Chisel and gouge care,& quality rasps?

As far as stropping gouges without power, cut into a pieces of basswood or poplar with the gouge you want to sharpen and rub said cut with compound. Do not sand it. An errant grain of 80 grit embedded in the wood doesn't help the tool any. Especially when you don't notice it until you've given it a dozen swipes across it.
 
Mr Rutgers, Thats a good tip. A block of wood with all the grooves for your gouges. I would add one more thing. They have a compound, Dave can correct me if I am wrong, called Clover leaf. This compound comes in various grits. It comes in small cans. Machinist use it to polish metal. That compound in the groves would sharpen the gouges. A word of warning to any neat freaks use very little. The compound is in a grease. A small dab will do.

All this discussion on sharpening is good. The first method I mentioned is what I would suggest to a begining sharpener. After that because there is more than one way to skin a cat. Some of the tools shuch as power stroups, paper wheels, can be added. I use a power wet stone. I also have one of those sit on wet stones for bigger knives (if you ever want to sharpen your swords or spears) stop in. One product not menioned, 3M makes a polishing wheel for stainless. You can put that wheel on a hand drill.I have never used it on a chisel but have sharpen a jack knive with it many times. You can buy them at any Fashenal store or most hardware stores.

Another thing not mentioned is a double bevel. Most people are aquainted with this on knives. This also works on chisels and gouges. However this not some thing I would suggest to some one just starting out sharpening. For advanced carving it can be useful.
 
After my long winded talk on grinding, I agree with Tod, once I have the tool in the shape I want, most of the time, it's a few swipes on the strop and back to work. All the tedius grinding and honing takes place on a new tool, or a new to me tool that needs work. Repeated stropping will eventually round over the edge, making it too blunt to cut correctly, then it's back to the stone to reestablish the correct bevel.
All new plane and spoke shave irons require flattening, or at least removal of course texture from factory surface. It doesn't matter how polished the bevel side is if the flat side is rough, you'll get a rough cut. This isn't that important if you're going to later sand the same surface anyway, but if the plane or gouge or whatever is creating the finished surface, it's real important. Many chisels and gouges have too abrupt bevel angle to my liking, so I regrind.
All that I've said is in context of the type of work I do. I've not done much decoy making, I've made one so far, which is the focus of most of the guys here. I spend most of my time building guns or furniture, so I'm after a different result. There's no real flat surface on a decoy except the bottom, while a rifle stock has many straight lines, and parts of geometric shapes like cones and cylinders. That first decoy at one point was starting to look very boatlike, my habit for hard lines from stock shaping didn't work for a duck, I had to change my thinking to get it right. My instructor, Bill Antilla, was very helpfull with this.
 
After my long winded talk on grinding, I agree with Tod, once I have the tool in the shape I want, most of the time, it's a few swipes on the strop and back to work. All the tedius grinding and honing takes place on a new tool, or a new to me tool that needs work. Repeated stropping will eventually round over the edge, making it too blunt to cut correctly, then it's back to the stone to reestablish the correct bevel.
All new plane and spoke shave irons require flattening, or at least removal of course texture from factory surface. It doesn't matter how polished the bevel side is if the flat side is rough, you'll get a rough cut. This isn't that important if you're going to later sand the same surface anyway, but if the plane or gouge or whatever is creating the finished surface, it's real important. Many chisels and gouges have too abrupt bevel angle to my liking, so I regrind.
All that I've said is in context of the type of work I do. I've not done much decoy making, I've made one so far, which is the focus of most of the guys here. I spend most of my time building guns or furniture, so I'm after a different result. There's no real flat surface on a decoy except the bottom, while a rifle stock has many straight lines, and parts of geometric shapes like cones and cylinders. That first decoy at one point was starting to look very boatlike, my habit for hard lines from stock shaping didn't work for a duck, I had to change my thinking to get it right. My instructor, Bill Antilla, was very helpfull with this.
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Hey Matt, only reason I pointed it out was that I used to think I needed to "sharpen" my tools every time they were dull (i.e., grind them down). Lot of elbow grease and steel wasted.
 
Yeah, I wavered between sharpening too often, and waiting too long, and not always sure when it needed it. Now I sometimes sharpen just to get away from what I've been doing for a few minutes. The mental break can help if I'm unsure of what I want to do to proceed with a project, and time spent at stone or stop isn't wasted. I'm building a shutzen rifle for my dad, it's not a style I've built before, so there's some real head scratching at times with it.
 
Matt what kind of wood are you using on that Shutzen rifle. I built a 50 cal. long barrel and used Maple. Sharp chisels with maple are a must. That so far is the only rifle I have built. I fully understand the comment about the head scratching. The rifle I built is one of a kind. Drew out my own patterns. I shoot left handed. flint DurEgg lock. Bought lock and silver from Track of the wolf. Used ideas from Beuckle and Old American Rifles by Srumway (spelling on both is wrong, sorry) Building your own rifle is a adventure. You build the first one so you know what to do on the next one or maybe what not to do.

That Shutzen rifle would be a interesting build. In the 1800 hundreds Milwaukee was a hot bed of shooting with that kind of rifle.
 
The stock's american walnut, a blank my dad gave me. He later gave me a .42 cal barrel, so I decided to make a rifle for him. He likes shooting cartridge shutzen, so I decided to make a muzzleloading shutzen for him. I've made more mistakes on this one than any gun I've built, so I've regretted picking this style frequently, but now that it's nearly finished I'm glad I did it. I may build another that fits me some day, my dad is 4 inches taller than me, with longer arms, and right handed. I'm left handed, and the gun's way too long for me, so even if he wills it back to my I won't be shooting it.
I bought an L & R shutzen lock for it, factory made single set trigger, I'd buid a simple double set if I build another. The trigger guard and butt plate I bought at a gun show, but are identical to the ones sold by Track of the Wolf. After I'd inletted the trigger guard, an old guy I knew said the trigger guard should be hooked under a plate at the forward part, so it can be easily removed to remove and clean/adjust the trigger. So I remade a plate that fit the mortice of the existing forward trigger guard plate, sawed off the original, and reshaped the remaining metal into a hook. A hell of alot of extra work that won't be noticed by most people, but I much more satisfied with it. Plus I had a few small gaps with the original inletting, so I made the new plate slightly larger to get a better wood to metal fit.
Shutzens had a false muzzle, that allows easier loading. I turned the muzzle end round and cut off the last inch or so for a false muzzle, turned the muzzle and false muzzle true. I poured a lead slug in the muzzle end, and shoved it an inch or so out the muzzle, and used this to index the cut off false muzzle with the rifling in the barrel. I lined everything up, epoxied them back together, and drilled for index pins from the muzzle end of the false muzzle, and heated it to break the epoxie bond. I then coned out the bore of the false muzzle to allow easy loading. This was the only thing that went off without a hitch on this rifle.
When I drilled the ramrod hole, it ran off center toward the bottom of the stock, not far enough to break through, but too damn far, not leaving enough meat for inletting the trigger guard. I eventually gave up on having a ramrod on a gun that'll never be shot anywhere except at the rifle range, and many shutzens were loaded with a bench rod anyway, so it's still historicaly acurate without a ramrod.
Nobody makes a cap box of the style I wanted, so I sawed one out of steel. What a pain in the butt this was to get it right, and I have some minor gaps on the inletting, but overall I'm ok with it.
I'm trying to get it ready for checkering and engraving. At the end of this comming week is a muzzleloading gunmakers fair near Corvalis, Or. Thursday and Friday are all day classes on both checkering and engraving. I've done both, but I could use improvement on both. So I'd better get off the computer, and get back to work on it.
 
Pattern maker's cabinet files #49, #50 are the ones to get. These work much better that the standard type wood rasp, they are less aggressive. Check with some of the wood worker suppliers to find them.

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