Alexander Grabovetskiy, woodcarver, School of Woodcarving · Published 2017
Which wood carving tools should you buy first?
Quick answer: A first wood carving tool kit is a set of gouges you are ready to keep sharp yourself, whatever the brand. The bevel decides how high you have to raise your hand. Hardness hardly varies. For real carving, a beginner set runs about 12 tools, and even a cheap set can carve.
A first wood carving tool set for real carving runs about twelve gouges, and you have to be ready to sharpen every one of them. The bevel decides how high your hand has to ride. The brand decides how the handle feels when you hold it all day long.
Do you have to lift the handle high before the edge grabs the wood? Does your shoulder ache after a long day of that? Did your new gouges arrive with machine marks still on them? The first two come from the bevel, and the third wants a buff before the tool carves anything.
I came to America from Russia with one gouge and one knife. My teacher gave me the gouge. The knife I made myself. I made some of my own tools because I had to. I couldn't spend $40 or 45 or $60 per gouge. Later on, yes, I bought a lot of tools that cost twice as much.
What decides whether a gouge works for you
- Steel across the good brands runs between RC58 and RC62, so hardness is rarely what separates them.
- Nearly every maker grinds the bevel a little high, and your shoulder pays.
- Rounding the heel keeps the edge strong in oak while your hand stays low.
- A cheap 12 piece set can carve a grape panel. I did it on camera.
- Every new gouge wants buffing before its first carving, whatever the price was.
Which wood carving tools should you buy first?
Buy a set you are ready to sharpen. Two things are worth adding to the cheap boxed set I tested, and I say that after carving a whole panel with it. A narrow number 11 veiner, around 1 mm and thinner than a sixteenth of an inch, gets underneath and cleans the really tiny spots. And I would want a V tool near 35 degrees, not the 60 that set came with. That would help a lot. The rest of my wall came later. The lesson on choosing tools walks the shelf brand by brand.
When I landed here I bought what was available right away, which was a Swiss Made set. In the United States the name is pronounced Pfeil. Walk into a Woodcraft and you will find maybe three names on the shelf: Pfeil, Flexcut, and some small Dockyard miniatures. Online the door opens wider. Ashley Iles, French-made Auriou, Two Cherries and Stubai, Henry Taylor, and more besides.
At the time of that lesson, most of my tools were Ashley Iles. The steel carries real mass, the fishtail shape lets me reach into a corner, and the rounded English handle sits easier in my palm through a long day than an eight sided one. Nobody pays me to say that. In that lesson my order was Auriou first if you can afford it, Ashley Iles second, Pfeil third. Later, in Hashemi flowers 23, Ashley Iles was still probably the maker I liked most, and a newer batch of the French tools disappointed me.
Some people really like the eight sided handle because it will not roll off the bench. Which is true. In my life, carving every day, I never had a tool roll off my workbench even once, and if yours does, some kind of mat on the bench ends the argument.
Do cheap carving gouges actually work?
They do. I wanted to find out on camera, and overall they're really good. A set of 12 Schaaf gouges is much, much cheaper. Their listing says RC60, which sits in the middle of the normal range. Their listing also says something honest: if you are not planning to sharpen these, do not buy them.
That warning is true of every brand on earth. A Pfeil usually arrives ready to carve and stays that way for a day or two, maybe longer, then it needs sharpening like anything else.
So I played beginner. I took the Schaaf gouges out of the box, put no grinder near them, and only buffed each one on a felt wheel with green compound on my Work Sharp 3000. Then I carved grapes on a basswood offcut, 6 by 8 inches, 152 by 203 mm, and just under 2 inches (48 mm) thick. The offcut had a planer snipe. It didn't bug me, but I took a block plane to it anyway, just to make it look nice.
I used 11 of the 12 tools and rebuffed each one three or four times while carving, which is about what I do with Ashley Iles. One handle came slightly loose. On Amazon they say they will swap a tool like that, and I can always put a new handle on myself anyway.
The grapes came out in full 3D. If I were just a hobbyist, or even a professional furniture maker, I would definitely buy them. For professional wood carving it is plainly not enough. The whole test is in the Schaaf tools lesson, from the first buff to the last grape.
What is wrong with the bevel on most new gouges?
Makers grind the bevel too high for my taste, and I have seen only one brand get it right at the factory. I place my hand underneath the tool, and with a good bevel my knuckle touches the wood and I start carving. On the BeaverCraft gouge it just rode on the heel. I had to raise the tool a lot, and even then it would not grab. Lift it and your elbow comes up, then your shoulder, and you get really tired.
Somebody asked me after a stream if I shorten my bevel for harder wood, and I answered it in the hardwood bevel lesson. Grind the bevel long and the steel behind the edge goes thin, and thin, weak steel is risky in white oak or cherry. Red oak is really hard too. Brown oak is a little kinder than the American white.
So for those hardwoods, most of the time I use a really short bevel, about a quarter inch, 6 mm. Short bevels lift your hand, though, and now we are back at the sore shoulder. The way out of that circle is the heel. Take the sharp corner off the back of the bevel and round it smooth. The steel stays thick and strong near the edge, and the rounded back still lets the blade reach the surface with your hand down low.
In that lesson I showed three number 3 gouges, close in size, ground three different ways for exactly this reason. One long, about 20 mm (3/4 in), one short, one with the heel rounded away. I left the short one untouched for the mallet.
Mallet work has its own geometry. With a heavy mallet on hardwood you hit the end of the handle, so you have to raise the tool up before you can hit and carve. Mine weighs 32 ounces, two pounds (about 0.9 kg). That is why the short bevel stays on that gouge. If you want to see those three bevels up close and carve along with me, that is what the school is for.
What did I find in each brand I tried?
| Brand | Made in | Hardness | What I notice at the bench |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pfeil | Switzerland | 59 to 61, I believe | Straight, holds an edge, thinner blade, eight sided handle |
| Ashley Iles | England | 61 in that lesson, 59 in 2020 | Thick steel, fishtails reach corners, rounded handle |
| Auriou | France | About the same | Beautiful, handle thick as the Iles, my first pick then |
| Schaaf | Set of 12 | RC60, Amazon says | Machine marks, carves fine once buffed |
| BeaverCraft | Ukraine | High carbon, they say | Good handle notch, tall factory grind, bandages included |
Those hardness numbers came from two places. In the tools selection lesson I said they are all about the same as far as how they are tempered. Pfeil, if I remember correctly, runs 59 to 61 HRC, and the Ashley Iles figure I read was HRC 61. On a live stream on April 5, 2020, I gave Ashley Iles as Rockwell 59, and said I believe this is the reason I like them, because they are really easy to reshape and quick to buff.
From one German brand I have only micro tools. They sat on the same shelf as my Pfeil, side by side, and the German ones got moisture in the metal quicker and showed some rust. I still use them for tiny work. I would not buy the big sizes.
The Ukrainian sets were sent to me, and I told the makers publicly what I liked and what I did not. What I loved most was not the knives. Somebody there thought to pack adhesive bandages in with them. I cut myself multiple times, and I remember a day when, if I counted, it was maybe over 100 times. I never saw anybody else put Band-Aids in the box. Maybe somebody does, but I did not see it.
They also threw in a strop of thick double shoulder leather and green paste. Those two things cost real money bought separately. The big gouge they sent has a notch in the handle that just feels good in my hand, and their bevel is a little too high, same as everyone else. I tried them on a Byzantine acanthus leaf and a low relief furniture panel, and both went fine.
What can a back bent gouge do that a straight one cannot?
A back bent gouge reaches past a high spot without digging in, and it gets underneath where a straight tool cannot. Back bent tools are my favorite tools, and I have so many of them. The tool is bent backward, so it rides raised above the high spot, where a straight tool at that angle would dig in.
The second way I like to use one is undercutting. When a panel is carved from one solid board, and nothing is glued on afterwards, you still need to get really deep underneath. Sometimes something sits in the way, and then no straight blade gets in there. Mine run from huge ones for big carvings down to about 3 mm, an eighth of an inch, in several curves.
How should the tools sit on your bench?
Lay them with the edges pointing at you, spaced a hand apart, and keep only a few out at a time. Most professional carvers usually put their tools that way, edge toward themselves, as I say in the bench lesson. Not every maker stamps the sweep on the handle, so with the blades facing you, you read the profile instead of hunting for it.
It is safer that way too. You pick the tool up by the handle, the blade goes away from your body, you carve, you set it back. In one class I saw a student lay the tools the other way, for fear of getting cut. But that way you don't see the sweep.
Leave space between them for your hand. And keep two or three on the bench, five at the outside. Back then I had like half a thousand tools, and if I put them all on the bench I would get lost.
Which shop tools help besides gouges?
A lift is one. I use a wood cabinet lift that I used a lot for cabinet building, and I use it for my carving too. I can raise it to any level and work on details that otherwise I can't reach. You don't have to have it. But I found it's an excellent tool, and probably the best thing is that I can sit down while I carve if I have to.
A pointing machine is another. A potential client once emailed me about a room where the right side matches the left, just reversed. He wrote that I could carve one side and then use a pantograph or the router on the other. I wrote him back that this is not the way I do work. All my work is by hand. To copy a finished piece I have to measure all the high spots and all the low spots. The needle shows a distance, and that distance tells me how deep I'm supposed to go.
Then there is the profile of the tool. On one stream I carved a mark with a 12 mm (about 1/2 in) number 11 from Ashley Iles, then another beside it with a Pfeil of exactly the same size, and the Pfeil wing came out about 4 or 5 mm (3/16 in) longer. Wood carving is all about light and shadow, and the deeper I get, the more beautiful the shadow will be. So I love the Pfeil profile much better, although for the steel itself I still like Ashley Iles better. There is a whole lesson on why I reach for Pfeil.
What takes the ridges out of a finished carving?
Spring steel scraper cards pull the facets down, though personally I kind of like the facets. They create the veins and look more natural, like it's hand done. Some of my customers like to see those tool marks. Others like it really shiny and smooth, and I kind of like both.
Gold leaf changes that. When I filmed this I was working on a piece that was going to be gold leafed, so I had to make it smooth. For water gilding you really need to get the surface ready, though I would not take off too many facets.
I used to make my own, sometimes from really cheap spring steel carving tools. Then I found a set of cabinet scraper cards on Amazon, 12 pieces of blue spring steel in all different shapes, each with two sides. Probably made in China. Nobody pays me to mention them, and out of the box they were not bad at all.
A scraper needs a hook turned along its edge before it will work properly. The burnisher does not have to be expensive, but it has to be good steel. Sometimes I just use a screwdriver. Put the card in a vise while you do it. Holding it in your fingers while you push is a bad idea.
If you do not know how to sharpen your tools, you are going to get frustrated with any brand. For those grapes I drew the design right on the wood with a marker first, though usually I use just a pencil. I also teach in person, and that Byzantine acanthus was one of those class projects.
Not sure where to begin? The first carvings course and the kitchen board are made for beginners, and if those grapes caught your eye, there is a grape onlay course too. The whole course list is one page, and the lesson map shows how they connect.
My teacher gave me that first gouge. The knife I made myself. Both of them came with me across the ocean.