Carving Gouges 101

Excerpts from The Messageboards

RJ wrote: Well, I got my new set of gouges. Am totally green to wood carving except for what I have done to some tree branches as a kid.

To me, these palm gouges look like an accident waiting to happen. Super razor sharp and yet doesn't quite carve through hardwoods like butter. I tried putting them in my hands (palm) and pushing outward to carve out some kinda test design on hunk of wood. The amount of force applied and the razor sharpness of the blades looks like accident waiting to happen to me…The wide blades I find can chip away okay, but the smaller gouges are hard to get started to cut.

What I am wondering is if maybe the term palm is misleading and maybe I should have the wood stationary like in a vise and use some kind of hammer on the gouges to help cut the hardwood (oak in this case). On a more recent post in this message board of wood carving I see that gouges were used to hollow out the bowl area of the spoons/ladles. I am wondering how the gouges work to do this. Because it seems that when I use the gouges they have a tendency to dig down and stick. It would be nice if they did gouge out a bit and go up. But they seem to stick. I can pry up and crack out but is this proper way?

William Duffield, on the Cohansey: First, you hold the tool in the palm of your hand, not the work. You are right, it is an accident waiting to happen. Hold the work in some sort of contrivance. Push with one and guide the blade with the other. If you can't do that with your palm tools, you may begin to understand why I won't use them.

The shape of the bevels, as the tools come from the factories, is all wrong. You are right, they just dive in, and can't remove any nice, controlled curls of wood.

Lee Grindinger offers good advice in several postings on this forum. Here is an example:

Cutting Actions
(from a post on 29 July 2005)
The cutting action of a knife is to leverage the chip away. The chip has to be small enough to do this or you have to back out and take a smaller cut. The cutting actions of a carving tool include this action and another very important one, that is a scooping cut. I'll grab a half gallon of your favorite ice cream to illustrate this. You can't scoop ice cream with a knife. In fact, the only way to steer a cut through ice cream with a knife is to take a small enough sliver that you can leverage the knife out, or soften the ice cream enough to lose resistance (basswood). An ice cream scoop works because it has an arc on the outside of the scoop that allows you to steer the cut in the arc of the scoop. The limitation of the scoop is that you have to cut the same arc as the scoop. To make it so you can control the arc you need to put a microbevel on the outside of the scoop and one on the inside to get the ice cream out of the way as you cut. With the microbevels in place you can control the arc of the cut within the limitations of the tool. This is not a perfect parallel but it should help. All chisels and knives and carving tools can cut with the action of a knife, it's a great way to cut. But most carvers demand more from their tools because leveraging small chips away is very often not the quickest or best way to carve. A carver needs the scooping action. Now it's true that you don't need a microbevel on the unground face of a tool to cut from the ground face. But you will not be able to use that unground face to model because the tool would only cut when used in the plane of that unground face, just like a bench chisel. A microbevel solves this problem, it enables you to use that face without dragging your knuckles over the work. As with ice cream, if it's soft enough all sorts of things are possible. Wood is the same way. Basswood and cherry carve very differently. I personally dislike basswood, it's too soft. …Fine furniture woods spoil you.
Lee Grindinger

Cutting Actions

(from a post on 29 July 2005)

The cutting action of a knife is to leverage the chip away. The chip has to be small enough to do this or you have to back out and take a smaller cut. The cutting actions of a carving tool include this action and another very important one, that is a scooping cut.

I'll grab a half gallon of your favorite ice cream to illustrate this. You can't scoop ice cream with a knife. In fact, the only way to steer a cut through ice cream with a knife is to take a small enough sliver that you can leverage the knife out, or soften the ice cream enough to lose resistance (basswood).

An ice cream scoop works because it has an arc on the outside of the scoop that allows you to steer the cut in the arc of the scoop. The limitation of the scoop is that you have to cut the same arc as the scoop. To make it so you can control the arc you need to put a microbevel on the outside of the scoop and one on the inside to get the ice cream out of the way as you cut. With the microbevels in place you can control the arc of the cut within the limitations of the tool. This is not a perfect parallel but it should help.

All chisels and knives and carving tools can cut with the action of a knife, it's a great way to cut. But most carvers demand more from their tools because leveraging small chips away is very often not the quickest or best way to carve. A carver needs the scooping action. Now it's true that you don't need a microbevel on the unground face of a tool to cut from the ground face. But you will not be able to use that unground face to model because the tool would only cut when used in the plane of that unground face, just like a bench chisel. A microbevel solves this problem, it enables you to use that face without dragging your knuckles over the work.

As with ice cream, if it's soft enough all sorts of things are possible. Wood is the same way. Basswood and cherry carve very differently. I personally dislike basswood, it's too soft. …Fine furniture woods spoil you.

Lee Grindinger

You would do well to use the Search function and read a whole bunch of the advice he has posted. It would be a great start on a real Carving 101 course.

Your tools may not be as sharp as you imagine them. After sharpening on your finest stone, stropping or buffing is probably also needed to make them usable and controllable for any work except with a mallet.

When carving spoons, after I've done everything I have suggested above. there is still another concept that is needed. You can't take it all out with a few deep cuts. Start small, in the middle, and bring the handle down, so the blade comes right back up, taking a small scoop, then continue working down through the wood, in ever widening arcs. Also, for shaping, preferentially work across the grain, like you would with a scrub plane. It's a lot easier.

John Lucas: RJ, Sounds like you have two of the problems I had when I was learning. The tools probably aren't as sharp as you think. They should be razor sharp if not sharper. The other thing is you are probably taking too big a cut. You need to start out with very small cuts. William's description of the scooping action is excellent. Also start on soft woods with little grain like basswood.