Whittling Tools That Hold an Edge
These inexpensive, easy-to-make carving tools can be even better than store-bought ones.
May/June 1985
By Glenn Jacobs
These inexpensive, easy-to-make carving tools can be even better than store-bought ones!
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Having a set of fine instruments for carving chunks of wood into shapes that fit your fantasies is as easy as this: Go to your local hardware store and buy some cement nails (also known as cut nails or square-cut nails). Since they come in several sizes, get a few big and a few little ones. That will set you back about four bits. (That's 50¢ to all you young whippersnappers.)
While you're at the shop, also purchase a $3.00 container of propane and—if you don't already have one—a propane torch, which is a fine investment. (It's good, for example, for fixing radiators or unfreezing copper waterlines.) Or, if money is tight, borrow the torch from a friend.
GOING TO WORK
Back at home, round up a pair of pliers, a fairly heavy hammer, that little piece of railroad iron you always thought would come in handy as an anvil, and a tin can of water. Then fire up the torch and, holding one of the nails with the pliers, heat the head redhot. The other end, the point, will later go into your tool's wooden handle. (In fact, you might want to epoxy the nail into a pre-drilled hole in, say, a hunk of broomstick before shaping it.) Beat the head flat with the hammer. Heat again and beat again until it looks like it's thin enough to have possibilities. (To form the round "spoon" of a gouge-type tool, beat it into a concave curve, or around a convex curve, on your anvil—and if you've only whittled with a pocketknife, you can't even imagine how handy it is to have a gouge as well.) Let the steel cool slowly, then use a bastard file to produce the shape you desire.
Now you'll want to heat the same metal until it's glowing orange. If it only gets red, no matter how high you turn up the fire, set the gas bottle in a pan of hot water for a minute or so to activate the fuel. Make sure, though, that this water is no hotter than you can put your hands into. Then, when the business-end of your future cutting tool is nice and orange, drop it into the water to harden it. (You've probably heard that you have to "draw the temper" after quenching if you don't want brittle steel, but it's not important in this case, because you won't be putting that much stress on these tools. Even so, you shouldn't use a file to sharpen this homemade blade after quenching it or you could ruin the file.)
