Thank you for sharing. These delight me. How did you start into this hobby? I am a new empty nester looking for a hobby.
I started making trout pinewood derby cars when my son was in elementary school and a Cub Scout. I posted those “trout cars” here and someone commented that they liked them and would like to have one without wheels… I figured that was basically a “carved fish” so I that comment got me thinking of trying to carve a trout. I got a decent size hunk of basswood and tried carving a life size brook trout. It turned out ok, but I didn’t really like it.
I had two little scrap pieces left from that.
Sometime later, I twisted my ankle pretty badly and had to keep off it. I decided to see if I could carve out a tiny brown trout. I used my scroll saw to rough out the shape and I used an X-acto knife to carve that. I sanded it a painted it and mounted it on a rock.
This was it.
At the time, I thought this looked good. And it did because I was just starting and didn’t really know what I was doing.
I carved a second trout. It was a little bit better, then I carved another and so on…
If you want to give it a go, know that I do NOT recommend carving with X-acto blades! I cut my fingers a ridiculous amount of times using them. Get real carving knives, watch some YouTube videos on whittling and give it a go!
