[Dan C]

Sometimes the answer you get depends on the question you ask, (duh!) so I'm going to be careful and ask my question as clearly as I can.

I'm doing a deep relief carving of a morning glory floral arrangement. I'm going down about 1/2 inch to the background. There are a lot of tight places between vines, leafs, and flowers where I want to go down almost to the 1/2 inch background level. How the devil can this be done cleanly?

I have a lot of small gouges including a set of dockyard gouges, but they all have one thing in common. The cutting edge sticks out in a line with the handle of the gouge. The tight space the gouge has to fit into means that the gouge goes in at a sharp angle, and this doesn't allow for aligning the cutting edge with the surface of the background so that the background can be shaved off cleanly. That's my problem.

The result is a hacked up looking background surface down in the hole. I've tried a dremel tool approach, which works somewhat, but the surface down in the hole is left fuzzy.

Are there very small gouges available that have a blade coming off at a right angle to the handle that are designed to get down in these places? How do you all deal with this issue? Thanks for any and all advice!

[whitecree]

You might want to consider a small chip knife or even an X-acto.

[Irish]

Dan, Your question was excellently worded!

In very deep tight areas I have a small straight chisel that I bought many years ago from Harbor Freight ... yep, the cheap tool company. The chisel is an 1/8" profile and is of soft steel. So it is very easy for me to change the angle or profile of the tool just for tight spaces with just a little time on the sharpening stones.

Once that chisel is well sharpened I hold it straight up on profile ... 90 degrees from the wood ... and use it in a scrapping motion. I don't know if you have ever done any chair seat work but scrapping is an old technique for odd curves and hard to reach areas.

I also will use my small round gouges in areas like these.

Once I have the area scrapped as smooth as possible I get myself a brand new pencil ... never sharpened. I cut the pencil tip into a straight chisel shape and the cut a strip of sand paper that I can fold over that blunt edge. Don't tape the sandpaper to the pencil because you will want to be able to adjust the paper to new areas.

Once the pencil sander is ready it also will drop nicely into a tight spot for general sanding.

Hope these ideas help.

Susan

[Dan C]

Thanks Susan! Your comments are very helpful! I'll try the scraping and sanding.

What's really valuable to me here, is learning what techniques are out there and available. I hate to do something the hard way just because I haven't thought of the easier and better way to do it. Also, the more techniques available, the better. I figure you probably are pretty aware of the possibilities for solving this problem with relief carving, so I appreciate your feedback.

Your pencil and sandpaper comment is interesting. You probably know this, but I'll pass it on. There is actually a real nice tool out there that I got at Hobby Lobby that has a design just like you described. It's a tool about the shape of a pencil with a chisel point and a band of sandpaper that goes around it from end to end. You can get different grits. It works pretty well. I try to stay away from sandpaper, but I'm learning that you do what you have to do!

Thanks again!

Dan C.

[Irish]

Dan, I do indeed know about the sanding stick. But I have used a pencil for so long, mostly because I can cut it to fit the area that I just haven't gotten around to buying any.

When you are working on low relief or 3-d avoiding sandpaper is an option. But it is not an opinion, at least for me, with deep relief. There are so many little tight areas, undercut areas and the background areas where you simply can not get a clean cut stroke. Clean cut strokes don't need sanding.

In a deep carving I will find myself digging more then cutting or teasing instead of pushing the knives and gouges. In those areas I find I must sand in I want smooth.

Susan

(Found a photo)

[Ashbys]

Dan,

They also make dog leg chisels for increasing the workable area in recessed wood. The flat dog- leg depending upon the depth your working at can give you that 90' angle you talking about.

There's also a scoop fishtail , which it purchased in a 1 2 or 3 radius works very well getting under an into areas to clean up the background lines.

Garry

[Dan C]

Hi All!

Hope people keep checking old threads. Here's a follow-up.

Garry - Thanks for the tip on dogleg gouges! I thought I'd see what was out there. I went to the Woodcraft home page and typed in "dogleg" on the Search function line.

At this point, I hope the Woodcraft people are reading this! If I could make this in "red" I would, but I'm not sure it's possible to do that.

Anyway, when you type in "dogleg" you are taken to some Dockyard dogleg gouge options. The problem here is that they don't show pictures or tell you anything about the length of the dogleg offset, etc. I didn't really want to make the investment without at least seeing a picture.

In addition, this isn't the extent of dogleg gouges that Woodcraft sells at all! In fact, they sell some very nice dogleg gouges. If you type in 05X23 on the Search function line, you are taken to them. I was trying to recreate how I actually found them, but can't remember. Although the name for the tool isn't "dogleg", that is what they are, and I would suggest that they be listed if you search for "dogleg". In addition, there is a link on that page which does take you to another dogleg tool 05S03 which doesn't come up in the "dogleg" search either.

Anyway, I bought the 4 gouges I mention above - 05X21, 05X22, 05X23, and 05S03. I haven't had a chance to use them yet, but they look like exactly what I will need for deep relief background cleanup and they are all good quality Swiss made gouges. (Another option along with Susan's techniques described above.)

As the picture shows, the 05X21, 05X22, and 05X23 gouges are a set with a left skew end, straight chisel end, and a right skew end.

Anyone buying this set would probably not need the 05S03 straight chisel ended gouge. It's pretty similar to the 05X22 gouge. The 05X22 has about a 4 mm cutting edge, while the 05S03 has about a 6 mm cutting edge.

Sorry for all the words, but I'm hoping this information will be useful to readers and to Woodcraft as well.

Dan C.

[Old_Gord]

That's one of the problems I find with Woodcraft sometimes...creating new names for things that already have long established names.
Pfeil Drake Undercutting tool...hmmm looks like a duck , quacks like a duck....must be a Drake Undercutting tool.
Another name you might look for is "Foot chisel" it's quite similar to the "Dogsleg chisel" in shape and function.
Mine are Henry Taylor's as are most of my full size carving gouges and chisels.
Thanks Dan C, just the kind of info that might help a fellow carver in the future.

.

OG

[heineda]

Hello,

Diobsud Forge makes a really nice tool for this situation. It looks like a brick layers trowel, but works like a dream. Like all Diobsud Forge tools, it's not cheap, but it is worth every penny. Check it out here:
http://thewoodcraftshop.com/DesktopM...ion=0&langID=0

Carving,
Dan Heine

[AlArchie]

This may seem a bit off-beat, but I've made a few very narrow chisles from small pocket screwdrivers. The steel is very good, easily ground and sharpened and if I screw it up, hey, it's a buck and a half! These little guys can be bent to get into just about anywhere!

Al