When Ernest “Mooney” Warther was a young boy, he met a master wood carver who showed him how to expertly carve a pair of pliers with a single block of wood and only 10 cuts. After that experience, he made carving exquisite wooden sculptures his life’s work. One of the best known pieces that Ernest created is a tree made from 511 wooden pliers, made with the same ’10 cut’ technique he learned when he was young. The tree uses 31,000 cuts! You can see the photos of the tree below. He passed this gift and trade on to his son, David Warther, who is continuing his father’s legacy. David started sculpting small model boats at 3 years old. He isn’t really interested in the history of the boats he creates, but instead in the boat’s design and aesthetic beauty. Still, the amount of studying he has undertaken in order to make his boats incredibly precise is astounding. He studied the history of ship development, and he even became a member of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA) at Texas A & M University. He even learned to read ship blueprints on his own. Aside from David’s boat sculptures, you can see him demonstrating how to create some wooden pliers with 10 cuts in a single piece of wood in the video below. Make sure you watch until 2:30, that’s where the real magic happens.
->**Watch David Warther make a pair of wooden pliers.**<-