You obviously do not think it is possible to carve that kind of detail without having some kind of reference do you? I would say that burning a sketch of what he is to carve into the wood would not take away from the fact that he was hand carving his pieces.
Reference is one thing as I assume would be done via carbon paper.
Smoothie made the point earlier here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=935115.msg10252734#msg10252734...that this was likely not done by carbon paper,
but appears to have some depth to it.
Take a look at the image Smoothie attached. You can see that
it's already been carved up to the edge. Seems to me that all WC is really
doing is removing more wood that surrounds the pre-made groove... with
some kind of tool.
Do you really consider that "hand carving" ?
To be honest, I have no idea. I really do not know that much about wood to say one way or another. I would say that even if it were carved with a laser with an initial imprint then it would not be the scam that this is being made out to be. Without being able to touch the piece I really cannot even say with certainty if the piece is carved or is just burned as of the picture that smoothie attached.