What figured wood is good for carving?

[Tom Jones III]

I'm learning how to carve by working through the Chris Pye videos and my next carving will be a couple of moths/butterflies. Since real moth or butterfly wings are very "figured" I would like to find an interesting wood to use. Can you suggest any figured wood that also carves relatively well? What about a figured maple or lacewood? Would they look good as butterfly wings and carve well?

[Paul Hinds]

I've never done any carving but I can tell you that lacewood is splintery and chips out pretty readily so I doubt it would be good for carving. It WOULD give a great look for butterflies though.

[Karl Andersson]

I haven't tried carving many exotic figured woods except for a few inlays in relatively simple shapes (butterfly wings would be simple if you don't try to carve the veins). I do have experience carving figured maple, both soft and hard (soft maple isn't really soft- still harder than basswood). My opinion on maple is that it needs very sharp tools and light cuts, but is nice to work. If you're just looking for "tiger stripes" in figured maple, that isn't a result of changing grain so it will be easy to carve- even Home Depot maple often has short runs of stripes, so it's not hard to find unless you want a full gunstock-length with all stripes. You can get knotty, curly pieces that will have a lot of dramatic effect (swirls, etc.) but then you'll be dealing with grain that reverses, comes straight at you, etc. and you'll have to shave lightly and have very sharp tools to avoid digging in or lifting the grain. This would be true for most curly hardwoods. Even when curly or striped, maple fairly bland and may be best treated to get more color afterwards, either using one of the Kentucky rifle-makers tricks for tiger stripes (aqua fortis) or something like the "mulberry" false tortoise-shell effect (as described on the blog Pegs and Tails). You could try just staining and oiling it, but it may not show the dramatic grain as boldly as you're looking for. I'll leave the opinions on exotics to those with more experience with them. Lacewood looks like it would be very interesting, if it is carve-able.
Karl

[Tom Sontag]

Basswood comes curly sometimes.