For those looking for a fascinating hobby or even an artistic career, woodcarving can be hypnotic — or frustrating if approached with the wrong equipment. Grinders and chainsaws work well on some materials and scales of work, but the simplest approach is still the mallet, chisel and gouge. Carving knives play only a small role in the trade, occasionally useful for cleanup and for folk art tricks like the wooden chain or ball-in-cage.
Relief carving once was a common skill among furniture makers and depends as much on patterns and matching tool shapes to known designs as it does on artistic ability. Complete sets of chisels and gouges in a wide range of sweeps and sizes make duplication of nearly any design a by-the-numbers project. Chip carving combines geometric patterns with simple knife and chisel blades, but even though the approach looks simple the best chip patterns are truly intricate and beautiful, challenging even for experts.
For sculpting the gouge and chisel provide nearly infinite control of angle and cutting depth. Heavy tools remove waste wood quickly, while smaller combinations handle fine detail. Tool sets are chosen to match the scale of the work, with most types intended to be driven by a mallet. The smallest combine with palm handles for working with hand pressure only.
Tye Two Cherries’ 5 Piece Carving Set with palm-sized handles — built for hand pressure detail work but also useful with a light mallet.
The Two Cherries’ 11 Piece Carving Set provides six full sized mallet driven tools, four chip carving knives and a whetstone.
The 20 piece Starter Set from FlexTool offers a broad range of tools in slim profile spring steel and interchangeable handles — a new and good idea.
Timber framers know this tool. If you've tried an axe for chopping joints for log buildings or post-and-beam construction and it didn't work out well, it was probably because you had something else in hand. Only the squared edge of a carpenter's axe will chop a truly flat surface.
The ...
The Fein FMM 250Q is one of the few power tools that actually does those critical awkward jobs you'd otherwise need hand tools to accomplish. With the Fein, you can avoid the other carpenter's solution of busting things out and starting over.
The Fein MultiMaster drives an assortment of ...
Arbortech's Power Chisel uses either a 20 mm flat chisel blade or a 20 mm No. 7 Sweep gouge blade to quickly shape sculptures, wooden carved signs and timber framing joints. Get the look of hand-chiseled techniques with the speed and power of a truly modern woodworking machine.
The Arbortech ...
At last, real power tools for the woodcarver and sculptor. Arbortech's Mini Grinder Carving Kit converts most 4- or 4-1/2-inch angle grinders into the machine equivalent of a carving gouge.
Until now the only carving options other than hand tools were chainsaws and grinding machines, and even though it's amazing ...
Drawknives like the Arno Flat Forged Drawknife can remove large amounts of wood quickly, but only with the proper hold-downs or vises in place. Arno makes this knife in a traditional pattern that was once a favorite of coopers and wheelwrights. Using any drawknife successfully means stepping back to ...
A modern version of a specialized and still useful old tool, the DK1000 10-inch Draw Knife from Lumber Jack Tools is much better suited to shaping tool handles than stripping bark from trees. That's no criticism of the knife, since this is a tool of excellent quality -- ...
With the proper hold-down tools, the Two Cherries 9-inch Drawknife helps the craftsman rough out chair legs, rungs, tool handles, and more. You're sure to appreciate the ample handles of natural wood and the quality of the German steel.
This nine-inch drawknife is handy for debarking small logs, but with the ...
Crown's Right-Handed Marking Knife has the low price, high quality, and practicality that I love to see in hand tools. Getting all three of those in one tool is increasingly rare.
Crown Hand Tools, Ltd., of Sheffield, England, makes this knife -- it's a simple and extremely useful woodworker's knife that ...
Makita designed the 9820-2 Horizontal Wheel Sharpener to restore the edges of planer blades to perfect condition. The same wet grinding system that sharpens planer blades perfectly true and razor sharp -- without danger of overheating -- will do the same great job on your best knives, wood plane blades, and ...
Lighter than traditional drawknives, this curved drawknife with 5-inch cutting edge from Flexcut was designed for carvers rather than wheelwrights and coopers. Flexcut created this small drawknife from high carbon spring steel with shanks tempered for slight flexing under load. That extra movement allows the knife to follow complex ...
Although some very well-known carvers use pocketknives exclusively, a pocketknife was actually designed for occasional use. Where hours of work are involved, other styles work better. The carving set from Flexcut of Erie, Pennsylvania, offers four specialized carving knives meant for the long haul.
The problem with pocket knives ...
Obviously designed by a woodcarver, the Flexcut Carvin Jack packs a basic set of woodcarving knives and gouges into a multi-tool small enough to fit in a belt pouch. If you gave up whittling around the campfire because you couldn't bring your workshop with you, now's your chance to ...
The Folding Deluxe Whittler from Boker of Solingen, Germany, continues to be produced in what is now a somewhat rare metal -- plain-edged carbon steel. You'll notice the difference in the color of the blades right away, since they lack the mirror finish of high carbon stainless steel. If you ...
Classic pocket knives were nearly left behind when one-handed opening clip folders came along, even though modern clip folders lacked the grace of the old styles. Kershaw's Double Cross combines the best features of the modern pocket folders in a familiar, classic style. This traditional pocket knife with a ...
Being able to cut a 2x4 at a perfect right angle with a handsaw is always one of the marks of a skilled carpenter -- with the European style of saw most of us know, accurate cuts take years of practice. With Shark's 12-inch carpentry saw, an improved version of ...
Shark's flexible Fine Cut Saw gives us the traditional Ryoba joiner's saw with a modern improvement -- push-button blade replacement. This double-edged saw style has been standard in Japan for centuries but is relatively new to Western woodworkers. One side bears shark-tooth shaped teeth for crosscutting and the opposite ...
The Shark Dowel/Dovetail/Detail Saw cuts one of the thinnest kerfs possible, but even though it's a great crosscut saw for tenons and tricky detail work it isn't the only saw you'll need for dovetailing.
The Shark Detail Saw is so thin and flexible that it's a little tricky to use. ...
When craftsmen of today try to recreate the work of previous generations, there's a good chance they'll just end up wondering how those old-timers did that. Modern tools were designed for modern materials and often don't fare well on traditional challenges. The Gransfors Bruks Swedish Carving Axe is one ...
Shark's Trim/Detail Ryoba combines a thin double edged spring steel blade with an old handle design that's not so great. The 19 tpi ripping edge and the 24 tpi crosscut edge otherwise would be a perfect combination for dovetailing and other tricky feats of joinery.
With a finer tpi ...
Flexcut Tool Company's SK108 20-Piece Carving Starter Set gives artisans a selection of 17 blades, two interchangeable handles, and the basics of a sharpening system all in one compact case. This collection of good tools is not the traditional approach, using light spring steel blades instead of heavy forged patterns ...
The 11 Piece Carving Set from Two Cherries includes tools for both relief and chip carving. A good choice for beginners and for expert carvers who need to replace tools or expand collections, the Two Cherries set features forged blades of high carbon tool steel hardened to Rockwell 61 ...
The Two Cherries 5 Piece Palm-Handled Carving set includes five high quality tools for detailing and small scale relief carvings plus a five-pocket leather pouch for storage.
These small carving tools show some of the same features of full-sized gouges and chisels intended for heavier work. Forged bolsters and ferruled ...
This set of tools will work well for someone looking to start a serious wood carving hobby. The tools are professional-quality and, while the set is not comprehensive, the tools provide a good range of the various tools of the trade needed to produce serious carvings.
The kit is intended for creating ...
| CURL error code = 6. (Could not resolve host: rest.ebay.com) |
Twitter
RSS