When you have a plan to make wood carving, the first decision for you to make is what kind of woods are best for your carving. You can make an option based on your purpose actually. If you want wood that will last for a long time and be forgiving of mistakes, a hard wood maybe good choice; while for a beginner armed with only knives and willing to experiment, a soft wood is generally the right choice. What types of soft wood are best depends on where the carver lives and what kind of texture or appearance is desired.

In view of what objects are being created and how the wood is being cut, wood carving is divided into three different types in general. The first and most complex is hand carving. In which the wood is shaped by gouging out slivers in a whittling fashion. This kind of carving can work in any dimension, not forced to compromise a design to fit the dimensions of a machine in width or length. The hand work allows carvers to adjust the pattern of a molding so that the corners have the traditional neat finish - often with rich acanthus decoration - not just a cut in the middle of a pattern because the material comes in fixed lengths. For wood carving, every piece is different from each other in pattern; the piece you own is unique. The second type is machine carving. The work of machine carving can show high efficiency, and there is no difference of all pieces. Compared with hand carving, the pattern of machine carving is short of stereo sense. Also machine made work shows the limitations of a spinning router blade and lacks any sharp, intricate detail. The third type is to carve from a copy. This type of carving needs you to choose the pattern you like first then print it on a piece of paper, the paper will be put on the surface of the wood, so you could carve by copying the pattern. The patterns are not as vivid as hand carving because carvers couldn't follow their own will to carve.

Wood carving is very popular in furniture, as above mentioned; the hand carving is the most valuable one, which can reveal your status, glamour and good taste.