The right tools for the right job

It should be noted that the main tools used in wood carving are gouges, chisels, knives and riffers. But that say that it is also nice to have a fill power tools on hand to speed up the operation. Called "roughing out" stage. This can include but are not necessary to have but are nice to use to speed the operation. These are the chop saw to cut materials to rough length, the scroll or saber saw if curves are involved, and for those really large projects "the chain saw."

Gouges:

There are basically three groups. A gouge is basically a chisel with a curved cutting edge.

Shaft - Straight, Curved,Spoon, Backbent

width - the width of the cutting edge

Sweep - the curve on the cutting edge, from almost flat to U shaped (numbers 3 - 9)

No - one is expected to own all the possible permutations, so start with an all - purpose selection. Example

straight 3/4 inch number 4, Straight 1 1/2 inch no 5 and a Curved 3/8 inch number 8.

Knives:  

A curved blade is long and pointed is long and pointed enough to get into tight corners, and the shape of the lets you make a real fist round it so you put a lot of power into the cuts. Some f the Japanese knives look similar to the Swedish Sloyd, but not as chunky. These cold possibly be used by the ladies perhaps.

Beware.... some tool suppliers often put "Chip Carving Knives" in with other carving tools. The chip carving knives have flat blades and are used and suitable for wood chip carving (engraving flat surfaces).

Rifflers and Rasps

A riffer is a small curved file with various shapes at each end, designed for smoothing out small curved places. The most useful shapes are the Ratstail and ski shapes.

Rasps are similar but much bigger, for quick basic shaping of flat or convex surfaces.

Power tools

Angle grinder is useful for scooping out if an Arbortech wood cutter blade is used. Make sure you get the grinder that is strong enough but light enough to hold in one hand. It should be noted that this can be more violent the the chainsaw. The instructions say keep both hands on your tool and THEY ARE NOT KIDDING.

Dremel 300 or ohers small multi purpose rotary tools:

The Dremel 300 variable speed rotary tool is very versatile and is small enough to hold like a pen. It lets you set the speed to control how much or how little wood your diamond cutter removes from the smallest recesses. Make sure to have a good selection of small drill bits and sanding disk, drums. You will need the drill bits for pierce carvings.

Other items to have on hand. A hand plane - to bring the stock down in thickness. If you have power planner - this works to.

For the large carving (the big 3 D ones that stand 6 ft tall or larger)

Chainsaw - This is noisy, oil splattered and potentially violent assault, but with lots of practice you can do your early roughing out in hours rather than days. Gasoline chainsaws are more powerful than electric but with the combustion 2 - stroke exhaust fumes make them unsuitable to use indoors.

Sculpture or Carving

There are two broad camps. There are those from an art background who include wood as one of their mediums, them there are those from the woodworking background who include "Carving in the round" as one of their activities. Sculpture implies starting with a creative design, which is then turned into 3D reality by whatever means. Carving more implies an activity, the end product of which may or may not be particularly artistic. In carving...What the heck? its just semantics.