The difficult parts of any carving are also the most delicate. On this fork those parts would be the tines. They have to be thin enough to spear food, but thin means vulnerable to breakage. A broken tine would stick out like a missing thumb.
When I started my foray into whittling I was very hesitant to carve away too much material. This reluctance resulted in lots of "fat" whittlins early on. While it's true you can't put those wood chips back on, you do need to shave enough of them off so your projects don't look like Hurley from "Lost." It was a lesson learned the slow way.
So this fork was carved to be thin, like an actual functional fork you'd find on the dinner table. The only blade used was the Becker BK11, as per the contest rules. I sanded it smooth with some beach stones, then dyed it by soaking it in berry juice. I really like how it turned out.
