Carving the History of Steam www.warthers.com/museum.htm
Mooney Warther loved the steam engine and at the age of 28 he began carving the history of the steam engine. At first he carved using walnut wood and bone for his carvings, later he carved in walnut, ebony, ivory, and pearl.
Ivory Carvings
At the age of 68, Mooney Warther completed his goal of carving the history of the steam engine. So, at the age of 72 he began carving major events in steam history. With these carvings, he used ivory exclusively. The Empire State Express, measuring 8' long, is the largest working ivory carving in the world.

Warther Carvings Museum and Button Collection www.roadsideamerica.com/story/10049
In 1902 Ernest Warther started making knives of his own design and technique because he wasn't satisfied with the quality of the knives he could buy. Visit the Warther Carving Museum, in Dover, and youll experience the amazing story Ernest "Mooney" Warther and how his combined love of family and their hobbies were used to create an amazing legacy that still lives today. Ernest Warther turned his carving into creations the Smithsonian called priceless works of art. In an age when steam locomotives were king, so many of Mooney's carvings were based on the mighty steam locomotives of the day. Many are made of walnut, ebony, and ivory. His carvings combined not only history and artistry, but also with motion by giving his locomotive carvings the ability to run authentically. Exacting precision and detail reflect Mooneys amazing skills and passion for steam technology. In fact, the perfection and mechanizing of his steam locomotives earned him the title of Worlds Master Carver, in the 1920s.

Mooney was born in Dover in 1885 and lived there for most of his 87 years. He never got past the second grade and his father -- who died when Mooney was three -- "couldn't make a wood shaving," according to our museum tour guide.
Mooney, however, could carve. As a boy he met a hobo who taught him to whittle a pair of pliers out of piece of wood. Mooney quickly mastered this. He then set himself the task of seeing how many pliers he could make if each handle of the original plier was then carved to form a new set of pliers, and so on, and so on. His "Plier Tree," on display at the museum, has 511 interconnected pliers carved from a single block of wood. Math professors from Case University in Cleveland studied it, and declared that it was impossible.

Having pushed the plier thing as far as he cared to, Mooney began his second, and grandest, phase of his work -- carving perfect scale replicas of massive locomotive steam engines. The museum is a surprisingly well-mounted shrine to these masterworks, with tasteful displays, key lighting,and spacious galleries that rival anything in New York City or Washington, DC.

Here's the Big Boy, carved in 1953. There's the Lincoln Funeral Train, carved in 1965, with tiny Lincoln in his tiny casket inside. Over there's the Great Northern, carved in 1933, which was Mooney's favorite. He worked almost exclusively in walnut, ebony, and ivory, and since he loved elephants he only used antique tusks or ivory from old billiard balls.
Train carved out of ivory. Many of his carvings have small built-in motors so that the engine wheels turn, and Mooney used a special oily Brazilian wood for the bearings so that they would never need lubrication.

Every piece -- and some of the carvings have over 7,500 -- was carved by hand, every pipe, rivet, and lump of coal, even the microscopic connecting rods and eentsy-weentsy screws, all of which must -- and do -- work flawlessly. With only a workbench, a vise, and some hand-made knives, Mooney did this. He even carved perfectly round wheels. The experts put their calipers to his work, shrugged their shoulders, and said that it was impossible.


^^^^ I toured the Warther Museum 12 years ago, in Dover, Ohio.
It was a fascinating exhibition. One of his "priceless works of art" was donated to the Smithsonian & another to a former President.

Another relative of Mooney runs the David Warther Ship Carvings Museum: www.youtube.com/watch
It was also a good place to tour.