Make your own Wood Carving Tools

Blacksmithing Workshops: Forge Carving Tools

LEARN TO DESIGN, FORGE, HARDEN, HANDLE AND SHARPEN CUSTOM WOOD CARVING TOOLS. THEY WILL BECOME YOUR FAVORITES

There is a special satisfaction in carving wood with a tool that you have forged, shaped, hardened, sharpened, and handled yourself. In this four-day workshop, you’ll learn the traditional skills of blacksmithing as you forge your own custom woodcarving tools from tool steel.

My German woodcarving teacher, Frederick Brunner, forged his own carving tools. One evening, he proudly showed me the first tool he had forged when he was thirteen years old—a tool he was still using in his eighties. That made a lasting impression on me. He was not only an accomplished artist and woodcarver, but also an expert mechanic who understood his tools and how they worked.

In this workshop, you’ll experience that tradition firsthand. You’ll learn how to heat and forge tool steel, shape and refine the cutting edge, harden and temper the steel, sharpen the finished tool, and finally make and fit a wooden handle. Along the way, you’ll develop a much better understanding of what makes a carving tool work—its shape, geometry, steel, balance, and cutting edge.

You don’t need a large blacksmith shop to continue doing this on your own. A small propane forge and a relatively simple setup can give you the ability to make specialized carving tools for your own work.

This workshop is about more than making a few tools. It is about becoming a more complete craftsman—understanding the tool from the inside out and gaining the ability to make a tool for the work you want to do.

By the end of the workshop, you’ll leave with hand-forged carving tools that you made yourself, along with the knowledge and skills to continue designing and making tools on your own. There is something very different about reaching for a carving tool at your bench and knowing that your own hands made both the tool and the carving it creates.

These hand-forged wood carving tools may very well become the favorites in your collection. Guaranteed.

The Calvo Wood Carving School is located in Gloucester, Massachusetts on Cape Ann, about 50 minutes north of Logan Airport in Boston. Students travel to our blacksmithing and woodcarving workshops from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey, as well as from across the United States. If you've been searching for a blacksmithing class, tool making workshop, or a class where you can learn to make your own woodcarving tools, this is a specialized workshop that can be worth traveling for. I've had students come to Gloucester from nearly every state in the country to study traditional hand skills and craftsmanship at the school.

Student Gallery