Hello I have carving questions 👀 Do you, like, just eat a peach and then carve the pitt or are there preparatory steps in between? Are you carving the super wrinkly knobbly pitt that I think of as a peach pitt or is there like a smoother pitt inside of it somehow? What kind of knife/ tools do you use?
I love carving questions I am sorry for taking so long to answer this (it has been a week in which several important things broke, including but not limited to my schedule, my tools, and my AC)
Anyway! Carving!! Peach pits!!! Let's go!!!!! This is going to be a long post, you have been warned 😈
I do in fact carve the same peach pits you are thinking of! There is a seed/kernel inside of the pit, which is plantable and also somewhat poisonous. That part is not particularly carveable.
Here's a very rough diagram from one of the very very few Western resources I've found on peach pit carving, contrasted with a picture of an actual carving- you can see the hollow where the kernel goes.
Generally one breaks the kernel up with a knife tip, long pin, sewing needle, awl, whatever works, and very carefully scrapes it out.
I am sadly not lucky enough to be eating the local peaches whenever I want, because they are a bit spensy, but I do hoard the pits from those when I get the chance! They're a little bigger and with different internal proportions than the ones carved in my posts so far.
These wrinkly little friends are Nermaguard peach pits, which you can buy as plantable seeds, which is in fact how I got them. I would love to waylay a peach canning plant and make off with a truckload of pits from there, but until then this is the cheapest way I know of to get materials.
The Nermaguard pits are very good for carving as far as pits and seeds go imho, with thick walls and a generally predictable placement of the kernel inside.
(I believe there's other pit carvers who specialize in other pits, and also at least one (1) whole entire Eastern tradition, but I have very little information on that other than the occasional Pinterest picture or news article. Foreign language translations do also make it a bit difficult to tell exactly what type of pit is being carved! I will absolutely make a post gushing about the very small amount I know if someone wants me to. Just know that I am not by any means an expert.)
As for tools, I admit to using power tools, because I am disabled and do not have the stamina or hand strength to do much carving by hand. Before this week I would have told you my main tool was an old Dremel model 770, but that has since given up the ghost and needs refurbishing, so I have a new tool now: a very sexy DEPSTECH Model DC08.
I have to hold it one-handed (which is very much not recommended for many very valid safety reasons! but needs must when the devil drives) so: I have my peach pit in one hand, tool in the other. It's a bit big, so I generally brace the end on my shoulder and then brace my hand on my work table (actually my dining room table). This works very well for me because I have experience managing tiny carving objects and power tools, mostly, but there are definitely times when things I am carving yeet themselves into the void and I have to go hunt them down!
For rotary tool bits I actually use a variety, depending on the scale of the details and the smoothness of the finish I'm aiming for. Roughing out takes a carbide bit, which is often all I need if I'm doing something simple like a basket. Going down the scale in detail I have diamond bits (which come in a better variety of shapes), which I can use for very rough detail on an animal figure or for smoothing out. And for most of the detail for animal figures, I have drill bits!
"Why on earth would you use tiny drill bits," you might ask? They break if you breathe on them too hard, and they're definitely not MEANT for this sort of thing; they're meant for drilling <1mm holes in miniature figures and/or circuit boards.
The answer is mostly that I don't want to use dental tools, and this was the alternative. Also, they come in bulk packs: 10 to a case, and multiple cases at once. Very handy when one of them breaks again halfway through carving a set of details! One case goes from 1 or 1.1mm down to… eh, i think .2mm? I eyeball these things, and they are not well labeled.
After the details are carved comes polishing. I will tell you for free that many very smart people use polishing attachments for their rotary tools.
I have a big ziploc bag of little sanding discs that go up to maybe 3000 grit, and also some much bigger sanding discs of 10,000 grit sandpaper. See that gray background in the earlier images? That's them.
It makes things very shiny. I love my 10,000 grit sandpaper :)
Thank you for activating my trap card of Peach Pit Infodumping, I hope your upcoming week is fantastic and full of tiny delights 🫡