Carving Swedish Trolls

With Mike Bloomquist

Reviewed by Doug Evans

One of the newest DVD's to hit the carving market is indeed a big hit for Mike Bloomquist. I sat down and carved this step-by-step project as Mike shows us. This is a "must have " for any beginner and a serious consideration for carvers at all levels. It is just a fun, fun project.  Mike is an excellent teacher. He has a natural pace in his delivery and explains well.

The DVD starts with a great background scene with Native American flute music that I would have swore Mike was playing until I checked the credits - a neat and unique approach.

The DVD features safety considerations, sharpening tips and layout techniques. Each is covered in detail as Mike uses a classroom white board to illustrate his lesson step-by-step. This is by far one of the better "theory" instructional tools out there. If you want to be spoon fed , this is what you want to run out and get.

One of my favorite lessons shows a student how to properly round a piece. While we all learn this in our travels in the carving world, I have never seen this spelled out so nicely for the new carver.

Another unique feature is that at many points in the process, Mike demonstrates how to carve the next step with just a knife and then carves it again with a v-tool or gouge with the same end result. First the traditional hard way is shown and then (thank God) the easier way with other tools. If we all used just a knife we would put all our favorite vendors out of business !!!

I had a lot of fun carving my troll. The character is one that you could change the basic carving any number of ways and come up with paint combinations to make a full "troll-munity" to display.

I will use this to just kill time around a camp fire, get a new carver started or to show others what an instructional DVD should be like.

Great job Mike !!! You'll have to tell us more of the story that goes with these fun little guys !!