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Mini wood carving tools.


Bill Hudson

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I really like the quality of the Ashley Iles palm gouges. I think they are likely the finest quality of craftsmandship of the commercially available gouges for miniature wood working. The smallest size is 1/16". They are crafted in England but available in the USA from a source in New York.

 

The storefront is in Brookly so you could go shopping there in person when you got to the New York Guild show or if you stop in New York before heading up to the guild school which some students seem to do.

 

The gouges

https://www.toolsforworkingwood.com/store/dept/CIL/item/IL-ALLBLOCK.XX

 

The store location:

https://www.toolsforworkingwood.com/store/more/directions.html

 

There was a mention of the Pfiel. They too make some  palm gouges but not as narrow as 1/16".  However I have purchased their long shafted ones then cut the shaft to an appropriate length with a Dremel cut off disc and mounted them into a palm handle that I turned on my lathe. After inserting the gouge into the handle I slip a piece of heat shrink electrical tubing over the gouge shank covering the shank most of the way towards the cutting end, then shrink for a tight fit. This creates a cushion  so my fingers have a comfortable grip near the tip of the cutting end. Otherwise the metal edges of the shank dig into my fingers and that hurts after a while. The heat shrink does no harm to the tools and is easy to remove if you ever wanted to do so. Just slice along the length of the tube and peel it off to remove it, there is no adhesive residue to deal with.

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  • 4 months later...

Has anyone tried the flexcut palm carving tools?  I got a set inexpensively from a local auction, and some life size sorbys... fun auction, except husband had hernia surgery and I had to do all the heavy lifting for the stuff he purchased.

 

Sorry I can't post a link... you will have to look them up... CTRL +P doesn't work here for me.

 

I haven't used them yet...

 

Tamra

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  • 3 months later...

My all time favorite tools are Two Cherries/Kirschen micro carving chisels and Pfeil/Swiss made (though I can't call them micro, the smallest V-tool is 1mm. I also bought a carving set from David Hurley last year, 5 chisels - pretty good.

And last week I got this huge set from Russian ship modeler

 

22711373695_4603bf65b1_c.jpgMicro Carving tools by Victoria, on Flickr

 

22697812882_c72d687114_z.jpgMicro Carving tools by Victoria, on Flickr

 

16 chisels, straight chisels - from 0,5 mm to 3mm and medium gouges 0,5mm to 3mm, and one v-tool 1mm.  Just to compare overall size, upper one is v-tool from this set and lower is Pfeil v-tool, both 1mm:

 

22697812412_04fee62943_z.jpgMicro Carving tools by Victoria, on Flickr

 

And 0,5 gouge next to 3mm gouge, both from the set.

 

22722553261_d75ccdca05_z.jpgMicro Carving tools by Victoria, on Flickr

 

As for the quality - I'm very happy I ordered it, can be easily compared with Two Cherries (though I hear they not what they used to be, sadly).

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I've noticed with my wax carving tool set that I just acquired that I am using only 1 tool very consistently. 

 

Victoria, I am trying my best to not have tool envy.  Your set looks beautiful in its case...

 

I hope everyone who is reading and is experienced in hand wood carving will share the brand of their favorite wood carving tool and the shape.  I have a carving tool from Elizabeth's QA Leg seminar that I have become pretty fond of... and I think she made it.  I'm still trying to determine if I like turned knob handles or straight handles; guess I won't know until after lots of hours (ie 100) of hand carving experience.

 

I already know that I'm developing a set of 'go to' tools for my lathe cutting experiments, and once I switch to the smaller taig or unimat lathe, I am expecting that I will develop new favorites based upon the materials that I am turning.

 

hmmm.... turning tools and carving tools are of course different.  I suspect turning tools are much longer then hand carving tools to get your hands away from the spinning lathe... but other then length and thickness of the tool I wonder if they can be used for both.  I certainly intend to use my gravers for turning; in addition to their intended use as a hand tool.

 

Tamra

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Hi, Tamara. In response, for turning wood on a mini lathe, I use a miniature set of six Ashley Iles (made in England) high speed steel (HSS) turning chisels and for hand carving, I like Pfeil (Swiss made) palm handled carving tools. For larger projects, I use some of the intermediate sizes too. gail

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That is a wonderful set! Did the ship modeler make them or were they factory produced?

I have made a few cases for sets of tools I have and then they seem to live in a drawer somewhere until I remember I have them. Most of my favorite tools just " live" on my workbench.

Thanks for showing us these.

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  • 1 month later...

I am busy carving chair backs on mopane which is quite a difficult wood to carve, for the really tiny details I find my knife blade way too big to be able to see what I am doing and was getting frustrated...I had the brain wave to try a 0.3mm ball burr in a pin vise and it turned out to be one of the best ideas I ever had, I used it on the outside edge of the scroll on the right side of the chair back, the left side still needs more work. For the inside curve I used the 0.5mm ball bur that you can also see in the photo, followed by a 0.8mm ball bur.

20151210_133356-1_zps4tasbeyx.jpg

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Freehand Tamra, I don't think pin routing is a technique suitable for carving and I am also not really comfortable using a moto tool for this, I feel much more in control just using my hands...especially after all the fret work and other work that needs to be done before you can start the carving...

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Sorry, Elga, I missed "pin vise"... that should have been a clue!  They are going to be beautiful chairs.

 

Tamra

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  • 1 month later...

I wonder...can anyone identify this set of carving tools, a US friend that I visited on the way home from Castine in 2013 gave them to me, I made the dowel stick handles for them. The two at the top just beneath the knife is my favorites for scraping away wood and smoothing the surface, they work great on mopane wood. My friend is a dollmaker and I think somebody gave it to her, if anyone knows where these come from and where one can buy them that would be great, to be honest I am not even sure that they are carving tools, for all I know they may have been made for something else.

20160125_131733-1_zps5uty1q4w.jpg

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Hi Elga, they look like gravers to me.  From the Xacto knife down, I purchased similar gravers 1 & 3 when I placed my order.  You can purchase graver blanks and make your own cool profiles with a wet bench grinder.  One of my mentors in our Unimat forum indicated he would not let his students use the lathe until they could pass the sharpening test.  Mert is one wise teacher!  I wish he wasn't so far from me, as I feel like I'd be hanging out with him in his workshop on the weekends.

 

Gravers are available in the US from Gesswein, Rio Grande, GRS Tools etc...

 

Tamra

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Has anyone tried the flexcut palm carving tools?  I got a set inexpensively from a local auction, and some life size sorbys... fun auction, except husband had hernia surgery and I had to do all the heavy lifting for the stuff he purchased.

 

Sorry I can't post a link... you will have to look them up... CTRL +P doesn't work here for me.

 

I haven't used them yet...

 

Tamra

I have purchased a couple of flex cut tools and did not like them. In fact the metal shank on one of them broke as I was using it.   Never again will I buy one. But if you already have them then use them. But they are not  small enough for doing detail carvings in miniatures.

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Elga those are scrapers from some kind of very hard carbon something and someone named Gary is all I remember. They are very hard and brittle, will break if dropped and can only be reshaped on a diamond cutting wheel. I will look through my files and see if I can come up with more but yeah my memory is actually the anti-memory haha---

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Bill Hudson had a while back posted on another forum he belongs to a link to a magazine article on how to make small sized carving tools. The link he used is no longer valid for some reason but I did find a .pdf for the whole magazine. The article begins on page 70 of the .pdf file. It is a very good article. Love how the author is showing the use of his homemade swage block to help accurately forge the shape of a miniature fishtail gouge. This is a shape I would really like to have in a very small size for my miniature sized gouges carving tool set. The author also presents a rather unusual method that I have never seen before of slow cool down for annealing as well as many other tips on shaping the gouges.  Anyway here is the link to the down load for the magazine, American Woodworker issue #72 from April of 1999.  Enjoy, it's a very nice introduction to methods of hand forging your own small carving gouges.

 

https://ia801703.us.archive.org/13/items/american-woodworker-072/american-woodworker-072.pdf

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