Making Carving Tools

Why make your own

The green woodworking tools in this program - sloyd knife, hook knife, gouge - are small, simple, and expensive to buy well made. A smith can forge them from a few inches of good steel, shaped exactly to their own hand and carving (see The Sloyd Knife and Knife Grips, and Carving a Spoon).

Steel: 1084 or 1095 for blades, or O1. Use bar about 1/8 inch thick for knives, 3/16 inch for gouges.

A sloyd knife blade

A short (about 3-inch, 75 mm), stiff blade with a Scandinavian grind: one wide, flat bevel each side running right to the edge ¹.

1. Forge the profile: straight spine, slight curve to a point, hidden tang.
2. Forge or grind the wide flat bevels, edge about 1 mm thick.
3. Normalize, harden in oil, and temper to a straw - about 400-450°F - for a hard, fine edge ^{2 3}.
4. Grind the bevels flat and even to a zero edge; a flat Scandi bevel is what makes it easy to sharpen.

A hook knife

1. Forge a flat blade about 2-3 inches long with a tang, and grind a single bevel on the outside of what will be the curve (for most hook knives) - the bevel must be ground before bending.
2. Heat and bend it around a mandrel (a rod or a tapered form) to the curve you want: an open curve for shallow spoon bowls, a tight one for deep bowls and kuksas.
3. Heat evenly and quench in oil; temper to a straw.
4. Hone the inside flat (or slightly beveled) and the outside bevel; a slip stone or a dowel wrapped in sandpaper reaches the curve.

A bowl gouge

1. Draw out a blade section and spread it wider than the finished sweep.
2. Form the sweep (curve across the blade) over a fuller or swage in the hardy hole, or in a groove in a block of hardwood, at heat.
3. Bend the shank for a bent or spoon gouge if needed.
4. Forge a tang or socket for the handle.
5. Grind the outside bevel, harden, and temper to straw at the edge and softer toward the struck end.

Heat treating thin tools

• Heat evenly: thin edges and tips overheat first. Keep them out of the hottest spot, or heat the spine and let heat flow to the edge.
• Quench in oil, edge-first, up and down - water is likely to crack thin, curved blades.
• Temper immediately ³; for a hook knife, a toaster oven at a verified temperature works.
• Bacon’s old trick of running temper colors to the edge works for gouges and chisels: polish, heat behind the edge, and quench when straw reaches the edge ⁴.

What to take from this

Forge carving tools from 1084, 1095, or O1. A sloyd knife gets flat Scandi bevels and a straw temper; a hook knife is beveled flat first, then bent around a mandrel before hardening; a gouge’s sweep is formed in a swage or wooden groove. Heat thin tools evenly, quench edge-first in oil, temper to straw immediately, and grind the bevels true.