First let me say I do not consider myself a carver, I would call myself a guy who cuts wood in an effort to make something that resembles something someone might recognize. So, I do some relief carving to embellish turnings and some flat work. I have a small set of pheil tools and a mallet for this and for the most part they do what I need. Next, I work a 7 days on and 7 days off schedule so I decided a couple years ago to start carving spoons when I'm out of town. This is ongoing and I enjoy this. I have 3 hook type knifes with different sweeps and two soyld knives. They are made by Del Stubbs at pine wood forge. They are fantastic tool I just keep them honed and they stay nice and sharp. Now to the question. I caught the bug for carving these little country type fellows. Hillbillies,wizard type dudes etc. Best I can tell this is called chip carving although I kind of think it is whittling. I want to add this to my spoon carving when out of town so I have been watching some you tube videos trying to figure out what I might need. For heavy roughing in I think one of the soylds will be fine but I think I need a knife with a straight blade. Through my research They have all kinds, detail , med detail, small detail, roughing etc. Lengths starting at one inch up to about 1-3/4 I don't think I want to do more than a couple. The size I want to carve would be from 2x2x6 inch blocks down to 1x1x4 possibly. I do want quality good knife that strops well. I have heard of Helvie, OCC and several others. I'm hoping I have outlined this enough that you folks can see what I'm trying to do. So any suggestion are welcome thanks for reading this post.