Power Carved Toadstool | How To

Make your own decorative power carved toadstool with the Arbortech Power Carving range, to give your garden in to a mystical and magical woodland feel. A great project to do outdoors, and to test your power carving skills. Watch Ben in our Woodworking Wisdom demo or follow our step by step guide below.

https://youtu.be/vazC4M9tFAQ

Power carve the top of the toadstool

Select your piece of timber for the top of your toadstool. Mark out and cut to a rough circle in your desired size.

Using the Forstner bit, drill a shallow hole on the underside. Ensure that the work piece is well clamped or fixed to your workbench before you begin carving. Mark out the areas that you want to carve away.

Using the Power Carving unit with the Turboplane attached, start to remove waste material.

Continue to carve until you are happy with the overall shape, then begin to blend and smooth the shape. This will save lots of time when to comes to sanding

Carve the underside and make the stalk

Next, flip the workpiece over and repeat the process of marking out, waste removal and smoothing. We went with a wavy edge to our Toadstool cap. If you are carving one similar, remember to keep in mind the shape on the underside and match it to the top.

Isolate the power carving unit and remove the Turboplane. Replace with the flexible sanding pad and sand both sides. Remember turn the speed down on the power carving unit to prevent burning from the abrasive.

Next, take your branch section and cut to length. Hold your selected branch securely in a bench vice. With a drill driver fitted with the power tenon cutter, cut the 1" tenon to fit the 1" hole drilled in the underside of the top/cap. Then test fit.

Assemble your power carved toadstool

Glue the two components together. An epoxy resin is a great way of gluing these together. We have used a 5 minute formula. Be sure to coat the walls as well as the bottom of the hole for best results.

Allow the glue time to dry then you can decorate/finish the project however you like. We simply scorched ours to create some colour but this could be painted, stained or oiled.

Liked it? Try this!

If you liked this project, then why not have a go at power carving your own decorative mushroom, with Arbortech. If you have made out power carved toadstool project or these decorative mushrooms, share your snaps with us! Tag us on social media, search @axminstertools on Facebook or Instagram. Or share on our online gallery.