Carving Mistakes

I just want to know what you all do when you make a mistake, ie. take too much off with your Foredom or knife or just take it off in the wrong place or the tool just slips. I know this could be a very subjective question so just asking in general terms. Do you

A. scrap the work and start over
B. just use the head or body anyway
C. try to correct your mistake taking some off from the other side

Thought this would be a fun conversation, took alittle to much off one head last night and uncovered a hiddeen knot in a bill so I am leaning to scraping these heads and starting over

if you have a wood stove, you have kindling, otherwise, they become part of YOUR personal rig..I confess that i have a milk box in the shop which contains a number of various old baddies, which i still occasionally look at for inspiration. There is also another crate full of what i kinda refer to as seconds--actually, every time i make a dozen or so, i make extras, and they go into that crate, for future use.
After over thirty years of this, and close to 6000 dekes, one does have to expect clinkers.

george w wrote:if you have a wood stove, you have kindling, otherwise, they become part of YOUR personal rig..I confess that i have a milk box in the shop which contains a number of various old baddies, which i still occasionally look at for inspiration. There is also another crate full of what i kinda refer to as seconds--actually, every time i make a dozen or so, i make extras, and they go into that crate, for future use.
After over thirty years of this, and close to 6000 dekes, one does have to expect clinkers.

Or those that are stuck to your underpants

Capt. Larry M wrote:I just want to know what you all do when you make a mistake, ie. take too much off with your Foredom or knife or just take it off in the wrong place or the tool just slips. I know this could be a very subjective question so just asking in general terms. Do you

A. scrap the work and start over
B. just use the head or body anyway
C. try to correct your mistake taking some off from the other side

Thought this would be a fun conversation, took alittle to much off one head last night and uncovered a hiddeen knot in a bill so I am leaning to scraping these heads and starting over

If I screw up on a head that I know would be noticable, I scrap the head. When I first started carving, I scrapped a lot of heads. I have even scrapped bodies that I messed up on, although a lot of times with the body, you can get away with a mess up or two and not have it be as noticable as a screw up on the head.

You can "clean" up a lot of mistakes with wood putty or epoxy-sculpt even bondo!

The problem with all of those fixes is that exposure to elements tends to pop them off..You can probably get away with that process for a long time with shelf stuff, but for gunners, it may be an annual, or at least biennial hospitalization. I have even come to love the embedded shot in heads, rather than dig them out and do more work than the pellet did originally.
The whole thing is a learning process--One of my Art instructiors in undergrad had a great philosophy--First time you do it, it is a mistake--if you repeat it, you are not learning!