Tools Of The Trade???

[cwt2112]

I am a taxidermist who specializes in fish and want to begin offering wood fish carvings for my clients and collectors. Any help regarding tools, equipment, and choice of wood would be greatly appreciated; I am ready to start investing in equipment. Money spent is a concern; although, not at the expense of aggravation.

Flexible shaft tools?
Wood burners?
Tips/sanders/grinders?
Wood for bodies?
Wood for fins?
Good sources of education?
What else am I missing?

Anything you can think of. Painting I am comfortable with and use an airbrush primarily except when tipping scales or trying to achieve different effects. Thank you for any help ya'll can provide.

[BobT]

I don't carve fish. I did 2 and figured out it was not for me. I do admire a lot of those people though. When you have the talent, WOW!

You may want to get some good advice here,

Fish Carving - The largest online resource for fish carving instructionals and fish carving classes by Ed Walicki.

if you haven't been there yet.

Bob

[DiamondWillow]

Well I might be able to answer a few of your questions. Anyway, I will take a shot at it.

Flexible shaft tools? I would go with a Foredom Flex Shaft, reversible, they are very reliable and work excellent. I am sure most fish carvers have at least one if not two of them.

Wood burners? I would check the Pyrography section of this site for lots of good information on wood burners.

Tips/sanders/grinders? I personally use soft cushion rotary sanders on fish and bases. They are the kind that you cut the sand paper and slip it into the sanders and away you go. For real small sanding areas I use the GugeSanders that I get from The Woodcraft Shop at Bettendorf, Iowa.

Wood for bodies? Most will use Basswood for the bodies, although some are using Jelutong for the bodies. It carves very easily with hand tools.


Wood for fins? For fins I mostly also use Basswood, but lots of fish carvers use Tupelo for fins, I guess it is a little stronger than Basswood for the ultra thin fins.


Good sources of education? Greatest source of info would be The Breakthrough Fish Carving Manual. It has virtually all the info you need to carve a good fish. Of course with the World Fish Carving Championships coming up very shortly in St Charles, MO there is an excellent place to find lots of good info at their seminars. They are put on by top notch fish carvers and well worth the price of admission. The National Fishcarvers Guild out of Oregon is also an excellent group of carvers that is strongly promoting fish carving and putting out lots of good information. The can be found at National Fish Carvers Guild There is also the Yahoo group Fishcarvers group at Fishcarving2 : Biggest & Best of its kind in the World!

Hopefully that will help you a little bit, if you have any questions just holler and I will do what I can to help.

Gene

Hope that might help you a little.

[cwt2112]

Thanks to both of you, I really appreciate it. I love the idea of wood carving because the possibilities are limitless.

[R-OLDS]

Where do you live? Knowing that people in UR area could give you information on upcoming classes, seminars...

[Mark Dellinger]

Let me start by thanking you for asking the questions. I love to carve fish even though I can't say that they are of the caliber of the ones that I saw when checking out the links provided.

I use bass wood for everything. I rough cut the bodies out of blocks, but use the misc. scraps for the fins, which I attach with epoxy. I do all my carving with a knife and use chisels for the detail in the fins. I have done a couple of different styles of scales by using my round chisel and shingling the cuts. I also have a "CUB" wood burner with a small, medium, and large scale tip.

I have three resources for reference that I use.
1. Freshwater Fish Patterns by Thomas Wolf and Ed walicki
2. Freshwater Fish carving by by James Filger
3. Freshwater Game fish of North America by Herbert A Schaffner (this is for the pictures for painting freference)

I read somewhere and have tried it a time or two, that if your fins get too thin and brittle you can coat them with a thin layer of super glue to add strength.

Hope this helps some.

Good luck and do what I do and have read numerous times on this site thus far, Have fun.

Mark