s I began my journey into hand carving wood bowls, I made the decision to using only traditional hand tools. Many sites had videos using chain saws, power carvers and such to hollow out the bowls and band saws to “hew” away the outside…all making the process easier. The last thing I wanted was a loud piece of equipment, all in an effort to quicken the process. In and effort to provide full disclosure, I do use a chain saw to selectively cut various trees from my woodlot.
There are 4 main tools I would recommend you start with in order to carve a bowl using traditional tools…an adze, carving ax, draw knife and bent gouge.
Drew Langsner’s, Country Workshop, was my first exposure and source for Swedish toolmaker, Hans Karlsson . His tools are praised at almost every site on carving so I’m not going to get into it here except to say that they hold an edge extremely well and are very comfortable to hold, especially for hours on end. His tools are always in short supply, worldwide and took me 6 months to acquire these four. Another source for his and other fine tools as well as a very helpful site is Woodsmith. Located in the UK, I’ve been very happy with their service and selection.
I’m not going to go into each individual tool here and now. I’ll either enter details at a later date or post them in my Blog.
I soon added the following tools to help me to smooth and shape my bowls.
The various bent gouges are necessary to smooth the inside of the bowl as well as making it possible to add various fluting, ribbing or other texturing. I picked up the 2/25, almost flat gouge, thinking it would help with flattening certain areas, but find I don’t use it very often. The dogleg gouge makes working the inside bottom on deeper valleys possible. I currently use two spokeshaves, a radius and flat sole. Although there are many outlets for quality carving tools, I seemed to gravitate to Woodcraft for price, selection of quality of manufacturers and service. Except for the dogleg gouge, the other tools are a Swiss toolmaker, Pfeil. A little less expensive than Hans Karlssen, I still find them a very high quality tool, comfortable and holds an edge well.
Again, I’ll go into more detail on the individual tools either later on here or on my Blog.
It wasn’t long before I began to add engraving, chip carving and other “special effects” to my bowls. Here is what I’ve accumulated so far. Word of caution…there is no end to what’s out there! Unless you have an never ending pocketbook you might want to practice some restraint. Again, I’ll get into more detail later, either here or on my Blog.
Except for the Morakniv Sloyd knife, made in Mora, Sweden, all the other gouges are by Pfeil.
Once you’ve invested in these tools, maintaining them will be a necessity that will hopefully become second nature to you. Here are some of what I use to keep a sharp edge on the various blades.
I’m sure to get into sharpening and what’s working for me, in a later blog.
Some other sites that I find useful in locating carving tools is:
Tools For Woodworking Be sure to check out the holdfasts by Grammacy Tools. VERY useful!
Highland Woodworking Lots of info, products and an on-line magazine.