Quote Originally Posted by Mike Berti View Post
In general there are two options: use power tools or hand tools.

1) Power tools: carving disks made by companies like King Arthur, Arbotech or Saburrtooth. There are YouTubes showing the use of these tools. I have a disk from King Arthur tools and while quite expensive it does the job. You just need to practice a little to get used to it.

2) Traditional chair making with hand tools: specially made tools of the trade are: A scorp (or inshave) a Travisher and a (now discontinued) tool made by Veritas - the pullshave. (I had it for some time and it performed quite well). As always you need to practice and get used to these traditional tools. One of the better makers of these tools is Ray Iles from UK.
Keegan, Mike has summarised it well here.

It sounds as though you prefer hand tools. My on tools include a shop made adze (which is quite new and I have yet to use it on a seat), Ray Iles scorp, Pfeil #7 gouge, Veritas pull shave, a couple of modified heel shaves (different curves), and a two travishers I made based on the design by Peter Galbert (different curves).

I thought to make a radius plane, such as the HNT Gordon, but realised that these are for smoothing, and the travishers + scrapers do the job well. If you want cheaper than the HNT Gordon (Terry makes beautiful planes), Lee Valley sell a squirrel-tail radius block plane.

Regards from Perth

Derek