The shape of my pinecone is done and I did a beautiful job for a first attempt. If I squint my eyes tight it looks like a pinecone shape. I don't want just a flat pinecone. I want it to carve out the little arms on the pinecone that hide the seed. I pulled out my chip carving knife last night and made started chip carving on my beautiful pinecone shape. I promptly cut a ruined one side of my pinecone by splitting my wood.
Now I expected that my first project was going to have problems and this was not going to be a museum piece, but I didn't want to just destroy the entire project.
The carvers will be at work today so I'll get their thoughts on this. Maybe they can help me recover this project. I think I'll take my knife with me too and see if they can sharpen it for me. Maybe my knife is dull and that's why the wood split or maybe I'm just a newbie and don't know what I'm doing.