Whittling

What are you whittling?

Tom took out his knife and started whittling a piece of wood.

I picked up the knife and started whittling away at the block of wood.

a whittling down

Result: nothing would prevent the rapid destruction of the Deco District. Already the developers are calling for a whittling down of the original square mile to a few blocks. The few blocks will no doubt be whittled down to one building, and in the end all that will be left will be a Deco mailbox well pissed on by the local dogs. In another era it was called salami tactics.