Quiz answer ...

When I put up this video and announced the quiz I sort of assumed that it would all be over within the first day. It ended up taking nearly a month to reach the limit of five winners, and this came only after the page was linked to by a couple of major websites [1, 2], bringing in hundreds of viewers in a very short time.

Many of the incorrect entries I received related to the presence/absence of the water flask in the video. There was plenty of natural light that day, so I wasn't using the bulb that hangs down over the bench. When this bulb is on, its light is spread out and softened by the flask full of water that is positioned directly in front of it (this is a standard technique of traditional carvers in this field). At the point in the video where I finish the first cutting and then switch to the mallet and gouge for clearing away un-needed wood, I reached out and removed the flask, allowing me to swing the hammer much more freely. No error there ....

The actual error comes in the very first frames of the video, in a sequence that does indeed flash by pretty quickly. The people who did manage to spot it only did so by stopping the video and stepping through frame by frame. When you do this, you can see my error clearly ... Here it is:

I must have been still half asleep that morning - I taped the protective newspaper over the front of the block, not the back! When I then flipped it over to start carving, I stared at the blank wood for a moment, realized what I had done, then tore off the paper and taped it in place where it belonged, on the back of the block. Senior moment, indeed!

Thanks to all those who wrote in with guesses/answers. I ended up sending prints out to eight people, as I extended the contest beyond the stated limit of five, due to the extra coverage the page received.