Advice sought on using Pfeil short bent gouges.

[haggismuncher]

Good morning from a cold wet Hobart everyone,
I have recently been trying my hand at bowl carving having found the work of David Fisher ( Dave Fisher carves a greenwood bowl - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tohfM6uiMo8&ab_channel=FineWoodworking) ). I am gradually turning our firewood pile into piles of chips using a bowl carving adze. Once I have the rough shape I have been trying to use Short reach Spoon Gouges to carve out the sides and bottom but just can't get my head around how they cut. I seem to have to hold them vertically or even tipped away from the face being cut if I want the edge to cut.
Would anyone have any advice or know of an online tutorial?

Regards

Chris

[ClaudeF]

Hello, Chris! What brand of gouge do you have? The way the gouge cuts depends on the angle of the bevel. A larger bevel angle will mean that you have to tilt the gouge significantly when carving the edge of the bowl You might be better off using a straight gouge near the rim of the bowl, then switching to the bowl gouge when nearing the bottom of the bowl. You might also search the forum for "Robson Valley". He has some good advice about using crooked knives and adzes for bowl carving.

Claude

[Robson Valley]

I'm here.
I've carved several bowls of different shapes and sizes. I have run across several different techniques.
In none of them does anybody ever use a bent gouge. That's a new one for me.

In fact, I rarely ever use gouges at all any more. For the past 10(?) years, I have been carving everything
with crooked knives and elbow and D adzes, the carving tools common and popular among the First Nations
here in the Pacific Northwest. A journey of exploration, I suppose, with very satisfactory results.

How big is your dish? How deep? How thin do you want the wall to be? Straight sides? Flat bottom?
Will it have little carved feet to stand on?

503229

503230

[haggismuncher]

Hi Claude,
Thank you for the suggestions, I have bought Pfeil brand gouges, they appear to need to be nearly vertical to dig in.
I assume they are what is best for the bottom of the bowl, up to this point I have been using straight or long bent gouges for the sides and rim.

Chris

[haggismuncher]

Good morning Robson,
Thanks for the advice.
I'd love to make bowls up to 45cm/18 inches in diameter approx 30cm/12 inches deep, currently practicing on smaller bowls.
The sides and bottom I am aiming for are curved.

I've been using an adze to hollow out the main bowl and outside, ideally the sides would end up being about 1cm thick, but my current skill level with the adze means I have a lot of chiselling to do to get down to that thickness.

Chris

[Robson Valley]

Hi Chris:
You certainly work with big dishes. I wanted ones to be convenient on my table.
One thing I did learn was that I must almost finish the entire outside of the dish before I do the easy fun part,
hogging out the dish bowl void.

I get the hollow part roughed out with an elbow adze, the D adze is a poor performer here.
To clean it up and finish it, I use an assortment of crooked knives. Unlike any sort of a gouge, the crooked knife allows
you to carve sideways with ease.

Several good sources of these. Mora (Sweden) makes the #162, #163 and #164 (#161, 162, 163?) I forget.
Anyway, the blades have varying amounts of sweep to carve sideways for things like spoons, ladles and kuksa.

There are several bladesmiths scattered across the USA and Canada that forge crooked knife blades.
Really a bent knife blade, carving sharp on both edges so you can work left and right with just one tool.
I usually buy the blades and make up all the handles for the knives and adzes.
What I have made up look a lot like these tools from Gregg and Charlie:
The ones I use the most are the larger sizes of blades with J-shape sweeps. Not huge like the ones the totem pole carvers make.

Kestrel Tool (http://www.kestreltool.com/)


The other thing that's common practice among the First Nations carvers here is to make everything yourself.
Leaf spring of 25-40mm width make excellent adze blades.
Old saw blades, dull SawzAll blades can be worked into both straight and crooked knife forms.

A really cheap source of blades in good shapes are the worn down farrier's hoof trimming knives.
Good curves, nice scorp tip that you can keep or cut off if it gets in the way.
I buy $50 knives from our local farrier for $5.00 each.

I revise the bevels roughly with a 7/32" Oregon chain saw file. Then I do the conventional fine sandpapers sharpening bumpf.
The only snag is that these are single edges but they are made in left and right designs. Sometimes a single edge isn't so bad because you can push on the dull spine for greater control.

I know that the Canadian maker, Hall, exports to Australia. Damn hard, hard steel.
I'll ruin a new chainsaw file for every 2 Hall blades I dress up.

Propane Forges & Parts | hallknife (https://www.hallknifeandforge.com/forges)

Enough.
I suggest you rethink using a gouge to dress up the inner surface of the bowl.
Look at farrier's knives with a revised 12 degree bevel, not the factory 25 degrees.

I built a cheap caliper that allows me to reach into a dish and measure thickness +/- 1 mm.
My two pictured dishes above? The bottoms are flat and almost exactly 3/8" or 9 mm thick.
I'll try to find pictures. A couple of cheap wooden meter sticks from a hardware and you can build it in 20 minutes.