A year of spoon, bowl, shrink pot and kuksa carving has got me interested in extending my carving skills to a wider subject-matter, specifically: relief carving (rather than carving in the round). I’ve been devouring vids and books on the necessary tools, their maintenance and the techniques for using them. All I need now is the experience (inclusive of the 100 mistakes).
I do have various green woodworking knives and gouges but few of them are suitable for relief carving.
The set-up (shaping) and sharpening of carving tools is rather more complicated than it is for the nice rectilinear blades used in cabinet making tools. I feel the need to practice on tools-that-don’t-matter, to make the mistakes on them before acquiring and setting up good quality carving chisels.
I have (and can make) the necessary equipment – A Sorby ProEdge belt grinder for shaping and initial sharpening; buffing & polishing wheels; various slips made from shaped wood coated with fine-grit pastes or 3M papers.
Can anyone recommend a brand of inexpensive carving chisels from Amazon or similar that’ll cost no more then, say, £/$50 for a set of six, inclusive of gouges, V-tools and chisels (straight & skew)? There are plenty that come up in an Amazon search but most seem to consist of strange chisel shapes that are not much like those of true carving chisels.
As I live in the UK, any suggestion would have to be available there rather than from overseas. The postage from, for instance, the USA to Britain is a silly amount of money; and then there’s the customs, sales tax and carrier charges for the bureaucracy of applying them.
Replies
Why not start with the good vintage gouges available on the bay and other sites in the UK Once they are set up and sharp one has a good tool at the cost of new crap. Among my mixed tools I have several British makers, Herring, Sorby, James Cam. All are good steel and most only needed a good honing before being fit for use. My opinion, others may vary.
I agree with 3steers. There has to be a decent market in England for vintage good quality carving tools. I'm in the US and I prize mine, as they are as good as any that I bought new. I think you are too worried about "ruining" a good tool by practicing sharpening on it. You won't likely use up more than a 1/32" of its length before you get the hang of it. Some will come with decent sharpening profiles that you can use directly or just refine; others will need some reshaping. I think what you will find is that some will seem to work better than others; explore the small differences in sharpening that make those differences.
A long ago FWW article explained that for the gouges with a deep U shape, the actual edge needs to move outward as you go up the U, for the gouge to be able to cut deeply. I.e., more metal removed on the inside of the U as you move away from the bottom. I haven't seen this detail in any other source.
Also note that buying new carving tools, esp. cheap ones, doesn't guarantee that they will come with anything like proper sharpening profile to copy. Even some of the new expensive ones we bought were very crudely shaped. We didn't bother buying any more of them! Our favorite brand when buying new turned out to be the "Swiss Made" that Woodcraft sells here in the US.
I've attached a couple pictures for inspiration.
The notion of buying ebay or other older chisels to practice the reshaping/sharpening on seems a very good idea. "Why didn't I think of that?" :-)
The advice that I'll be following will be that imparted by Chris Pye in both his books and in his recently-released (free, to You Tube) carving videos formerly part of his commercially-sold instruction set. (Perhaps he's retired?) I find his explanations clear, precise, comprehensive and unambiguous.
Some snippets from this Pye advice:
Main bevel of 15 - 20 degrees, flat (no micro bevels) from (a slightly smoothed) heel to edge, with an inner bevel of some 5-10 degrees, depending on the work and the wood to be carved. Aim to remove the "line of light" reflected from any edge not truly sharp.
U-gouges - sharpen with a flat edge but consider giving these and perhaps V-tools some "wings", which are the vertical U-gouge sections shaped to point forward of the U-part of the edge (or the V-tool chisel edges to point forward of the very slightly rounded V part of the edge. The objective, as you suggest, is to have these "wings" enter the wood ahead of the bottom part of the edge for the purpose of giving a more slicing and hence cleaner cut on the side that may be cutting against the grain in any cut that's going obliquely to the grain direction.
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I can probably manage the sharpening and honing aspects well enough, since I've sharpened and honed cabinet-making tools for years. Its the (re) shaping of the working end of awkward profiles such as gouges and V-tools that I feel a need to practice on. According to Mr Pye, even well-sharpened carving chisels come from the manufacturer with bevels that are often too steep and also lack the small inside bevel; and definitely no wings!
Thanks for you advice. Ebay here I come.
two things:
1) I wouldn't get cheap carving tools unless you have some inside knowledge about them being good steel. of all of the tools you'll use, carving tools lacking in fineness or hardness -maybe the worst place to skimp. Cheap tools often also have fat or bulky (can border on unusable) profiles.
2) you typically won't need much power anything to use carving tools. The tool bevels aren't that thick and it's probably better to maintain them by hand at first to understand the profiles.
We are captive in the US to woodcraft having pfeil. Pfeil are the nicest new carving tools in my opinion, and they are probably more expensive here than they are anywhere else, and you used to be able to get them from overseas to go around that but last I saw, any such thing has been shut down.
Carving can mean a lot of things - you could find old tools that suit your needs, or if you are taking classes and the instructors tell you to get something, you could end up getting five gouges and not use most of them regularly going forward, and need to get three more for the net project.
it's not uncommon to find henry taylor or other kind of later less refined carving tools on ebay for $20 each - hard to give you a specific suggestion but to say I don't have many cheap carving tools that are crude that I can stand. But I could get along for everything I've made with rehandled harbor freight bench chisels.
The Best bang for the buck now for woodworking knives and chisels seems to come from Ukraine, and you get to keep them as they are likely to be well made from good steel and good manufacturing practices: https://beavercrafttools.com/