How do you organize you carving chisel rolls
Hi,
I have been carving for about a quarter and have been purchasing carving tools as needed for specific projects. A few weeks ago, Woodcraft had a 15% off sale so I bought some additional Pfeil carving tools for anticipated projects. As such, my 18 tool roll is now full and I am on my second roll. Assuming you use rolls (I am taking a class rather than working in my workshop at home), have you found a certain way to organize them handy? Many thanks for your input.
Sincerely,
Joe
Update 28Jun2024
What I needed up doing was organizing them by sweep. At least for now, they all fit in a 24 (or is it 36 I can’t recall; whatever is largest size Woodcraft has). It seems to work fine. When I get to my carving class, I take out the ones I need and put the roll aside. Seems to working fine for me.
Replies
It's a problem. Add numerous knives, rifflers, rasps and so forth and .......
At present I try to organise them all by basic type. Eight knives in one roll; five spoon knives in another; eight small gouges in another; round rasps and files in another; scrapers in another; etc..
Some tools are too big and go loose with a good leather cover on their edges - axes, large bowl gouges, adzes and the like.
All of them go into two large cases with carry handles: empty tool boxes from Bosch and Dewalt, for carting off outside to whittle and pare when the weather is nice.
Soon I will be once more making a shaving horse, bowl bench and a pole lathe. No room in the shed for them so they'll have to be made for outside. Oak or Iroko then. Expensive. :-(
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I notice a Beavercraft tool caddy, made of thin plywood into a box with ten holes in which can stand the tools you're using on a particular project. It seems a good addition to organise the sub-set of tools into a handy spot to avoid a bench tangle with the inevitable fall of an edge to the floor or one's foot.
https://beavercrafttools.com/products/th10-tools-holder-beavercraft?_pos=3&_sid=8202ae755&_ss=r
For us cabinetmakers, it wouldn't be difficult to knock up such a thing.
Lataxe
That does look to be a handy thing that would be easy to make out of scrap. Thanks.
If you make that two sided into a wooden tool box, that could be quite handy and portable.
I started sewing my own tool rolls. I love learning a new skill. I can make rolls in the width and length I need. I used a Woodcraft roll as a pattern to start with.
I use a different fabric for every roll. Canvas or heavy cotton duck work best. Most commonly used carving tools go in one roll. Back bends and odd vee tools in another. Bowl and spoon carving in another. And so on. Because if the different fabric, I know at a glance what tools are in what roll.
And now I know how to sew.
Being a lazy ole scroot, I've persuaded the ladywife to sew me the tool rolls, edge-covers, knife sheaths and the like. As you say, making each tool roll with a different material or look makes it easy to select the right one from the numerous rolls of this & that within the tool caddy/box.
I did think of making a posh tool box with a handle on it for all this stuff .... but this would be a distraction from my current obsession with the spoons, kuksas and bowls!
Thanks both for the feedback. Not opposed to learning to sew and this is likely as simple project.
Mine don't leave the shop so I just keep my main squeezes laid out in some thin drawers with cloth and I don't open and close the drawers quickly. You will get to know the ones that will be kept close at hand.
How do I organize my carving gouges and V chisels on the bench while carving. I lay the ones that I will be using out close to my carving with the blade so I can identify them while retrieve and return them quickly.
Thanks
Like howlandwood, mine don't usually leave the shop. My now retired partner and I did a fair amount of ornamental church carving in the late 1980s and 1990s. We were making money with carving, so we invested in gouges, filling in the holes in our collection that I had accumulated at flea markets, garage sales, etc. We ended up with almost 100 gouges to organize. I made shallow trays to fit some large drawers in my (originally vocational school) workbench, and put a notched strip of wood down the center. Each gouge shank fits in a notch, with the handles alternating to save space. There is a label before each notch, with sweep # followed by width (e.g., 4-9 for a #4 gouge that's 9mm wide.) I also stamped the same pair of numbers on the handle of the gouge, using number punches, for easy, quick identification. When I have more than a couple out on the bench, I use a shorter notched strip to keep them from banging around or into each other.
I've attached pictures of the trays, and one of a lectern we made, a 3/4 size reproduction of an antique English pulpit that had been given to a church in Nashville, TN. We also made a matching communion table.
Thanks for sharing. If mine didn't leave the shop, I would likely use this type of system.
I have three roles of carving tools and another role for the files and rasps. I find all the carving tools are pulled out at the start of the project. When the day is done the ones I use go into one role and the others are mixed up in the other two until another project starts. Not the best way.
The rasps and files would be a separate roll for me for sure. As of now, I don’t have that many and I typically don’t bring them to class.
Mine don't leave my shop anymore either. I did take a few carving classes and it was a pain to transport the carving tools. I personally don't care for tool rolls, I tried them but they were cumbersome and didn't really protect the tools as well as I expected (yes, the cutting edges are outside of the pockets, and they do touch each other when you roll up the tool roll.
At home I do two things that might be useful to someone else.
First, I color code each tool, regardless of shape, by it's sweep number - white for #1, red for #2, etc. I use cheap Testor's enamel (tiny bottles) and paint the shank of the tool with about 1" of paint. I did this several years ago, and since you don't have any reason to touch the paint on the shank, it's not rubbed off at all.
Secondly, I have a three inexpensive tool storage cabinets with primarily shallow drawers that are stacked on top of each other. These are readily available at home improvement stores (mine are Performax brand from Menards), but don't buy the cheapest ones, get ones with ball bearing drawer slides. I have perhaps 125 full size tools and many other unique carving tools stored in these. Each shallow drawer has shop-made wooden compartments to protect the tools from each other. Drawers that are deep enough have a bottom layer and a lift-out top tray. It's important to buy cabinets with interior dimensions that will allow you to make efficient use of the space, so make sure to plan for the length of your longest tools.
I also labeled the drawer handles with what is inside - sweeps of gouges, special profiles (spoons, back bent, etc.).
Someone may say that this was overkill, but it only took me about a weekend to plan all of this and make the specialized protective dividers and trays that fit perfectly inside each drawer, and over my lifetime I will spend many, many times as long enjoying the ease and speed with which I can find the tool I want.
My roll covers the cutting sides with a flap and when rolled up they do not touch each other at all.
The protective flap sounds like a good improvement over the simple ones I had.
I got mine from Blue Spruce.
Sounds like a great set up. I haven’t drawn outlines for where my tools go on pegboard but I’m close to that level of organization so I completely understand.
Thanks. Of course, I don't put every carving tool away in it's compartment each time I am switching tools, I have a small tray that I use to keep the tools currently being used at hand. However, a couple of times each carving session, I put away tools I'm no longer using in order to reduce benchtop clutter, and at the end of each session, I put them all away.
I also don't have any pegboard with tool outlines, but I'm well organized and could pretty much tell someone exactly which drawer or cabinet has which tool.
I have also read that tool rolls can promote rusting, since the fabric can hold moisture in a damp environment and restricts airflow, but I don't have any personal experience on that.
I put the small desiccant packs that seem to come with everything shipped to me in the drawers to help reduce rusting tendency.
I've amassed about 50 gouges and store them on magnetic strips inside two wall hanging cabinets, where I can see them all at a glance. After visiting a master carver who stores his in a rolling cabinet w/ drawers, I'm thinking of that for more space as my collection grows. But more open floor space and quick access are hard to beat, unless I want to clear out wall space and slow myself down when looking for a certain sweep, which could be good too...
I grew up with rolling cabinets as my dad worked on his cars. Not at all opposed to that for home use if my collection grows. Trying hard to not go crazy on them and have passed on many used deals out there. Basically, when I start a new project that has instructions, I see what gouges they recommend. If I have something close (e.g. recommends a No 7 12 and I have a No 7 10) I don't buy a new one; if I don't have anything close, I buy a new gouge. Feel good about this approach (unlike my over abundance of chisels and hand planes)
One thing I did early on was to print out a copy of a pictorial of the Sheffield gouge sizes at 100% and as I acquired gouges, I marked them on the copy. I also color-coded whether they were a straight gouge, long bent, spoon, back bent, etc. It quickly showed me where I had significant gaps in tool sizes/styles. Like you said, you don't have to have every possible size of every style. However, since a missing tool requires me to stop carving while I search for, wait for delivery of, and re-commission a tool, I eventually bit the bullet, filled in the significant gaps and got them all ready for carving. I don't think I have any that I haven't needed to use, from my miniature Dockyards to my 2" wide sculptor gouges, but it depends on what type of carving you want to do. I've done everything from detailed reliefs to a large totem pole.
This sounds like an excellent idea. Thank you. Will print out and mark up like you did for sure.
The buy-only-when-needed approach is a good one, although it takes a will of iron which sometimes eludes me. :-)
As an amateur who enjoys playing about with a wide variety of makings, I also find I can buy a tool when needed for a project but then don't have another project needing that tool for years! In fact, some projects have been started out of embarrassment at hosting such a tool in the shed and being unable to bring myself to sell it.
On the other hand, such tools if bought from up-market, can often become, thereby, something of a very inexpensive rental. I have a tool for five years and use it on only three projects then sell it .... but because it's high quality its kept up with or exceeded the rate of inflation in its cash value. We've all seen it with Lie-Nielsen, for example - but it happens with many good WW tools.
Such tools can have many happy buyers and sellers over a lifetime. Long ago I nearly got into carving whilst making Cotswold style A&C furniture pieces needing the edges carved with various traditional mouldings of the style, so bought a set of Pfeil carving tools second hand (about 20 of them) from Mike Wenzloff, late of this parish. I wish, now, that I'd kept them.
The carving yen fell away as I moved on from Cotswold A&C so I sold them all to another happy buyer for what I'd paid Mike plus a bit. I believe Mike himself had bought them 2nd (or perhaps 3rd or 4th) hand from someone else.
I still have me Wenzloff saws, mind. I'm keeping them. :-)