Holiday tool gifts ?

[Irish]

Helluvawreck had a question on the Wood Spirits tutorial that I thought was excellent. I wanted to move his question here so that everyone can add their thoughts.

'Wreck wrote:

Since you are a woman and a carver I would like to ask you a question concerning my daughter. She's about 30 years old and she was up over the weekend for a day and was watching me carve for a few minutes and has expressed an interest about taking up carving as a hobby. So I was thinking about buying her a startup kit for Christmas. I've been to your site a couple of times today looking around so before I ask for some advice about what I ought to get her I thought I would see what advice you have given about such things. I'm really just a beginner myself and I figured that you might know better what would be best for a woman. please understand I don't mean any disrespect about women's abilities verse men's abilities. That's not it. I figure men and women can carve equally well if they put their mind to it. The thing is that my hands are fairly stocky and my daughter's are fairly small. I might not get the right thing and I figure that since you are a woman and have been around carving and are an excellent carver and teacher you would be able to give excellent advice on this.

I have wanted to carve all of my life but because I have always worked long hours and hard work I just never did it except off and on a few times.

I would be thrilled if my daughter was able to do this. Of course I don't want to spend a fortune because she might give up or not like it. But if she does like it I'll give her all the help that I can."

Susan

[Irish]

And ... here are my thoughts ...

Wreck, I really appreciateyour question. As a woman carver I have, over the years, run into many great tool sets or individual tools that I could never, ever use. The reason is the exact one that you pointed out.

it's call dimorphisism ... meaning simply that the male human is on average about 10 - 12% larger than the female human.

Many tool are sized to fit a man's hand. My hand is about one inch or more shorter from finger tip to the end of my palm than my husbands. The tools that fit him beautifully are cumbersome and unconfortable for me to use.

When I started carving many years ago there were a few women carvers. Today, I would estimate that half of the carving community are female. But the tool manufacturers have not caught up with this change in the hobbies population.

For a woman that has never carved before I would suggest a meidum priced gouge set. A nice seet can be purchased at around $50. Plus a good bench knive - about $30 to 40 more.

I would suggest a long handle style that is under 1" in diameter. Palm styled tools often have a wider handle diameter but since they are held differently the size here really doesn't matter. The same 1" or under handle for the bench knife.

I do believe in medium priced sets for beginners. First you do not know if you are going to love this hobby so you sure don't want to drop $300 for six tools. Second, if she does love it we don't know what type of carving she will end up doing ... architectural work needs heavy chisels and mallets where small - do it in your lap - relief may need micro tools.

So ... these are just my ideas. I carry tools and so does Rick's Little Shavers which always gets great reviews.

Susan

[CarverFromNoWhere]

I have been having similar questions, My mother has shown interest in carving and last winter we carved a number of Santa ornaments. So this Christmas I am making her a custom set of my knives shaping the handles to fit her hands I also let her pick out the woods so she could have the grain and colors she liked. She bought her self a nice set of Flexcut SK tools and seem to not have any trouble with them even though she has very small hands (she buys children's sized gloves). They also have the newer much smaller handle for the SK series.

A lot of this will depend on what she wants to carve as Susan Excellently stated the different styles or areas of carving require different tools. If you want quality tools that have smaller handles check out Lamp brand wood carvers supply in Florida sells them. Otherwise the palm sets from Ramulson and Pfeil have smaller handles and are well worth the money, if she decides she doesn't want to continue you could always use them your self.

Now if you want to look at what I am doing I have a tutorial on how I make my knives. It's quite simple and they would be handmade so they will mean a lot more then just buying something thats already made. You could even only make one knife instead of a set, if your interested I will tell you where to get all of the supplies and who has the best prices on the stuff required.
Carl

[helluvawreck]

Hi, Susan,

I appreciate your going to the trouble of answering my questions about getting tools for my daughter. I've been looking around and thinking over what you have said. i'm also waiting on those books and hope that they arrive today and am still pondering over your leafman and sharpening tutorials.

thanks so much for the advice,

helluvawreck

BTW, Wreck is fine with me, too

[Kenny_S]

My wife carves some as well as my 11 year old grandaughter. Rick of little shavers beginner's set is an idea set for both ages.What is great is these tools come sharpened by Rick and if ever dulled, he will sharpen for free.The service from Rick is amongst the very best.

[helluvawreck]

Carl, I'd sure be interested in you're knife making info. I made a knife a while back and use it for marking dovetails in my shop and other joints. I have built a pretty good forge but haven't used it for anything yet. I also have a cutting torch and acetylene torches, anvils, vices, files, and a few blacksmith tools, ect.

I made my knife out of the template steel that we use to use for our moulder knife templates and it seemed to come out quite hard. I couldn't cut it with a good file. It just skipped right off, not making a mark. Actually, it was the first and last thing that i ever heat treated.

I have bought a good many books about making tools but haven't really done anything yet. Time always seems to be a problem with a lot of things that I'm interested in ..... and I still have a whole house to fix up. The house is what my wife of 37 years wants me to get on but she has always been kind and patient about all of my idiosycracies ... even my stubborness. God bless her cause she has been a blessing. Where's your tutorial?

thanks

helluvawreck