Carving is by all odds the hardest of all woodworking processes to learn and yet there are some simple forms of it that are at once easy to do and pretty to look at. While carving is an art in itself it can be used with fine effect in combination with some kinds of scroll sawed and turned work.

Your Set of Carving Tools

To begin with you can get along very well with a set of six carving tools. A set of this number is made up of a 3/8 inch, a 1/4 inch, a 1/2 inch and a 5/16 inch straight shank carving tools and two of these are chisels and four are gouges, so you see that they are just about the same as carpenters' and turners' chisels and gouges. Such a set of tools costs about $3.00.

A better set contains a dozen carving tools and this includes the above tools as well as a couple of bent fluting gouges, with 1/8 and 1/4 inch sweeps, a couple of front bent tools, a straight parting tool, and a vein-ing tool, all of which is shown at A in Fig. 22; the sweeps, as the curved cutting edges are called, are shown at B.

The tangs of these tools, that is the sharp ends which fit into the handles, have shoulders on them to prevent the handles from creeping and splitting. The best carving tools on the market are those made by S. J. Addis of London, and you can't go wrong if you buy them.

B Sweeps Of Wood Carving Tools

C Carver's Mallet

Fig. 22. Kinds And Sweeps Of Carving Tools

Carving tools as they come from the makers are sharpened but not honed, that is the tools are ground sharp, but the inside bevel of the tools must be rubbed up with an oil stone slip and most wood carvers like to do this themselves.

When you buy a set of carving tools you also want to get a carver's mallet made of lignum-vitae 14 with a face 2 1/2 inches in diameter and, as you will see in Fig. 21, its shape is quite different from the ordinary kinds. Also get a Washita oil stone, and an Arkansas carving tool slip, which is a small wedge-shaped oil-stone. Two or more markers, which are stamps made of tool steel, are very useful for stamping in background work. A number of different designs are shown in Fig. 23 and they cost about a quarter apiece.

Fig. 23. Markers For Stamping In Backgrounds

A Snib

A Hand Clamp

A Carvers Vise

Fig. 24. SCHEMES FOR holding work when carving

To hold the work while you are carving it you can make two or more snibs as shown at A in Fig. 24.

14 Lignum-vitae is a greenish-brown wood and is very hard and heavy. It grows in tropical America.

These little clamps are sawed out pieces of wood with an ordinary wood screw through the thick end, and when you want to carve a flat piece of work clip it with a couple of snibs and screw the latter to your bench. A better scheme is to use a couple of hand screws as shown at B. For carving in relief you will need a wood-carver's vise as shown at C.