Basswood, cherry Pokemon carvings sweep through social media
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Snorlax is made from walnut with a basswood belly, with cherry inlays on his feet.

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Sean Syman's Pokemon carvings are becoming a hit on social media.
 
Hailing from New Zealand, the now Toronto-based designer is self-taught and has only been carving for a few years. His Pokemon carvings are primarily made of basswood, walnut, cherry, and maple. He also carves pendants, which feature a more exotic variety - including ebony, rosewood, koa, and zebrawood.
 
"I started taking my carving seriously in the last couple of years, but I've been making small things like pendants and figures for probably about five years now," Syman says on his website. "I always had an love for hand tools and shaping things, and I first started getting into carving when I was making pendants for my girlfriend early in our relationship."
 
Syman uses hand tools almost exclusively. Each figure takes between 20 and 30 hours.
 
"I use pretty much entirely hand tools - I'll occasionally use a dremel to drill a hole for my joinery but the noise and dust from power tools doesn't work well with my tiny apartment workshop. My go-to tools are chisels, knives, gouges and v-tools and japanese pull saws."
 
Syman's work has seen recent success on social media - particularly on Reddit, where his work has garnered thousands of upvotes and comments. He has more than 7,000 followers on Instagram.
 
He says he definitely will not carve all 151 original Pokemon - in case you were wondering.
 

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About the author
Robert Dalheim

Robert Dalheim is an editor at the Woodworking Network. Along with publishing online news articles, he writes feature stories for the FDMC print publication. He can be reached at [email protected].