BASIC TOOLS FOR WORKING WOOD
A basic set of wood-carving tools would contain a mallet and several gouges and chisels. For carving a design in a block that would create large areas of waste that project off the surface, a saw will speed the initial stages of roughing-out enormously. For instance in the head described above, if the chin was jutting out away from the neck the waste at the front of the neck and below the chin could be sawn off much faster than it could be chiseled away with the gouge. Just make sure to leave a margin of waste so the surface profile can be chiseled to the correct contour.
THE BOW SAW,TURNING SAW, and COPING SAW are frame saws where the relatively narrow blade is held in tension between the two ends of the rigid frame. The bow saw is commonly used as a type of pruning saw for the yard, and it holds the blade in a steady orientation parallel to the frame. The turning saw allows the blade to be turned at various angles in relation to the frame, allowing for cutting at right angles. The coping saw is small (6” long blade) but it too allows for right angle work.
THE MALLET is used to strike the handle of the medium and larger sizes of gouge or chisel. The mallet is especially useful when working harder varieties of wood, or when working with fairly wide tools and removing large amounts of waste quickly. Mallets are available in a wide range of sizes and should be used depending on the exact nature of the work at hand.
THE CARVING GOUGE is made in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. The gouge is a tempered steel tool handled in wood. The tool is usually hollow on the upper side and rounded correspondingly on the bottom. It is generally sharpened with the beveled cutting edge at 90º to the main axis. Gouges may be sharpened either with the bevel ground to the outside (out-cannel) or with the bevel ground to the inside (in-cannel). The term carving gouge usually refers to out-cannel tools that allow work to be done in concave areas as well as in convex portions of the carving. Out-cannel grinding is suited to working in a variety of positions and angles. In-cannel gouges are used primarily by furniture-makers for working carved intersections into moldings and similar areas where there are straight or perpendicular lines.
The larger gouges would be used in conjunction with a mallet to rough out the carving by removing waste material as rapidly as possible.
THE CHISEL is a flat bladed cutting tool that is primarily used by furniture makers, but it has numerous uses for the woodcarver as well. It is well-suited to work at the intersections of sharply defined forms within the carving, and for removing waste material by chopping to a set depth in the background areas of relief work.
THE CARVING KNIFE is usually sharpened along one side of the blade, and beveled on only one side. The blade is usually a small one, with a larger handle that fits the hand so the leverage ratio is very favorable when held in much the same way one would hold a paring knife while peeling an apple. The carving knife comes in a variety of blade shapes (even right and left-handed versions of the same shape), most of which are called chip-carving knives. Each different blade allows working in a special way depending upon the nature of the are being worked upon.
RASPS AND FILES are made of high-carbon tool steel and they have teeth which are designed to cut when pushed in one direction (away from the handled end). Rasps have a series of individual pointed teeth which are made for rapid stock removal. File teeth are a regular series of long cutting edges which give a much smoother cut than the rasp. Rasps and files are made in a variety of shapes for a variety of contours. A half-round rasp is a basic shape, although all of the various shapes will be of use to the carver. The odd curves and angles of riffler rasps and riffler files are especially useful while working hard-to-reach areas of the carving. The types shaped like short knife blades and the types shaped like small spoons will be the ones most often used. The rasp literally tears the surface of the wood away, as does the file if used against the grain. A file used with the grain usually does not tear the wood but shears it off cleanly.
SCRAPERS are flat pieces of high-carbon tool steel that have their thin, perpendicular edges burnished to a very slight raised burr that is used to scrape small shavings off the surface of the wood. Scrapers will give a smoother surface than sandpaper much more quickly if used with the grain. Gooseneck scrapers are curved with one end bigger than the other, and they are usually used for concave surface areas. Flat scrapers are rectangular in shape, and they are primarily used for flat or convex surfaces. To properly use a scraper you need either a burnisher or a straight gouge with a polished lower side. The burnisher of lower curved surface of the gouge is used to create the tiny burr that is the key to making the scraper work. A fair substitute for the scraper is a freshly broken piece of window glass. Do not use a scraper following any sanding operation — any stray particle of sanding grit will ruin the edge on the scraper very quickly.
SANDPAPER is used to smooth surfaces after the contours are uniformly shaped with the rasps & files. Each grit of sandpaper is used to remove the scratches left by the previous grit. A range of grits should be used to remove all the visible scratches. For most types of wood surfaces this is about four different stages. Proper sanding needs to be done by paying attention to the direction of the grain, and use sanding strokes that follow its direction to prevent very obvious cross-grain scratches.
The fastest cutting sandpaper for wood is the type made out of orange-colored garnet abrasive. When the individual grains of garnet start to break down they fracture, leaving sharp edges that continue to abrade the surface of the wood. A harder abrasive that is suitable to sand plastic and metal as well as wood is the tan or brown colored aluminum oxide. Aluminum oxide is tougher and stays sharp longer, but when it starts to get dull the sharp edges just get blunted and cut slower and slower. The higher expense coupled with the black color of emery grit and silicon carbide grits make them unsuitable for most woodworking applications using light woods where stray loose particles might be trapped in open-pored woodgrain and leaving obvious ‘speckles’ under the finish. The very pale tan colored flint sandpaper is the least expensive sandpaper you can buy. It is also the worst value because it dulls so rapidly.
