Carving Axes?

[Sean Reilly]

I'm getting into carving wooden spoons and am looking at carving axes. I was wondering if anyone has an opinion on them? I have seen two different ones at highland woodworking http://www.highlandwoodworking.com/gransfors-bruk-carving-hatchet.aspx / http://www.highlandwoodworking.com/swedishcarvingaxe.aspx and one at LN https://www.lie-nielsen.com/product/toms-toolbox/carving-axe?node=4225 . Also the Swedish style seems to have more of a curve that comes over the top of the handle, does anyone have a preference? The swedish one also comes with a specific grind for right or left handed people, if anyone has any thoughts on that please let me know, I'm not sure it's something I need if I'm just starting out.

Thanks in advance for you advice

[Steve Bates]

I've looked into those myself, Sean. I'm a cheapskate when it's something new to me. I've read that starting out, any hatchet will do because EVERYTHING at first is a learning curve. With experience, I'll learn what I want in the tool. I can say you'll want a lighter weight tool because you'll need to develop and strengthen muscles as you're learning to use it. Not a feather weight because you'll want to have gravity in your favor to make the chips fly.

I haven't much more experience than you, but I've chopped a few crooks into spoon shaped firewood. Good luck!

[Tony Shea]

Check out Country Workshop tools. I personally really want the Svante Little Viking axe but still haven't dropped the $ on it. I currently use a GB small forest axe, GB Wildlife Hatchet, and my favorite right now is the Rosseli Axe. Even though the Rosseli has a small head the shape of the bevels and the overall design of this axe is just great for carving. I have grown to really like this axe for spoon carving. It is also a beast when I need it be, it will split of large chunks when needed with more ease than any other axes I use.

I would also check out their other tools, such a great resource for this type of woodworking and Drew is a great guy to deal with. Some of these tools you may need to wait for though because stock is relatively limited.

[Karl Andersson]

Hi Sean,
I've done plenty of spoon carving and started with a simple camp axe (double-bevel with the cutting edge only slightly wider than the poll) then accumulated ones like you've linked to with more "beard" (the cutting edge swells much wider than the poll in the direction of the handle). For spoon rough shaping and even most final shaping, a sharp double-bevel hatchet of any shape will work fine - although bearded blades allow you to get your hand up behind the cutting edge when you're shaving wood in the more refined shaping stages (you don't keep chopping, the axe is used like a heavy shave in most of the shaping) so you have a bit finer control. To me, having the blade swell above the poll, as you point out, doesn't make much of a difference in spoon work - as long as the edge is convex so you can make shearing cuts when pushing the axe straight, it doesn't seem to make a difference whether you get that upper wing on the blade.

Now I will warn you, as I found out, that spoon carving leads to other nefarious tasks (after all, making only spoons can be a bit boring after a while) - so you may just end up carving bowls as well as cutting boards and other larger treen objects. Wasting away the inside of a bowl and shaping the ends (all cross-grain work on a log) is grunt work, and that is where you'll want the advantages of these carving axes. the best one I have for bowl work is an antique Austrian forester's axe, shaped a lot like the LN one you show but without the cutout behind the beard - it swells above and below the poll and has a deeply convex blade (about a 4" radius) with a double bevel. The curved cutting edge is about 5 inches long and will sink into the wood easily when chopping from either direction - so I don't have to switch sides of the log when wasting the inside of a bowl. I do have single-bevel hatchets, but I haven't found them to be useful for rough shaping and only really use them for flattening the bottoms and squaring up blanks before shaping with a double-bevel. Single bevels also tend to ride the grain more and it's harder to cut inside a curve with them.

These are my experiences - I hope it's understandable, and of course, YMMV. please let me know if you have any questions
Karl

for example:
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[Jim Belair]

Here's a blog post Robin Wood did on the subject a few years ago.

http://www.robin-wood.co.uk/wood-craft-blog/2010/07/25/which-is-the-best-axe-for-carving-bushcraft-general-use/

And Karl, those are lovely spoons. I've never seen them with painted decoration. Does the style have a particular origin, ethnic or otherwise?

[Karl Andersson]

Thanks Jim,
my wife did the painting and she's eastern European, but she didn't follow any specific ethnic patterns, just what matched her taste. We did look online before deciding on decorations and settled on some carving with paint as well - which we saw on many antique and modern European examples (the ones Jogge Sundqvist sells on his site are almost all painted - or at least they were a few years ago).
Karl

[Allen Jordan]

Here's one I made the handle for and posted recently:

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?239271-Forged-Carving-Axe&highlight=

[Sean Reilly]

Thanks everyone for the replies. I have a lot to think about. I looks to me like it mostly comes down to weight and cost. The cheapest and most expensive both weigh in at 2.2 lbs while the middle one comes in at .7 lbs. I think I'll start out with something cheap and try out the double bevel first than try the single bevel to see what I think, while doing that I'll make a decision on weight. Karl those bowls look really nice, can't wait to start making some of those.