It's the lure of woodcarving that draws Galindo to the wood scraps, where he envisions animal and caricature creations that wait to be chiseled, hammered and carved. Woodcarvers say once they pick up a knife to carve, they never look at wood in the same way again.

While most carvers select woods such as the all-purpose basswood, medium-density butternut or marble-like black walnut, Galindo, a Willow Glen resident, experiments with older wood because he sees designs in places other people don't bother to look.

Galindo's entree into woodcarving started more than 20 years ago with firewood.

"It sits there and you see a basic shape that you can either enhance or ruin," he says. "Meanwhile you're having fun."

His unconventional approach to learning the craft earned him the teasing nickname "firewood kid" from Santa Clara Valley Carvers' fellow members. But Willow Glen resident Charlie Pulvino is quick to point out that Galindo can do something most carvers don't attempt.

"I gave him some nondescript wood and he made four beautiful carvings out of it," Pulvino says.

Galindo says that he's never come across a piece of wood he couldn't carve. His ability to see an emerging design in all types of wood means he starts more projects than he finishes, because he doesn't want his ideas to escape him, he says.

One of his most recent projects—carving two Disney cartoon-like bears out of a redwood fence pole—made it to his display table at the Santa Clara Valley Carvers 37th annual Wood Carving and Turning Show on April 17­18. And if he doesn't like a project's outcome, he says, he returns the piece to the firewood pile without a sense of guilt that he's ruined a good piece of wood.

Galindo's familiarity with firewood goes back to his youth, when he helped his father in a Willow Glen firewood business.

"My job was to make sure the blade was clean," he says. And he notes that life has a funny way of coming full circle. Although he spent his boyhood years cutting firewood and later working with finer-quality wood as a carver, "now I'm back to firewood."

To work with old wood, which has a tendency to slash or splinter, Galindo uses a power carving tool—a drill with a rounded bit that shaves wood.

"It moves faster than a knife, so you can ruin good pieces," he says, but he prefers using that tool to hand carving.

Galindo's fascination with woodcarvers' tools even led him to craft his own wood-handled knives and hand-held sanders that he sells.

His pet project—a toddler-size carousel horse—that he's been working on for more than four years is his pièce de résistance.

"I'll get it done one of these years," Galindo says.

The project consists of multiple pieces of wood attached together because of the project's size, which allows him to detach sections and rework them.

"The ears look too much like a mule's," says Galindo, as he unscrews them from the horse's head, planning to redo the ears.

Pulvino says it is part of Galindo's nature to get his carvings perfect. And Galindo acknowledges that his hobby tends to border on obsession.

When he began carving, Galindo never thought he'd stick with it, but now he finds himself either in his workshop or in his yard sculpting bushes.

"I garden, rest, carve," he says. "There's never a dull moment. It's good therapy."

For Charlie Pulvino, the activity provides an avenue for friendship.

"The camaraderie in our group is really fantastic," he says.

"I argue with Dan about power carving or hand carving, which is faster," he says with an eyebrow raised in mischievous jest.

Having carved seriously for more than 30 years, Pulvino has a range of carvings, including a lion, a panther and faces on wooden golf balls.

He's done woodcarving demonstrations in schools and donated carvings to children at the Ronald McDonald House, a facility that houses families of terminally ill children.

Now he's working on a butternut figurine of a child with a fawn started by another club member, who died before she could finish the piece.

"I'm going to try to finish it and give it to her family," Pulvino says.

Willow Glen resident and Santa Clara Valley Carvers Treasurer Dean Aspinwall agrees that pieces often become meaningful to members because of the interest they share in each other's work. Yet club members are diverse, coming from all walks of life, he says, and each member has his or her own preference as to wood, tools and subject matter. Pieces will range from family-member likenesses to wildlife, Renaissance and African art. But all the members share a passion to improve their craft and create a masterpiece.

"It takes up your whole time, and you get lost in it," he says. Aspinwall says he's carved more than 100 pieces, but he's known best for his mini Santa Clauses that can fit inside film canisters.

Aspinwall says his interest in carving was natural, because he grew up working in his father's sawmill in Oregon.

"Growing up, [woodcarving] was the furthest thing from my mind, because fir is not good for carving," he says. When a neighbor introduced him to the club after retirement, he picked up woodcarving with a little practice and tips from other members.

"If you make a mistake, you just adapt the pattern, or we kid around that it's a hunk of firewood," Aspinwall says. The creative process is simply "going with the flow," he says.

Like other carvers in the club, Al Furtado was introduced to woodworking at an early age and associated it with the outdoors.

"I always liked the feel of wood in the Boy Scouts," he says. His father was a carpenter.

With his natural interest in birds and fish, he didn't have to ponder many options when it came to looking for a hobby and images to carve, he says. He also says that it's relaxing and that he's met wonderful people through the club.

And Furtado's commitment to the craft extends beyond the club. For 11 years, he's spent one week each summer at a professional woodcarving seminar in Missoula, Mont., to brush up on his techniques in carving feathers and fins and applying a realistic paint job.

"It can be a class-A carving, but if you don't paint it right, it won't look right," he says. A blue-wing teal duck with tipped feathers is evidence of his 40 hours of labor on a trip to Missoula.

Furtado also likes to pair woodcarving with fishing expeditions, he says.

"Somebody once told me that the good Lord gives you an extra hour of life for every hour you fish," he says. "Maybe he does the same for woodcarving."

For Gloria Pope, one of the few women members of the club, woodcarving went hand in hand with her favorite hobbies, backpacking and hiking.

She tried whittling on her trips to Sequoia and Lassen national parks, but didn't have a good knife. "I always figured backpacking and carving went together," she says.

After returning from a trip to the back country 13 years ago, Pope attended a woodcarving show and found like-minded individuals who nurtured her talent.

"It was so nice to be taken in by the group and taught," she says. Pope mainly carves bears, but also does fine furniture. Two of her bears won ribbons in the Santa Clara Valley Carvers 37th annual Wood Carving and Turning Show.

It was at one of these annual shows that Lee Truan was first introduced to the craft. He found out about the woodcarvers club when he attended a show in 1996.

"I was hooked," says Truan, who started the hobby later in life. "I got there at 10 a.m. and didn't leave until 5 p.m."

A model airplane builder, he found the transition from building models to carving wood to be an easy one. In the last seven years, his work has moved up from novice to advanced to the expert judging level.

"Every piece I've entered, I've got ribbons," he says. Truan's realistic carving of a Navy sailor with his kit bag on a dock won second place at this year's annual show, which was held at Prospect High School in Saratoga.

He also carves cowboy caricatures and Native American figures. Truan says he often gets ideas at the annual shows and likes to combine two to three images to create a new woodcarving. His knack with wood and his enthusiasm for carving have converged to spawn approximately 200 pieces.

Another Johnny-come-lately to the art of woodcarving is Frank Rossi, who joined the club four years ago after retiring as an elementary school teacher.

"I'm a carving fool," he laughs.

At the show, Rossi lined up five bears that he had done at varying skill levels, and the differences among them were dramatic.

"It's a learning process, step by step," he says. "The trick is to take it from a [one-dimensional form] to 3-D."

Rossi credits club member Jack Thompson for mentoring him and teaching him the importance of details. Thompson once asked Rossi if his nose was placed in the middle of his cheek; that taught Rossi to carve human and animal anatomy more carefully.

"It's just a folk art, not a fine art," says Rossi, who creates birds, bears and dragons.

But to Anthony Schiavone, woodcarving is akin to sculpting and Gothic architecture.

"There's not a lot of difference between wood and marble," he says.

Schiavone studies Michelangelo and Bernini to learn proportions and human muscle structure. His entry, "Angela at the Beach," carved from a photo of his daughter as a toddler, won Best in Show at this year's annual Wood Carving and Turning Show.

Although Schiavone has won eight Best in Shows and seven runners-up, he says the club does not have a competitive atmosphere and that people in the club teach each other techniques.

"It's a great hobby for comradeship," he says. "The friendships you develop are like a family."

Schiavone adds that the hardest part of being in the club is losing talented members and friends along the way.

One of the club's difficulties is the lack of new and younger members, says member Joseph Bonfiglio.

Rossi says that his Italian ancestors were woodcarvers and that now his 10-year-old grandson wants to join the tradition. While he wants his grandson to wait to his midteen years to carve so he'll have all his fine-motor skills, he says his favorite photo shows the boy whittling at his workbench.

"He's going to make a lot of good things," Rossi says.

And Aspinwall adds, "Carving will go on forever. In history, there's so much to look at in European and U.S. carving."

Santa Clara Valley Carvers meets on Mondays at the Santa Maria Hall, 2211 Shamrock Ave. in Campbell, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The club also meets in the Prospect High School woodshop on Thursday nights from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. For more information, contact Jerry Gin at 408.737.8539.