If you've spent time with a knife or gouges working on relief projects or simple flat-plane cuts, at some point you start wondering what it would feel like to carve something fully three-dimensional. Something you can pick up, turn over in your hands, and appreciate from every angle.
That's carving in the round — also called 3D wood carving — and it's one of the most satisfying directions you can take as a beginner. Unlike relief carving, where your design lives on a flat surface, carving in the round produces a freestanding object with no "back" to hide. You're thinking sculpturally, rotating your piece constantly, and making decisions about form that feel different from anything else in the craft.
Think whittling but on a larger scale, and with gouges.
The projects below are all genuinely approachable for beginners — and each one links to a video tutorial from an experienced carver who walks you through the process.
How to use this article: Browse the projects, find one that excites you, and follow the linked tutorial. The goal here is to inspire and point you toward great project tutorial resources so you can dive right in.
If you want to explore other project ideas first, check out our 13 Easy Wood Carving Ideas for Beginners, our 10 Easy Relief Carving Projects, and our roundup of Easy Whittling Projects from a 1x1x4 Basswood Block.
What You'll Need
Most of the projects below can be completed with a basic set of full-size gouges and a mallet. Our 12pc Beginner Set covers the fundamental profiles — straight gouges, medium sweeps, a V-tool — that will get you through four of the five projects listed here (the bowl carving project includes some specialty tools, like an adz).
A few of the projects use cottonwood bark rather than basswood. That's its own unique material with its own characteristics (more on that below), but your same gouges apply.
As always: cut-resistant gloves on your non-dominant hand, and strop your tools between sessions.
Project 1: A Simple Apple
Skill level: Absolute beginner Tutorial: How to Carve Simple 3D (Apple) — Chris Pye
This is about as good a starting point as carving in the round gets — and the instructor makes it exceptional. Chris Pye is one of the most respected carving educators in the world, and this free playlist walks complete beginners through the basics of 3D carving using an apple as the subject.
Why an apple? Because the form is familiar, forgiving, and teaches you almost everything you need to know about working in three dimensions. There are no flat planes to hide behind, no hard angles to fall back on. You're rounding, blending, and thinking sculpturally from the very first cut.
By the time you finish, you'll have worked through the core challenge of all carving in the round: how to develop a shape evenly from all sides rather than getting absorbed in one view and losing your proportions. It's a lesson that carries into every project that follows.
What this teaches you: Constant rotation, developing a feel for curved surfaces, using gouges to remove material efficiently while maintaining form.
Project 2: A Wood Spirit
Skill level: Beginner Tutorial: How to Carve a Wood Spirit — Lucas Kost for Schaaf Tools
Wood spirits are one of the most beloved carving traditions — faces emerging from a piece of wood, as if the wood itself is looking back at you. They're also one of the most searched carving subjects online, which means there's no shortage of inspiration once you start looking.
This playlist features instructor Lucas Kost, in collaboration with Schaaf Tools, taking you through the full process. Wood spirits sit somewhere between carving in the round and relief carving — the face is fully three-dimensional, worked from multiple angles, but often carved into a log end or a piece of bark rather than a freestanding blank. That makes them approachable for beginners who aren't quite ready to tackle a fully freestanding figure, while still teaching all the core challenges of 3D carving: facial planes, stop cuts to define features, and how to work the eyes, nose, and mouth in relationship to one another rather than in isolation.
What this teaches you: Carving facial planes and features in sequence, using stop cuts to define boundaries before removing material, working a three-dimensional form from a natural piece of wood.
Project 3: An Owl
Skill level: Beginner–Intermediate Two approaches:
Owls are one of the most natural first animal carvings in the round. The body is essentially a rounded cylinder, the face is a flat disc with two large eye shapes, and the overall proportions are chunky and forgiving. They also happen to look great finished — people love a carved owl.
Here are two different ways to tackle one.
Approach A: Carving an Owl in Cottonwood Bark
Tutorial: Carving an Owl in Cottonwood Bark — Alec LaCasse
This is a great first introduction to cottonwood bark as a carving material — more on which below — and to carving an owl at the same time. Alec LaCasse sets himself a 45-minute time limit for this project, which gives you a realistic sense of the workflow and pacing. He covers clearing material, shaping the body, and working the features, while also spending time on the most important habit in carving: keeping your tools sharp. His point is direct — dull tools don't just slow you down, they make the whole experience frustrating and the results rough. Sharp tools make carving feel like carving.
One thing worth noting: Alec works with the natural cracks and irregularities in his piece of bark rather than fighting them, adjusting the owl's feet and eyes to suit the specific piece he has. That's a genuinely useful mindset for all carving in the round — the wood has a say in what it becomes.
Approach B: Carving an Owl from a Log
Tutorial: How to Carve an Owl from a Log — Woodworkers Institute
If you prefer to work with solid wood rather than bark, this step-by-step guide covers carving a full owl from a piece of alder — bark on, working from a natural log section. It's a more structured approach with numbered steps, specific gouge callouts, and detailed notes on shaping the eye discs, rounding the breast, and adding feather texture with a small U-gouge. A good reference to have open alongside whatever video you're watching.
What this teaches you: Shaping a rounded three-dimensional body from a single piece of material, working facial features in proportion, adding surface texture with a gouge.
Project 4: A Fairy House or Gnome Cottage
Skill level: Beginner–Intermediate Two approaches:
If you haven't encountered cottonwood bark carving before, this is probably the project that will make you want to try it. Cottonwood bark is incredibly soft and lightweight, with a natural outer texture that — with just a little carving — starts to look like stone walls, moss-covered roofs, and weathered wood siding. The bark does a lot of the visual work for you. What emerges from a modest piece of bark can look like it belongs in a fairy tale, and that's genuinely exciting for a beginner.
A 1 lb piece of cottonwood bark — roughly 3.5" wide, 15" long, and 3" thick — is the right size for a single cottage or lighthouse. Specialty suppliers like ChippingAway.com carry it if you can't source your own locally. You can also find it on Etsy.
Approach A: Bobby Duke's Fairy House
Tutorial: How to Carve a Fairy House in Cottonwood Bark — Bobby Duke
Bobby Duke's approach is freeform and artistic — he talks openly about the challenge of starting a new project without knowing exactly where it's going, and leans into that uncertainty rather than fighting it. The fairy house evolves: a staircase gets redesigned mid-carving, a waterfall gets added, lights go in at the end. It's genuinely inspiring to watch someone creative work through a project in real time, and his video captures the feeling of what makes bark carving special. Great for getting excited about the medium.
Approach B: Bill Goff's Gnome House
Tutorial: Carving a Gnome House in Cottonwood Bark — Bill Goff
If Bobby Duke's video makes you want to pick up a piece of bark immediately, Bill Goff's video teaches you what to actually do with it. This is a comprehensive instructional guide covering everything from selecting and preparing the bark, to laying out roof lines with a pencil, to carving shingles, stone, and siding with separate techniques for each. He covers how to use a wood burner for undercuts and shadow effects, how to add fine details like nail heads and chimneys, and how to problem-solve when the bark breaks or behaves unexpectedly. Watch Bobby Duke to get inspired, watch Bill Goff to learn how it's done.
What this teaches you: Working with natural material rather than against it, carving architectural details (windows, doors, rooflines), adding texture to suggest different surfaces, and creative problem-solving when the wood surprises you.
Project 5: A Carved Bowl
Skill level: Intermediate (a step up from the others — but worth knowing about) Tutorial: Carving a Wooden Bowl with Hand Tools — Dan Lawrence
This one is a little different from the four projects above, and it's worth being upfront about that. A hand-carved bowl is more challenging from start to finish than a stylized owl or a bark fairy house — and Dan Lawrence, a professional craftsman in Derbyshire, is a skilled carver who makes the process look more effortless than it is. The video is over two hours long and covers adze work, dog-leg gouges, undercutting the rim, and a full exterior shaping process that goes beyond beginner territory.
So why include it here? Because the bowl is one of the purest expressions of what carving in the round actually means — a fully three-dimensional functional object carved entirely by hand — and watching Dan work through the complete process from raw wood to finished, oiled bowl is genuinely instructive even if you're not ready to attempt it yourself. It reframes what's possible with hand tools alone, and it makes the gouge work in your other projects feel connected to something larger.
Come back to this one when you've completed a couple of the earlier projects, or if you're familiar with woodworking and feeling ready for a challenge. The hollowing techniques Dan demonstrates with his gouge translate directly from the simpler scooping cuts you've been practicing.
What this teaches you: Deep hollowing with a gouge, managing exterior form while working the interior, undercutting, and finishing a functional object.
A Note on Cottonwood Bark
Three of the five projects above either use or could use cottonwood bark (the owl, the fairy house, and the wood spirit). It's worth a brief explanation if you haven't encountered it.
Cottonwood bark is harvested from the base of mature cottonwood trees, where the bark grows thick — sometimes several inches deep. It's extremely soft and lightweight, much easier to cut than basswood, and it has a natural outer texture that carvers exploit rather than remove. That texture becomes the walls of a cottage, the rocky base of a lighthouse, the gnarled surface of a wood spirit. The interior of the bark, once you cut through the outer skin, is soft and consistent and carves beautifully with standard gouges.
The catch is that it can be difficult to source. Specialty suppliers are your best bet unless you live somewhere cottonwood grows and know how to identify and harvest it responsibly. We are looking for reliable sources so we can begin to offer it at Schaaf Tools as well, so stay tuned.
Ready to Get Started?
Pick the project that excites you most, follow the linked tutorial, and don't overthink it. The apple is the natural first step if you've never carved in the round before. The wood spirit connects to Schaaf's own tutorial content with Lucas Kost. The owl and fairy house are where cottonwood bark opens up a whole new direction. And the bowl is there when you're ready to push further.
Our 12pc Beginner Set handles everything on this list. Add the 15oz Precision Mallet if you're tackling the bowl or doing heavier roughing work on the owl or fairy house. And keep your cut-resistant gloves on — carving in the round means your hands are near the tool from more angles than usual.
Share your finished pieces with us on Instagram using @schaaftools and #Schaaftools — we'd love to see what you make.
Looking for more beginner project ideas? Check out our 13 Easy Wood Carving Ideas for Beginners, our 10 Easy Relief Carving Projects, and our Easy Whittling Projects from a 1x1x4 Basswood Block.
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