Ihis 40-year woodworking ca- Nreer, Paul White has spruced up businesses and homes across Cape Cod and beyond with his custom signs and artistic carvings of eagles and other icons. White is the owner of Paul White Woodcarving in East Sandwich, Mass. Since he was last featured in Woodshop News in 1997, he’s purchased a used, eight-spindle Minnesota-Milwaukee duplicarver and established a secondary business: Whitewood Duplicarving Co., mass-producing machine-routed eagle blanks.
“In the anticipation of reaching the age of 65, and slowing down somewhat, I’ve switched the focus of my work to carving eagles,” he said. “We’ve always done eagles but I started doing more eagles in the last eight or nine years and bought that machine with the thought of retiring to maybe a two- or three-day week.”
The blanks, currently offered in whitewood and mahogany, provide the rough lines, depths and enough detail to complete the carving of the eagle blank to perfection. They significantly reduce the tedious carving time by about 30 percent, but the end-result is still a hand-made heirloom piece.
This carving combines White’s detailed eagle carving with one of his infamous signs. It was made for a client’s ship, Bryermere III, of Hyannisport, Mass.
discovered pretty quickly that there are a lot of [customers] around the country that love to buy these eagles.”
Passing through the town’s main stretch on Route 6A, it’s easy to spot which signs are White’s. Every couple of buildings, residential and commercial, has something made at his shop.
White rents a 3,600-sq.-ft. commercial space to store his large machines and materials, but his home shop is where the action is. Examples of White’s colorful and dynamic work are everywhere, including classic signs, eagles, sharks, shells, fish, and a large mermaid.
White bought a VyTek CNC routing system in 1997 to expand his business. It did the trick, but he says his new duplicarver is proving to be more valuable for promoting eagle blanks. Other shop investments include a Delta 10" table saw, Advance machinery 6" jointer, 14" an 16" Walker-Turner bandsaws, De Walt radial arm saw, Rockwell lathe,
and a Delta router for lettering.
“Generally, 75 percent of our work is hand-carved and 25 percent is done by machine, whether we’re talking about roughing in eagles or carving letters with a computer.”
Everything is hand painted or gilded by Florence Sauerbrey of Centerville, Mass.
White keeps up to 7,000 bf of lumber in stock, mainly Western sugar pine, Eastern white pine, basswood, redwood and cedar. As a carver, he looks for many qualities when choosing a wood species, such as availability, price, a straight grain, how it takes paint and its resistance to rot. There’s no perfect wood for a sign carver, but mahogany comes close, he says.
“Redwood, cedar or cypress — those are very rot-resistant, but they are also very brittle straight-grain woods that don’t carve as well as you’d like,” said White. “There are some softwoods like basswood and butternut that carve well but aren’t necessarily rot-resistant. There are some other beautiful woods that you
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White grew up on the Cape and went to the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Conn., on a football scholarship. He dropped out after his second year discovering that, while he liked using his head, he loved working with his hands.
He moved back to the Cape and got jobs in landscaping and residential construction. He met a sign carver who said there was plenty of work, so White found a chisel and learned the trade. As word got around, people began buying his work.
“After the first summer, I needed help,” he said.
Older sign carvers vacationing on the Cape would offer him a tip here and there, but White says he learned mostly by trial and error. The biggest hurdle was how to work with the expansion and contraction of wood. White has conquered a number of challenges over the years.
“When you say the word woodcarving, it means something different to everybody,” he said. “We kind of do a little bit of everything.”
White has witnessed a slew of design trends from clients. Pineapples, a symbol of hospitality, were extremely popular for years but stars are now getting more attention as decorative items. But the eagle, a symbol of freedom, is always in demand.
“My first 10 years in business, I probably did eight of them. Somewhere, at some point, I saw an ad where you can buy roughed-in eagles, so I went to visit them,” he said. “I bought a few and they seemed like a good idea. When I decided we were going to make more, I said, ‘If we carve some of these on a machine, it would speed things up a little for us.’ We
A primed eagle, ready for paint, guilding or both.
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