BUCKET LIST UPDATE – No. 131: Carve my initials in a tree

I scratched another item off my bucket list yesterday when I carved my initials into a tree. This may not sound like a big deal, but it was something that I’d never done before, and it turned out to be more interesting than I thought at first.

To make sure that I didn’t screw this little project up, I first researched it online. I didn’t find a lot of advice other than to use a sharp knife. One person did suggest that the best place to carve your initials was at eye level.

To my surprise, most of what I found online was comments from people urging others not to carve their initials into trees. They said it could harm the tree and amounted to nothing more than graffiti. Others talked about how this practice is against the law in many places, especially if you deface a tree on public property or in a park or national forest.

For my purposes, I chose a relatively young water oak tree in my backyard. I own the tree, so I didn’t run the risk of breaking the law, and it’s somewhere that I’ll be able to look at it for hopefully years to come. I picked a spot at eye-level and used pruning shears to clip off one small limb to allow myself more working room. Using my fingers, I cleaned off a sizeable spot, removing loose pieces of bark from the work surface.

I then used a mechanical pencil to outline the letters “LP” and then used the short blade of my Swiss army knife to cut along the marks left by my pencil. Next, I carefully widened the lines with the end of the blade. My biggest worry was that I’d apply too much pressure and chip off a big piece of bark and ruin the entire thing. If you look at the picture above closely, you’ll see where I did accidentally remove a little too much bark where the lines of the “L” meet.

Once satisfied that I had a good outline established and that I was off to a good start, I put away my Swiss army knife and pulled out my trusty Leatherman. My Leatherman multi-tool has a nice file/flathead screwdriver that’s a sixteenth of an inch wide. I used it to make all my lines uniform in width and to deepen all the lines. It was during this time that I accidentally chipped off too much bark where the lines of the “L” intersect.

In all, this little project took about 10 minutes to complete. My kids were playing outside while I worked and when I showed them the finished product they asked me to carve their initials into the tree. It was at this point that I began to sense that I may have messed up and probably had not set the best example. I’m now waiting to find their roughly carved initials in our living room wall.

In the end, I enjoyed scratching another item off my bucket list even though it wasn’t one of my “biggies.” How many of you have carved your initials in a tree? What methods and techniques did you use? Do you know of a better way to do it? Let us know in the comments section below.