Which Gouge Sweep No. to Start With?

[Jacob]

I'd leave it at 890. There isn't a magic formula of details, tool shapes and sizes - you have to get stuck in with whatever tools you can muster, and find your way around. The only really important detail is sharpening but that'll improve as you go.

I'd add - the one essential thing is to actually start doing it with whatever you have, gouge or not. It's too easy to witter on endlessly about what you need without ever getting around to it. Bin there dunnit! (i.e. not dunnit)
Start tomorrow - get a piece of wood and dig in with a chisel - make a pattern, or lettering, or a shape, a face, a little boat, anything. It won't be very good at all, but it'll get better with practice - it never gets worse but things often never get started.

Happy christmas!

 

[Lons]

For once I'd agree with Jacob :shock: (Happy Christmas BTW)

Give it a go. Don't even think about bevel angle as you'll soon find as I said previously that you'll tend to use a different angle on hard woods like oak than you will on softer such as American basswood or lime. Comes with experience and more important by far is to just keep touching up the tool to keep it razor sharp.

I don't test on anything, if it cuts well then it's sharp - if it doesn't then it isn't.

The more polished the bevel the smoother the cut and better finish it leaves behind. Stropping leaves a mirror finish on the bevel

Bob

 

[Carl P]

I have started trawling through copies of Woodworker from the 1980s and have found the following so far:
- Jan. 1982: Figure & Decorative Carving by Harry Turner, Part. 1,
- Apr. 1982: Part. 2,
- May. 1982: Part. 3,
- Dec. 1982: Part. 4,
- Apr. 1983: Part. 5.
Six tools are mentioned but are not described in detail (they are referred to as “a boxed set suitable for most early needs”). However, there is no mention of colour coded handles or a special offer for purchase, so I wonder if BB is remembering another series.
Dec. 1982 also contains various other carving articles including carving a horse by Ian Norbury.
It is interesting to see the variety of subjects covered by these old issues, including history, clock cases, carving, musical instruments, toys, joints, finishing, seasoning, as well as furniture and turning. Rather a contrast with the present day...

Thanks for that - I've found a cheap annual of that year from an Amazon seller and am now looking forward to a speedy post-Christmas delivery :?!

Cheerio,

Carl

 

[J_SAMa]

Hi Carl,
Can you post a link maybe?

Sorry guys, been on vacation (carving and joinery just happens to be great traditions here in Hallstatt . Gotta show you some of the goodies I found here sometime).

Again, being an avid follower (read: fanboy...) of Paul Sellers' courses, I've decided to make a spoon first. He used a 32 mm no. 7 for it. Do you guys think something like a 14 mm is gonna do it?

Jacob,
Well I'll try and get around to it when I'm back. Now I should just pray that my tools not be covered in rust by then.

 

[Carl P]

Hi J_SAMa,

Here's the link, hope it's useful:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u... Woodcarving Tools, Materials & Equipment.pdf

Cheerio,

Carl

 

[Jacob]

Hi Carl,
Can you post a link maybe?

Sorry guys, been on vacation (carving and joinery just happens to be great traditions here in Hallstatt . Gotta show you some of the goodies I found here sometime).

Again, being an avid follower (read: fanboy...) of Paul Sellers' courses, I've decided to make a spoon first. He used a 32 mm no. 7 for it. Do you guys think something like a 14 mm is gonna do it?

Yes, but differently.
There's a lot of info about (too much) so it can help to back to basics with older books such as Percy Blandford's.
One here for 99p! it's a very good book.
Things were simpler in the old days and the assumption was that you had to make do with a lot less kit, with more emphasis on doing it rather than buying things!

 

[Lons]

Things were simpler in the old days and the assumption was that you had to make do with a lot less kit, with more emphasis on doing it rather than buying things!

How old is old though? Didn't realise you are more than 150 years old Jacob :wink:

One of the best known makers (and still some of the best quality) were the Addis family who produced a great variety of patterns and sizes in the 1800s so I guess there was a "perceived" need long before the possibility of open discussion. Information then was from master to apprentice.

Bob

 

[Jacob]

Things were simpler in the old days and the assumption was that you had to make do with a lot less kit, with more emphasis on doing it rather than buying things!

How old is old though? Didn't realise you are more than 150 years old Jacob :wink:

One of the best known makers (and still some of the best quality) were the Addis family who produced a great variety of patterns and sizes in the 1800s so I guess there was a "perceived" need long before the possibility of open discussion. Information then was from master to apprentice.

Bob

Yebbut the "great variety of patterns and sizes" were for competent professionals with many years of experience. Most of them would have started off with very little.

 

[charvercarver]

Sorry for the late reply:

How do you all sharpen? Slip stones or just plain stones? I imagine it'd be hard to sharpen the non-beveled side of a bent gouge on a flat stone.
Whats with the bevel angles? I've seen a few videos and they all seem to sharpen at a much lower angle (around 25 as opposed to 30...) than normal chisels. Especially the "corner" of the v-tool, looks as low as 15.

Also those "slip strops", are they worthwhile? One of those can cost me 20...

You need both, the slip stones, as you guessed, are for the inside of the gouge. You do need to strop on the inside, but you can use either a soft piece of leather that conforms to the curve ( using very, very light pressure), or you can make your own by using the gouge upside down on a narrow piece of wood creating a custom fit. You can then stick some leather over it.

You can use a 14 mm no7 to carve the bowl of the spoon, you will just have to make more passes to level the ridges it makes. In carving it is almost never the the case that only one sweep at one size will do, always remember that you are simply removing wood that you don't want to be there, however you do that is fine. Carving is much more about finding the form and effect that you want, it's not like joinery where you are working to knife and gauge lines.

Jacob, Lons:

I think the Sheffield pattern list has 2000+ tools on it. I think most of them are only necessary if you are doing Gibbons type work and even then you'd never need even a large fraction of that for any one piece. I doubt anyone has more than a few hundred. Medieval carvers commonly used many fewer types, I seem to remember it being around a dozen though I could be wrong.

 

[Jacob]

The outside (bevel) of a shallow gouge is about the easiest possible thing to sharpen freehand (along with cambered plane blades) - just a sweep and tilt from left to right (or right to left) along the length of a stone.
I'd avoid power (except for honing - powered ply disc plus autosol or similar set ups) and don't dream of jigs or things will get really complicated.
The inside is harder but the edge of the ply disc shaped half round, is handy.
TBH I haven't done a lot of carving but the ply disc turning slow on the back of a lathe headstock certainly made gouge honing/polishing very easy - and very sharp. Anything fiercer seems to get thin edges too hot.

 

[Lons]

Also those "slip strops", are they worthwhile? One of those can cost me 20...

You need both, the slip stones, as you guessed, are for the inside of the gouge. You do need to strop on the inside, but you can use either a soft piece of leather that conforms to the curve ( using very, very light pressure), or you can make your own by using the gouge upside down on a narrow piece of wood creating a custom fit. You can then stick some leather over it.

You can use a 14 mm no7 to carve the bowl of the spoon, you will just have to make more passes to level the ridges it makes. In carving it is almost never the the case that only one sweep at one size will do, always remember that you are simply removing wood that you don't want to be there, however you do that is fine. Carving is much more about finding the form and effect that you want, it's not like joinery where you are working to knife and gauge lines.

Jacob, Lons:

I think the Sheffield pattern list has 2000+ tools on it. I think most of them are only necessary if you are doing Gibbons type work and even then you'd never need even a large fraction of that for any one piece. I doubt anyone has more than a few hundred. Medieval carvers commonly used many fewer types, I seem to remember it being around a dozen though I could be wrong

.

I absolutely agree!

My slightly flippant comment to Jacob was because he said

Things were simpler in the old days and the assumption was that you had to make do with a lot less kit

which I don't quite agree with as it implies as a general statement that they all may have just used what was lying around. What I believe they did do was buy only as and when needed for specific tasks and only quality tools as they needed to pay for themselves. Apprentices would also be taught to use a wide range of sizes and sweeps that were available to the craftsmen who had built them up over years. They were after all there to learn their craft which was the care, maintenance and use of the relevant tools for the job in hand. They would start with a basic kit and build up as they learned to use others.

Today's problems didn't exist as there is now a wider choice of manufacturers and cheap inferior (sometimes) imports from the far east. There is also so much contradictory information available to all which is a cause of confusion. Jacob is quite right that things were simpler and in fact in a joiner shop there would be an occasional need to reproduce a simple carved detail which would indeed be attempted by the craftsman with those tools to hand as it wasn't affordable or viable to buy specialist carving tools for a one off job.

J-SAMa

You don't want to "sharpen" the inside of std gouges or you'll create a double bevel (though I have seen this done for specific cuts".) You just need to remove the burr. Slipstones are useful and nice to have but not essential. You can shape or fold leather and use autosol and if you get some different dia of dowling and wrap or glue some very fine glasspaper, Abranet or better still, wet and dry finishing paper, you'll manage very well.

I think you're getting too hung up on the bevel angles as well tbh. As I said previously, it depends on the wood. I have a couple of chisels which are almost knife like, in fact one of them is a very thin old file which works remarkably well and is highly polished. You can use a steep angle on softwood but will be more difficult than necessary whereas a low angle on hard oak would soon chip the edge.
I'd advise that your first attempts should be with lime if possible as it cuts easily and crisply. My first carving was a bit of mahogany which was awful and could have put me off.