worked fine. Even so, I ended up making some custom tools - a very fine knife (<1mm wide x 10mm long blade), and a tiny chisel (~2mm wide) to help with the carving. They were fabricated from dental scrapers lifted from my dentist's office (OK, maybe I actually ordered them from a woodworking place).
| Material: | Basswood |
| Construction: | Carved |
| Finish: | Wax |
| Size: | 2" x 2.25" x 1.5" |
| Done: | May 15, 1993 |
