Carving bench / workshop tools

J

JLS

New member
Aspiring carver here with a question I'm sure will be as diverse as the group;

What tools are in on or around your workbench that you use for carving decoys?

Anything from powered units and bits to knives, sookeshaves, sanding, burning, painting equipment, carving benches, dust collection.

What did you get that you don't use and feel was unnecessary and what had you wished you'd done or gotten sooner?

Trying to get a handle on affordable essentials.

Thanks everyone.
 
do you have any idea what you are interested in making. I'm guessing decoys, but that wasn't the case in my career. I started carving for a living in 1981, quite a bit of it was waterfowl themed, but very rarely a decoy of any kind, never a working decoy until 22 years ago. I went to a few shows many decades ago and was asked several times if I used a Foredom, I had no idea what that was. We lived on a farm back in those days, no real options to find things like carving tools, I had no mentors and did a lot of my carving with a couple of chisels and some small carving knives. Essentials would probably start with a mentor, it's hard to say since we don't know your name or location.

These days with the internet tools are pretty easy to find, lots of youtube videos. Deciding on traditional decoy making or more outside the box. Decorative or functional, or both. I guess what I'm saying is we need more information.
 
my first carvings were ducks, but not decoys, miniature flying birds. The wingspans were about 10 inches and I could carve them with exacto knives and eventually graduated up to a dremel with a cable hand piece. Now I have three Foredoms and a variety of carving and sanding tips.

I rarely carve by hand anymore, but it can be expensive to start up. I never had a Foredom the first 10 years, so you can Iive without it. Various wood types are important choices depending on what you are wanting to do. I like basswood for carving animals like pronghorn, deer, moose and caribou and run the grain lengthways in the legs as much as possible, it's less likely to split than other wood. I have mixed feelings about tupelo after getting a really bad board that was so hard not even my kutzalls wanted to deal with it. I love sugar pine for fish carvings. The nice thing about any rotary file is that it cares not about wood grain when it comes to decoratives and a wood burner is a good tool to clean up the fuzzies. It's extremely rare that I pick up a piece of sandpaper, opting for sanding cones on a mandrel in the rotary file.

Probably the most important tool is a respirator, not a M95, which do little to nothing, but a cartridge style mask, that's what you want.
 
I have been carving since the 70's. One tool I've always used is a good band saw and various tooth profile blades. Cutting out the basic bird is so much easier. From there I have a few draw knives and a large assortment of rasps and files. Once I have the basic shape I use several Dremel (each with flex shafts and tipped with various size sanding drums).
That is my style. But consider where to start. How do you plan on cutting out the basic shape (saw?). How will you do the basic shaping (power or hand tools)?
 
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