When experienced wood carvers talk to beginning wood carvers, they will instruct them to carve with the grain of the carving wood as much as possible. When carving with grain, your wood carving tools and knives will cut easier and move more freely. When carving against the grain, the wood carving tools and knives tend to hang or tear the wood more often. Also, when it comes to detail carving areas that stick out on the wood carving, if the grain is not running correctly, those areas may break off. There is nothing more frustrating than to be making your final detail touch ups and have a piece of your wood carving break off. Therefore, wood carvers need to determine the direction of the grain before beginning a wood carving project.
Some beginning wood carvers will have to ask the question, “What is the grain and how do you know that direction it runs?”. That question, although fairly simple, is very important. The grain of the wood is essentially the fibers of the wood that give the wood support as it grows. If you think about a tree as it grows, the grain runs up and down the tree and the tree grows in rings from center to the outside of the tree. After the tree is cut and processed into pieces for wood carving, you can still see the grain by turning the piece around. Different types of wood have varying degrees of grain density. You should be able to see the ends of the fibers cut off on the ends that are against the grain. The sides that run with the grain will tend to be smoother.