Why we don't carve out of a single piece of wood

One of our customers thought that because our carvings were carved from pieces of wood that was glued together (not one piece of wood) that it was an inferior product...well I'm here to say NOTHING could be further from the truth.

In order to keep a piece of wood from cracking and splitting after it has been kiln dried, great care is taken in gluing up segments of wood (only vertical segments) and gluing them together so that opposing grain structures will work against each other this is called tumbling the core.

This keeps the wood from warping. The glue lines are practically hidden because great care is given to have the glued up pieces match each other for color and grain structure. The detail of the carving itself tends to hide the joints.

A great example of this is if you have ever seen native carvings from the Caribbean or Africa. They are mostly always carved from a single piece of wood. Once they are exposed to the changes of temperature that is found in all homes they begin to show little cracks (called checking) which become large splits over time. The reason of course is that not only is it carved of a single piece of wood it is also because that the wood is always Air Dried, while fine carvings like ours are carved from wood that has been Kiln Dried.

As a point of information, all wood moldings, doors or other fine millwork found in homes are made from Kiln Dried wood. View the MasterWoodCarvers website to view our custom hand carved products.