Joiner's gouges in the 18th century

[greg Forster]

Several years back at "WW in the 18th c- Tables", Mack Headley mentioned a graduated set of gouges a joiner or country furniture maker would have, enabling them to carve a basic scroll. Does anyone know the gouges that would be needed? A set of 7 or 8 is what I remember being discussed.

[Mike Henderson]

Several years back at "WW in the 18th c- Tables", Mack Headley mentioned a graduated set of gouges a joiner or country furniture maker would have, enabling them to carve a basic scroll. Does anyone know the gouges that would be needed? A set of 7 or 8 is what I remember being discussed.
If by "scroll" you mean a volute, I generally use much flatter gouges. When outlining the volute, I'll start with a #2 on the outside of the volute and gradually work up to maybe a #5 on the inside. I generally use narrow gouges, maybe 5mm to 10mm, rarely wider, and make stab cuts side by side to outline the volute.

Then to clear the wood to form the shape of the volute, I'll mostly use #2 and #3 gouges. In clearing the waste, you don't want too much curve because you'll wind up with a bunch of small "trenches" side by side. The flatter gouges allow you to leave a much smoother surface. Even if you sand the final product, the flatter surface is easier to sand than the trenches.

For all my carving, I find that I use the lower number gouges the most. The high number gouges are mostly "speciality" tools to achieve certain effects. When you need them, nothing else will do. But the bulk of the work is done with the lower number gouges.

Mike

[added note] You can find a paper on how to lay out a volute here (http://www.springerlink.com/content/r61qh2354m56qt31/fulltext.pdf). On a volute, the radius of the curve is constantly changing so trying to use a wide gouge (of constant radius) to outline the volute doesn't work well. That's why I use narrow gouges to lay out the volute.

[one more added note] Here (http://www.classicist.org/handbook/15-Ionic-Volute.html)'s a web site with layout info. But don't get too anal about the layout. What counts is how it looks. I generally just draw them freehand.

[greg Forster]

Thanks Mike,
This is just the info I was looking for.

[Ken Werner]

Hi Mike,
Thanks for posting that, Very interesting.
Ken