Crafting is a passionate activity that involves using our hands skillfully and the products produced during crafting are often termed as ‘crafts’. Painters, weavers, pottery makers, artists, carpenters are all craftsmen specialized in their respective fields.

Not everyone who chooses woodwork wants to be a professional carpenter. Many of us show up their artistic side through wood crafting and pursue it more than just occupation or pleasure-seeking activity.

Every woodworker work with a basic woodcraft tool set. Wood crafting tools are tools/instruments chosen according to the need of refinement in quality. Obviously, the tools for crafting furniture will be different from those used for carving sculptures or intricate wood blocks.

TOOLS USED FOR CRAFTING WOOD ITEMS:

  • Work Table or Workmate: This provides you a flat raised platform on which you can do all your wood working whether it ripping, chipping, feeding it for processing to your bandsaw/circular saw/handsaw, sanding, painting/varnishing or doing finer carvings.
  • Saws: The second most important tool is the saw that you have like your bandsaw, chainsaw, electric circular saw, handsaw or jigsaw that you use for ripping, cutting or processing the timber as desired.
  • Electric Planer: It is a power operated planer used for shaping and smoothing the surface of the wood.
  • Electric Orbital Sander: It prepares a surface before and after painting. It sends vibrations in tiny circles for very smooth sanding results.
  • Drill: A drilling machine is used for making holes in wood or any hard material or driving nails into it. A cordless drill has many advantages over a traditional drill.
  • Knives: Wood cutting knife is basically designed for finer wood carving, chip carving, green woodworking. The knife should be very sharp for smooth finer cuts and each knife has a different purpose like the Hook knife wood carving tool is used for carving spoons, bowls or cups.
  • Chisels: A chisel is a tool used for carving wood or hard material having a specifically shaped (rectangular) sharp blade at its edge. There are so many types of chisels like firmer, bevel edge, bench, mortise, paring, slick, skew, socket, round or curved chisel each serving a different purpose.
  • Gouges: A gouge is a special chisel with a curved cutting edge that removes extra wood quickly from a flat surface where other chisels won’t dig in properly. A firmer gouge is used with a mallet and a skew gouge is used for planing wood.
  • Wooden Mallet: It’s a small hammer used along with gouges, chisels or screwdrivers for exerting more mechanical pressure at a particular place.
  • Veining Tools: This tool is a very narrow and straight gouge which is used for making finer details cuts and grooves.
  • ‘V’ Tools: A V-tool is also a special type of chisel consisting of two rectangular profiles brought together at a common point used for sketching around detail in wood carving.
  • Wood Burning Pens: These tipped pens are used for burning the outline of design, creating straight or curved lines or natural writings on wood.
  • Carpenter’s Wood Glue: This is used for sticking wood pieces together. Instead of this, a glue gun can also be used for a cleaner result.
  • Scrapers: A scraper is a woodworking shaping and finishing tool. It is used to manually remove very less material and is used for curing tricky grain areas where hand planes would cause a tear out.
  • Sharpening Stone: These stones are used to sharpen the dull steel tools by grinding and honing.
  • Planes: A hand plane is used for shaping wood using muscular power as electric planer machines are not suitable for fine scale planing.

Wood carving like any other art form takes passion, practice and patience along with proper knowledge of tools and techniques. For sculptures with a natural wood finish, woods like walnut, mahogany, cherry or butternut impart a rich color with a distinctive grain pattern.

Wood Crafting Methods & Styles:

  • Chip Carving: In chip carving, a small amount of wood or chips are taken out of a large wood piece with the help of very sharp knife, chisel, hammer or other tool to complete a drawn pattern. It can be used to make the most complex decorative ornaments.
  • Relief Carving: This carving style is used when the artist wants to carve sculptures with figures that protrude from background out of wood and requires immense skillfulness.  It involves removal of wood from a flat wood panel or block in such a way that an object appears to rise out of the wood.
  • Scandinavian Flat-plane: In Scandinavian flat plan style, figures are carved in single large flat plane using knives but nowadays carvers add arms, feet, boots, hat and pops in the background along with this style that may not be primarily made of wood.
  • Treen: It basically involves crafting small useful domestic household products like chopping boards, plates, bowls or spoons artistically.
  • Whittling: This style of carving is done using knives only and is the easiest one to start carving with. Small silvers of wood are sliced off with the help of a knife.
  • Chainsaw Carving: This style involves the modern day chainsaw technology in ancient art making. A Chainsaw carver can create fantastic sculptures like squirrels, bears, horses, eagles or awesome tables and benches also.

So, pick up your favorite style, sharpen up your crafting tools or buy some crafting tools online with woodfordtooling.com. We are one of the largest suppliers of basic woodworking tools in UK and delivers throughout the World. Let the artist within you crave out something special…