Carving the Whittle Pup

Blocking out the nose

I like big noses on my Whittle Pups. The figure at the top of this page, for example, has a nose that's 1/2 inch (1.3 cm) wide. I wouldn't go wider on a dog of this size, but you probably don't want the nose to be much thinner than 1/4 inch (0.6 cm). For this figure, I suggest that you draw a vertical line 1/4 inch (one pencil width) from each side of the center line, where you want the nose to be.

Then, place the edge of the knife along that line, angled slightly outward, and slice along the line. You'll be cutting a slight angle so that the back of the nose (where it meets the face) is slightly wider than the front of the nose. The result should be a pyramid-like shape, except the top is flat rather than pointed.

I've found the best way to do this with harder woods is to make a shallow angled stop cut, then remove wood from the side to the depth of the cut. Then deepen the stop cut, maintaining the angle, remove more wood from the side, etc.

Don't worry if you didn't get the angle perfect or if the nose (like mine) isn't quite square. We're just roughing it out at this stage, and we'll come back to even things out later.

Give your knife a good stropping before you continue.