#1 & #2 carving chisel bevel angles?

[Eshmiel]

With the intent to move from spoon & bowl carving to relief carving, I'm about to follow the Chris Pye video series recently released for free to YouTube. This needs a few basic carving chisels, including #1 and #2 flat chisels (straight and skew). I bought a couple of Henry Taylors, on sale at Toolnut. These seem well made and are reputedly of good steel but I'm puzzled by the bevels .... .

As carving chisels, they have a bevel each side rather then a flat back and one bevel, as with a bench chisel. The two bevels on the Henries are both 22.3 degrees from the long axis of the chisel, i.e. a total bevel of 45 degrees. This seems too big/steep, especially for carving. But what do I know (yet) about it, being a novice carver.

So, the question:

Should I reform these bevels to make something more like a 15 degree bevel each side (total 30 degrees) to allow easier penetration of the edge into the wood but to also have a low angle of 15 degrees at which to "operate" the chisel? Carving gouges all seem to have a 15 - 25 degree outer bevel with either no inside bevel or a very low angle inner bevel if the outer bevel is also low (to provide a more resilient cutting edge). Shouldn't the same principle apply to a double bevelled straight or skew chisel?

Any advice from practicing carvers will be gratefully received.

 

[johnnyb]

Yes 25/30 degrees is correct.(wrong word really as these angles can be highly variable) I'm guessing whomever made it didn't bother to finish grind it, only approximating the sharp end angle. My very best chisels are super delicate with a thin section. Henry Taylor are a bit chunkier.

 

[Eshmiel]

Yes 25/30 degrees is correct.(wrong word really as these angles can be highly variable) I'm guessing whomever made it didn't bother to finish grind it, only approximating the sharp end angle. My very best chisels are super delicate with a thin section. Henry Taylor are a bit chunkier.

Thanks for that reassurance. I'll regrind to 2 X 15 degrees on those new Henries.

 

[pgrbff]

With the intent to move from spoon & bowl carving to relief carving, I'm about to follow the Chris Pye video series recently released for free to YouTube. This needs a few basic carving chisels, including #1 and #2 flat chisels (straight and skew). I bought a couple of Henry Taylors, on sale at Toolnut. These seem well made and are reputedly of good steel but I'm puzzled by the bevels .... .

As carving chisels, they have a bevel each side rather then a flat back and one bevel, as with a bench chisel. The two bevels on the Henries are both 22.3 degrees from the long axis of the chisel, i.e. a total bevel of 45 degrees. This seems too big/steep, especially for carving. But what do I know (yet) about it, being a novice carver.

So, the question:

Should I reform these bevels to make something more like a 15 degree bevel each side (total 30 degrees) to allow easier penetration of the edge into the wood but to also have a low angle of 15 degrees at which to "operate" the chisel? Carving gouges all seem to have a 15 - 25 degree outer bevel with either no inside bevel or a very low angle inner bevel if the outer bevel is also low (to provide a more resilient cutting edge). Shouldn't the same principle apply to a double bevelled straight or skew chisel?

Any advice from practicing carvers will be gratefully received.

Do you mind telling me where to look for the videos? Thanks

 

[Eshmiel]

Chris Pye YouTube channel "Woodcarving Workshop":

https://www.youtube.com/@woodcarvingworkshop/playlists

Duckduckgo is my normal browser but the Woodcarving Workshop vids have to be watched on YouTube - I presume because of some sort of deal to allow the inclusion of adverts, which duckduckgo excludes. The adverts all seem to be those that allow you to skip them after they've played a few seconds and there are very few to none per vid, so not very annoying.

 

[pgrbff]

Chris Pye YouTube channel "Woodcarving Workshop":

https://www.youtube.com/@woodcarvingworkshop/playlists

Duckduckgo is my normal browser but the Woodcarving Workshop vids have to be watched on YouTube - I presume because of some sort of deal to allow the inclusion of adverts, which duckduckgo excludes. The adverts all seem to be those that allow you to skip them after they've played a few seconds and there are very few to none per vid, so not very annoying.

thanks

 

[Eshmiel]

thanks

PS If you look in the "more" section listed below the videos in YouTube you'll find pointers to various PDFs that contain notes to go with the videos. These too are very useful, summarising various things including a list of the tools recommended to complete a particular carving project.

 

[mwinfrance]

@Eshmiel
re downloading video from youtube, twitter or virtually any other website.If you are using windows ( or linux as I do ) and it may work on mac.Try ytDownloader ( duckduckgo search will bring both information about what it is and what it can do, and links to download it.It is freeware ( no ads , no spyware ), it allows for downloading video ( with or without audio..you can set the audio quality ) and audio from almost any website, so no need to "skip" ads. you get to keep the video(s) to enjoy "offline".

Example..the "Pye channel" on youtube..go to the channel, choose the playlist, set of videos on any subject ( "green man" or "foo" ).right click on the video, choose "copy link"..open ytdownloader ( if it isn't already open ) and left click on the green button.

It will "process" the link, you then get an insert in the interface with two tabs video and audio , choose video, this which will allow you to choose video with or without sound..and also what quality of sound, usually mp4 "unkown size" will give the best quality for video playback with sound.Below this part of the interface are two buttons green to begin the download, red for more options.

The options will allow you to choose where to download to etc ( self explanatory options ). If you go back to the top tabs and choose audio, you can set it to extract the audio from a video in various qualities , including .flac , which is useful if you want only the sound from a musical performance.

Back to the video tab, when you click the "download" button, that is what it will do..downloading has a progress bar, like many applications, it will firstly get the video stream and then get the audio.When done you'll get a "pop up" on screen to say the download is done.Navigate to the folder that you chose to download to..and there it is, available "offline" with no ads.

In the current version ytDownloader does not allow for downloading all the items sequentially in a "playlist", you have to repeat the above process for each video that you want.You can also obviously right click on any video whose thumbnail you may see on the right hand side at youtube ( or elsewhere ) and "copy the link" etc .
The program is a graphical interface to others running "under the surface", normally you'll have them installed anyway in win or linux ( you may not be aware that they are there ) one of the important ones it uses is ffmpeg, you will usually have this.If it does not detect what it needs to work, it will prompt you to allow it to go and get them, it will install them itself.

It is quite a small program, on linux it is in most repos, on mint it runs as a "flatpak", if you haven't got "flatpak" installed it will install it, a flatpak installation is around 1.5 to 2 gigs,( first time only ) so make sure that you have the required space.On windows it doesn't need this and will be a couple of hundred megs only.It is fast, and uses very little RAM or CPU when running or idling.

HTH