Wood carving tools overview | Hacker News Reader

Wood carving tools overview

davidffisher.com

60 pointswiherek19 comments

Kind of a fun thing to see on HN. If you enjoy this, you might also like frank howarth's videos on youtube. He puts in a ton of time to do stop motion animations of his projects coming to life.

https://www.youtube.com/user/urbanTrash/videos

It always delights me when an email shows up saying that frank howereth uploaded a new video to YouTube... I know what the next 15 minutes are going to be used for. Can't recommend him more.

And the other 50% of woodworkers worth watching https://www.youtube.com/user/Matthiaswandel

If you are in to this sort of thing, my wife (who carves a pretty spoon herself) maintains a list of links to carvers, tool-makers, and the like at http://jarofwood.com/spoon-links/.

If you have (lots) of extra money to spend, then there's always Lee Valley Tools

http://www.leevalley.com/en/home/OnlineCatalog.aspx?id=0a61b...

(They do ship internationally and to the U.S.)

Lee Valley / Veritas and Lie Nielsen have helped usher in a renaissance of well-made tools. Their planes and saws are arguably better than any produced during the 'golden age' before WWII. There are cheaper options from abroad available (WoodRiver, Quangsheng, etc) but I like spending the extra money knowing its supporting good, customer-focused companies who care about the craft.

(But I also like finding/restoring old Stanley planes when possible, which is cheap and ethically satisfying).

Wow, thanks for sharing! I have no idea how I've missed this for so many years. Lie-Nielsen (https://www.lie-nielsen.com) also makes beautiful (and expensive) hand tools, for anyone interested.

More fun with bowl carving with Roy Underhill. http://video.pbs.org/video/2365554475/

Unexpected, but glad to see this as I also have some logs drying that I intend to carve into bowls. Thanks for the tips!

Also you can make your own tools from scrap tool steel. I made a hand adze from a broken horse hoof rasp when I was a kid. Encourage your kids to hack stuff and make their own tools.

How much hot work was involved there? I sorta skimmed the bits about particular products because I'd probably aim to make my own tools for this sort of thing.

Well true, I did have access to an old coal furnace and I hammered out the basic shape. I bent the tang to follow the shape of the handle, flattened out the burrs and shaped the blade. Not sure if it was essential to do this all hot, but on the other hand I didn't have a bench grinder or much else, so I was going to have to get the final shape by hand.

Yeah, without a grinder, you'd pretty much have to do it hot. I've run across some knife makers who work entirely by stock removal, and I could imagine someone just grinding an edge into the end of a salvaged rasp and calling that it.

You "would probably aim to make" your own tools for this sort of thing? And you are also asking how much "hot work" is needed to refashion a farrier's rasp into an adze? Something does not add up.

I'm just going from prior probability. I don't often encounter another blacksmith here. There is also a difference between asking how much is the minimum amount needed and how much was actually used.

I really appreciate the work of Peter Follansbee, who makes reproductions of 17th-century oak furniture, spoons and bowls with hand woodworking tools https://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/

This is really cool! Another fun way is to use a lathe (I guess that would be called "turning" a bowl rather than "carving" a bowl). Using a lathe would be much faster and wood lathes are relatively inexpensive.

Undeniably true, that's how wooden bowls are typically made now.

But I cannot help but feel like using a lathe misses the point of hand carving a wooden bowl. In the same way most whittling could technically be accomplished much faster using a dremel.

That's so retro. I'd use a ShopBot CNC router, with a 1/2" carbide end mill for the roughing, then a 1/8" ball cutter for finishing. Then sand and polish.

that's awesome, I was playing with trying to carve a bowl, thought I might be using the wrong tools, found that, looked good, great references thanks guys

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