carving help

[Luke]

can any give me some help on chisel, dont know if i need to just buy a set of henry taylor,palm chisel there are 12 in this set,or if i can do with less than 12 what size do most of yall use,dont want to waste money i dont have,there are so many i get dazed.thanks guys hope all you have a good memorial weekend.luke

[Acer Saccharum]

You can build a fine gun with the following, including the carving:
1/8, 1/4, 3/8 wide flat
Parting tool, with 3/16" high legs
#3 sweep fishtail gouge
5 or 6 mm #9 sweep palm tool
Carving Knife, or Xacto.

You can add tools as you find you need them.

I bought a million tools, but find that I'm only using a handful.

[Don Tripp]

In my opinion (and I'm sure somebody will disagree), palm chisels are not the way to go for gun building. Get chisels with longer handles, I feel like I have more control with them. Henry Taylor is a good brand. Two Cherries is another good brand but Pfeil is the best that I have come across and are in the same price range as the Henry Taylor and Two Cherries so if your going to spend the money you may as well get the best.

Sets look impressive sitting next to your bench but there are going to be more tools in that prepackaged set that you will never use, than there are tools that you will use.

For chisels I would recommend:
5 or 6 MM # 1 Single bevel
3MM # 1 Single bevel
2MM # 1 Double bevel

Gouges:
#3, #4, #5 and #6 Sweep all in 5 or 6MM
6MM #7 Sweep
3MM #8 Sweep

You don't need them all at once. Buy a few to start with and then add to your set.

I like an Xacto knife instead of a carving knife because the blade is flexible and easy to reshape (they are cheap too).

[Jerry V Lape]

 Without knowing your carving technique it is a little difficult to give you a truly suitable list.  My technique is the stab in method for the most part.  But I would suggest you not try to buy everything all at once as much will be wasted.  Pfeil is really the best and you will not be sorry for buying them in the end.  Second point is the palm chisels are not all that useful.  Go with intermediate length or full length chisels as that is where you will wind up eventually anyway.  Here is my list of most useful for me.  The numbers are all Pfeil.  Straight single bevels: 1/2e  1/5e and 1/12e.  Skew double bevel 1S/5mm.  Gouges 8/3mm, 7/4mm, 5/5mm, 3/5mm, 3/8mm, 11/2mm, D12/2mm.  I still need to pickup a couple other gouge radius but they aren't cirtical.  That skew 1S/5mm is really important, or you could do with the same size in a pair of single bevels (a right and left).  Have to credit Jim Kibler for getting me started this direction. 

[Larry Luck]

Gary Brumfield, former master of the Colonial Williamsburg gunsmith shop and instructor at the NMLRA seminars at WKU, has posted this list for his carving class:

http://www.flintriflesmith.com/ToolsandTechniques/tools_carving_class.htm

Gary also uses a small tool to stamp in the perimeter of his carving. 

http://www.flintriflesmith.com/ToolsandTechniques/shopmadechisels.htm

Here is a link to an ALR discussion on the "lens shaped" stamping chisel.

http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=20500.0

There are exhaustive discussions in archived posts on the relative merits of stabbing and other methods of defining the perimeters of carving, and I'm not trying to reopen that issue here.

Acer's list is a great start.  I have made a couple small chisels (about 1/16" and 1/8") from ice picks by annealing and shaping them, then hardening by heating to cherry red and quenching in oil, then polishing and drawing to a dark straw color.  The 1/16" is what I use for trigger mortices and barrel keys.

Larry Luck

[rich pierce]

Carving (adding decoration which is incised or in relief) requires a different set of chisels than shaping a gunstock.  The lists above are good ones.

[Bernard]

Some carving I'm working on. Mostly done with an Exact-o Knife, a carving knife, some micro chisels and files.