Knives for woodcarving are a must-have accessory in the arsenal of the master, who makes decorative objects from natural wood.
Such tools can have various types and shapes, which directly affects the specifics of processing individual parts. The most famous cutter, which is very popular among our craftsmen, is the Bogorodsk knife.
Wood carving technique
Wood carving is a complex, but very interesting technique for decorating products, known since ancient times. The beginning of work, as a rule, is to create a blank, or more simply, a deck or blanks. Next, a rough surface treatment is performed, during which it is leveled and rid of all kinds of defects. Then comes the turn of artwork that the master carries out with the help of woodcarving cutters. Technically, such a process looks like a selection of part of the wood, which allows you to give the workpiece relief and volume. This stage can be called the main, because it depends on it what the final form of the product will be. Finishing a decorative object consists in polishing wood and its impregnation with antiseptics and paints.
To perform manual work of this type, cutting devices with various blade configurations can be used. The quality of the ornament on the wood depends on their quality no less than on the craftsman’s craftsmanship, so it is necessary to ensure that the blade of the chisel is strong, sharp and not chipped. If experienced craftsmen can, with their eyes closed, determine the type and quality of joiner's knives, then choosing wood cutters for beginners can be a difficult task. For those who are not yet fully familiar with the features of the choice and manufacture of cutters, we suggest that you familiarize yourself with their main varieties and method of application in more detail. You can also learn how to make wood cutters yourself by asking them the necessary size and shape.
Kinds
It is believed that master virtuosos can do with one or two incisors, however, as practice shows, a good set of special carpentry tools, which include chisels with blades of various shapes, will help to achieve the best result and facilitate work. Experts in this industry recommend replenishing their arsenal with the following positions:
- knives-jambs - a type of woodcarving with short triangular blades. They can have different bevel angles of the cutting part, which makes them suitable for the formation of complex relief patterns. Such universal knives for wood include three functional sections: a blade, a toe and a heel;
- chisels - the main and most common carpentry tool for curly cutting with an elongated shaft and a cutting edge at its end. The chisel, depending on the configuration of the edge, can be flat, angular, semicircular, bracketed and reverse. With such a diverse set, you can cut grooves and grooves of various depths, as well as give the surface the desired texture and volume;
- klukarzy - devices for manual finishing cutting, characterized by a significantly curved working part, which allows to achieve a clear relief of parts. Like the previous version with a straight handle, klukarza differs in the shape of the blade (bracketed, straight, semicircular, dovetail, goat leg, etc.);
- spoon cutters - made in the form of a ring or half ring, as the name implies, designed to cut spoons. Very often cabinetmakers prefer to make such a semicircular wood cutter with their own hands and adapt it to their needs.
Along with devices for cutting openwork elements, there are additional items that no joiner can do without. Such tools include hacksaws, jigsaws, drills, wood hacksaws can be used for roughing or finishing work (saber, bow).
Those craftsmen who work with large-sized structures acquire not only a hacksaw tool, but also include hatchet cutters, or, as they are also called, curly tesla. Their principle of operation is similar to that of which cutting tools of a smaller sample work with a difference only in the scale and purity of the process. Beginners, who are just beginning to comprehend the craft, do not understand the varieties of the instrument as thoroughly as experienced masters, so the main thing here is to observe the golden rule - quality is above all. Since buying good-quality knives can be expensive, many make cutters on their own, especially since today it’s easy to find suitable video and photo lessons on the Internet. Next, we will tell you how to make knives for curly carving with your own hands from improvised materials.
Let's make it yourself
Immediately make a reservation that not always a high price forces the joiner to take radical measures. Often, a good experienced craftsman can not choose for himself a tool that would meet his requirements, and this also becomes the reason for independent work on the cutter. In principle, this problem is being solved quite successfully, the main thing is to know what to make cutters from and what technology to apply in this case.
Blade
In most cases, as a raw material for self-harvesting, an ordinary canvas for wood or metal is suitable. An excellent jamb knife can be obtained from such material - it is enough to break off manually or cut a segment of the blade on a lathe, and then form a cutting edge. A saw blade for wood also has decent characteristics suitable for our product, because it’s very important which steel the jamb is made of, and here we are dealing with carbon metal that is easy to sharpen and remains sharp for a long time even when working with hard rocks tree.
If your future home-made cutter will be designed for wood sampling, it should have a semicircular blade shape, and in this case it is better to make it from a punch, which can be found in almost every home workshop. In private carpentry workshops, you can find home-made cutters from the bearing, which also proved to be quite good in work.
Lever
When the cutting part of the chisel is ready, you can begin to manufacture an equally important part of the tool - the handle. Here we need a wooden block, and it is better if it is hardwood, from which it will be necessary to cut a holder with a hole in the end. Please note that the shape of the hole should correspond to the same parameter of the metal shank of a knife for woodcarving, made of a cloth or a disk with your own hands.
Next, you need to glue the cutting segment into the handle and further strengthen the design with a metal ring.
In the event that a handle consisting of two parts is used to make a wood cutter, it is recommended that the blade is additionally fixed with fasteners, and the gluing process is carried out using a vise or clamps.
Sharpening
A carver will be able to achieve a worthy result in artistic craft only if the tool made is sharp. When carving on wood, the knives tend to blunt, so a properly sharpened jamb can work for a long time without reprocessing.