while starting to do relief carving i am becoming frustrated getting into detailed and otherwise tight spots. The size of the carving i am after would be like the traditional designs one might find on – say – the upper leg next to the rail on a chair or table.
My question is – do I need smaller tools, or is that just a begginners complaint aand I should do fine with what i have?
I have only 5 carving chisels and they are, 5/20 7/20 9/13 11/9 16/4
The outline and background removal and large shapes, ext, I have no problems with.
thank you.
Replies
Well, the professional carvers who do such work generally have at least twenty and up to several hundred carving tools. I can't tell from your list exactly what you have but it sounds to me like you are ready for some fine detail carving tools. Buy one or two and work with them and you will be better able to judge what you need from there. If you belong to a carving club you can often try some of your fellow members tools and you can often get tools from part-time dealers that belong to the clubs. I have also bought very nice knives from local carvers who make them. Gouges and parting tools are generally not available form local makers but often are sold by local dealers.
I'm not an expert carver, but I have taken a few courses from some who are. In each case they had a list of about a dozen gouges called out for the particular projects they were teaching. In many cases the design of a carving is based around particular tools, with the gouge sweeps being used to define curves. Another carver might make the same basic object, with slightly different shapes or sizes because they laid out the design with different tools in mind.
It is interesting that the lists from each of the three instructors from whom I took courses had very little overlap, of a dozen tools, about 9-10 were unique to the particular instructor. If one were working their own designs, probably very similar objects could be made with any one of the "sets" from a particular instructor, perhaps supplemented with 1 or 2 additional tools.
A #2 gouge is a very useful tool for all sorts of applications from rounding over leaves to grounding and trimming the sides of raised relief carvings. I would recommend getting a couple of them if you can...the 2 mm is a good choice for getting into the small openings and cleaning out the fuzz, and maybe a 12mm. A #3 or #5 fishtail will help a lot too.
Jim
Adam,
A shallow sweep fishtail gouge, a skew chisel, and a vee chisel (parting tool), along with small veiner, are very helpful in shaping details in tight areas.
Ray
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