Thread: Cheap Carving Tools

They say the blades are stainless steel Luke. I'm not sure that stainless will take the super keen edge that you will need in a carving tool. A bit more research maybe.

Cheers
Bevan

G'Day Luke,
You could have a look a W.L.Fuller who still made drills, etc in USA....

W.L. Fuller Inc.

I've bought some drill bits from them with great service and very reasonable pricing...

Cheers crowie

You'll need to email for price

Lisa M Fuller <[email protected]>

Luke

"Stainless steel" is for me the equivalent of "Danger Will Robertson, Danger"


A month or so ago I did a 3 day Lee Valley seminar on carving with one of the gun carvers in Calgary. His message was ONLY buy the tools as you need them.

Mary May has the same message.

If you must buy a "starter set" this Pfeil set https://www.dictum.com/en/tools/wood..._97.04_1_48_12 is not a bad start. It has a range of sweeps each in a size that sort of makes sense. But it you're looking to carve letters, then the tools are not ideal.

I strongly suggest you hold off purchasing until you know which tools you need. (After the sessions at Lee Valley I purchased just 4 chisels.)

No don't do it ! you will definitely regret it & spend most of your time sharpening rubbish steel & never discover the delights of woodcarving .
Six well chosen tools of a good make will be enough for good long while certainly enough to let you gain confidence & insight into the adsorbing world of woodcarving.
It is best not to start with a big set anyway because as you gain experience & learn what you want to make you make you can add new sizes to your collection the exact shape you need.
If you decide carving is not for you ,good gouges always keep a good resale value , you will never lose more than half their purchase value.


Think about it, what do you want to carve ? what carvings do you admire ? How big are they ? what wood do you want to use ? Post that info up here & those with experience can recommend a starter set.

Mike

Luke, I can't comment on those tools because I haven't tried anything like them. I can add a couple of things though:

If you start your carving on an extremely soft wood like jelutong then the edge holding qualities of the tools is not that critical. You still learn the same skills of handgrips, strokes, 3D visualisation etc.

Secondly you can try buying secondhand tools. I've bought a number of sets of Pfeil, Marples and Henry Taylor tools off EBay and Gumtree. Look for sets where the seller doesn't use the right keywords or puts the ad in the wrong category - some people just don't know how to sell things. I recently bought a bunch of Henry Taylor's for $6 per tool and 14 newish Pfeil tools at $10 each so it's doable, just need to be patient.

Incidently I started carving thinking I would only be doing ornamental carving (ie furniture embellishments) but have rambled through pretty much everything else. I expect you will too.

Carving very soft woods is a lot like slicing over-ripe tomatoes. Your edges need to be extremely sharp.
I bought some cheap tools, just to see how bad it can get. I can't get a good edge. Hopeless.
Not even a set that I'd give to anyone else.

Top carving tool brands have open stock, you can buy only the tools that you need.
Was about to ask but I read that you describe the carving style which interests you. Good.
I read that what you plan to do is really "relief" carving.
That's where I started. Taught by a full time professional carver of such things as relief portraits of favorite family pets.

Here's the starting list that we were advised to purchase:

12oz ShopFox carver's mallet, leather strop and CrOx honing compound.
1K/4k combo waterston from Leel Valley (yes, you can buy better but for a start, this is good.)
Pfeil gouges
D5/3
1/8
8/7
12/8
3F/8
5F/14

As Aaron points out, your curiosity is likely to get the better of you. Fine. You buy a couple more gouges and off you go.

Originally Posted by Luke Maddux

...
It may be worth noting that my carving interests lie in furniture-related work only. Things like floral relief patterns, shells, mouldings, ball and claw feet, etc.
...

Luke: I agree with the above. For what it's worth, here's a blog article by one of the best furniture/architectural carvers in the US - he makes his living carving this type. In this blog article, Mark spells out the tools he "can't live without", and, more importantly, tells you WHY he can't live without them. Tools I Can’t Live Without « Fiebig and Yundt Woodcarving

I've also attached a Radius of Gouges chart I made up. This charr, in both English and Metric, shows you the radius of the gouge curve for various sweep curves and widths. For example: you are following a pattern in a magazine and the author says to use a 9/10 gouge (#9sweep, 10mm wide) to make a certain cut. Well, you don't have one, so what do you do? Look at the chart: a 9/10 has a radius of 5mm. Eyeball the rest of the chart and look for another gouge with the same radius: There is a 5/5, a 4/3, a 7/8 which have exactly the same radius - any one of these could be substituted - you'd just have to make several cuts instead of one.

Claude
Radii of Gouges.pdf

Thanks Claude. Just read his "essay". For the direction that he has gone, I've never read better advice.
I don't believe that his selection of tools is by any means universal but for what the OP wants to do,
this is as good as it gets.

good interesting articles

Thanks a lot, fellas (I'm not going to click Thank for every response because of the three second rule...). That's all great advice. I'm glad you stopped me, and reinforced my thoughts on not buying it.

I think that the first thing I'm likely to try is some curved mouldings which require carving. This is easy to lay out, and because I can finish it with a scraper, it's pretty much fail safe. It should also make it easy to know which to buy, because I can use the (awesome and much appreciated) chart to know which are appropriate.

My girlfriend has a few Pfeil gouges that she uses for spoon carving, and I have some Titan firmer gouges I picked up a while back that need sharpening, but at least I know that I have some tools to practice with in the meantime.

Thanks again!

Luke

Here's an extra thought...

'Getting into carving' is as much about the 'how' as it is about the 'what with'... In the long run, a competent instructor will save you money, hours and probably a few injuries, by showing you what not to do in the course of showing you the 'how'. He/she will also have his/her preferences when it comes to tools and style. So....

1. Find a teacher who is willing to teach you what you want to know. (ask around the woodworker scene in your area)
2. Only buy what they recommend for getting through their training program. Initially this should only be a few chisels... not dozens.
3. Once you have the basics in hand then you can start to experiment with your own ideas and develop your own variants on the techniques you've been taught.
4. As your skills develop, add new chisels/tools ONLY as you discover a need for them. Try to remember that often in the beginning, one's ambitions travel far ahead of one's abilities. Carving is a physical skill that most people can gain a level of competency provided they take the time to practice, building new skills on firmly rooted older ones. Take the time to fully develop your skills in line with what you have been taught... in other words, give your hands a chance to catch up with your head before you decide you need to buy more tools. There is always a strong temptation to buy tools in the belief that they will get you to your creative goals faster. The truth is that they generally don't. They can help if you have taken the time to develop the skills worthy of them but tools alone won't make you a good carver.
5. When its time to buy a new tool, get the best your budget can afford. If you buy cheap, you'll only end up replacing it with the good tool later when you realise that the 'cheapie' won't give your skills their full potential. No point in buying multiple tools when one would have done the job.

Adhering to these simple principles should keep you happily creating increasingly better art without creating the world's largest collection of redundant tools at the same time.

Good luck....

Hi Luke, Like others have said don't waste your money on cheap ebay chisels, I made that mistake when I started and quickly learnt they are crap. If you have the sharpening skills like Aaron said, better to look for someone selling good quality second hand.

That's nice to see how everybody had the same opinion.
I started with such crap tools i was given.
A screwdriver set would work better.

I bought a set of the tools you mentioned. They are heavy, unwieldy and the profiles will leave you wondering what you are doing wrong.
I have a solution, email me...
[email protected]
jmorgan