Full Guide on How to Choose Wood Carving Tools for Beginners

Introduction

Thinking about wood carving as a hobby to try out or how to start wood carving? Perfect. You’re in the right place to cover basic questions. You’ll get to know what are the best wood carving tools for beginners right away.

Here you will find some kind of beginners’ wood carving guide. We will tell you how to choose the best tools for each type of carving and what criteria to focus on. However, if you already know what you want from the tool – we strongly suggest you to read our review articles, in which we share our practical experience of using and pros and cons of each manufacturer.

---

What is wood carving? It’s an art form with lots of potential to amaze you and give you a feeling of immense satisfaction. If you keep doing it, an aesthetic and useful carving will soon blossom as an output.

Wood carving requires to use different techniques, styles, and tools in the process.

Since you are a beginner and want to adopt wood carving as a hobby initially, then a decent collection of tools in a wood carving beginner kit will certainly be a great and smart choice of you. 

But considering how hard it can be for a newbie, our ultimate guide on best wood carving tools for beginners will give you a profound level of understanding and will help you with the extensively researched best options to choose from.

Our main goal is to open this new exciting hobby to you so you could jump into it without breaking the bank and long search done.

Plus, we have taken care of every essential aspect that needs to be considered for before buying

So, let’s make our guide simple while starting with basic wood carving tools for beginners.

What Are The Basic Wood Carving Tools For Beginners To Be Included In The Wood carving Starter Kit?

Learn the basic wood carving tools to start with!

Do not take your step forward before knowing these basic wood carving tools for beginners. They will help you achieve the best possible success in your passion.

As for a beginner, we would highly advise you to choose a set of few tools as you can always add up to your needs in the future. Well, the tools given below are must-haves to be in your starter kit.

1. Chisel

Chisel is considered to be a tool that requires thorough learning, comes with a detailed cutting edge over its end. It is available in different sizes ranging from very small to large chisels.

Some of them are used for roughing and removing large amounts of wood while some are required to make tiny details. Usually, a beginner starts with large knives and then goes working with small detailed knives. It means that large chisels are quite important in the list of beginner tools to buy. 

2. Spoon Carving Tools

As a beginner, we’d recommend you to start with spoon carving. It’s easy, interesting and practical as you get some kitchen woodenware at the same time. Below listed spoon carving tools that can help you making better spoons with remarkable cuts and hollows. Consider and decide to include them within your starter kit.

• Gouge

It is a unique kind of tool in wood carving with curved edges to carve out rounds, hollows and sweeping curves. The head of gouges is mostly bold and tough to be used for specific purposes. As expected, they too have a different range of sizes and designs to be worth considering before buying especially as a beginner. For the purpose, you can get some help from the best wood carving knife beginners list given below. 

• Hook Knife

Hook knives are mainly used for spoon carving. Well, you can also call it a crooked knife as it’s the odd one in the list. So, it’s a kind of dominant tool for spoon carving because the handle and design are so much comfortable that beginners will find no hard issues while using the knife. Its cutting edges are also curved to give that astonishing spoon carve finish.

• Sloyd Knife

Sloyd knives are known to the best knives to beautifully carve or rough out the wooden surface. They also come in the category of spoon carving knives. You can’t imagine a long-lasting sculpting experience without a thin and sharp sloyd knife. The knife enables to make great cuts within hollow parts and carve out rolling edges. Plus it’s badly needed for the spoon handle work.

3. Whittling knife for beginners

It’s last but the most interesting part of basic wood carving tools for beginners. To learn about whittling knives, you should go through a slight difference between carving and whittling.

However, whittling refers to an American term which ultimately means wood carving. But, for the good details, you can say that carving is a kind of hobby while whittling is a kind of passion or profession. 

To get mastery over complex carving processes, a whittling knife is worth considered even as a beginner tool. You can find them in different shapes and sizes. Even sometimes, the chip-carving knives or detail knives are called as whittling knives in the chapter of wood carving. 

4. Chip Carving Knives

As you move with your wood carving journey, you will start realizing that chip carving knives are one of the best tools out there. They are simple to use and come with an ergonomic shape. A chip carving knife is used to remove little chips of material from a flat wooden surface. 

These knives are normally small to fit confidently  your palm. The shape can be straight or slightly bent based upon the purpose that whether you want to create decorative patterns or do letter carving. Basically, you should adopt chip carving from the very beginning while going with straightforward chip carving knives.

Now, take a look at some of the essential factors to be considered for the best wood carving tools for beginners.

What To Look For In The Best Wood Carving Tools For Beginners?

To make a good decision on what tools to buy as a beginner, you should consider the following factors before buying wood carving tools. It will help you to pick the high quality and durable wood carving tools.

1. Quality Assurance

Quality assurance is the first mandatory consideration while buying wood carving tools for beginners. And, even professionals are going to matter for this point. No one wants to grab a tool they have to purchase again and again.

After all, the quality tools always feature notable blades with wood handles in better condition. A tool that doesn’t only last long but also holds its edge is what you should go for. The material should handle itself against hardwood and not only softwood for the purpose. 

2. Type of wood carving tool

Take a note of what you are buying and only go for the basic wood carving tools for beginners as we have mentioned earlier. Since you are not a professional and just starting your journey, these tools will help you to come a long way and get your stunning complexities done on wood. For instance, you would surely miss out on professional tools such as veiner, riffler or fluter, etc.

3. Number of wood carving tools for beginners in one set

How many tools should be in your starter kit? If there are too many or too few, then it may not be a good option for a beginner to have a chance upon. Instead, look for a decent number of tools in the set. And, those tools should not be confusing you shortly due to their lavish range of designs. So, simple is the best for the beginner as it will help you to understand wood carving in a better way.

4. Sharpness of blades

If the blades are not going to be sharp, they will surely affect your results and may ruin the whole purpose of wood carving. However, the aspect of sharpness needs to be maintained regularly. But, at the time of purchase, a sharp blade is more eye-catchy than the one having a dull edge. So, make sure your wood carving beginner kit is equipped with razor-sharp tools. 

5. Versatility

The versatile tools let you expand the talent and go beyond limits. Choosing the versatile tools means the ones with which you can do a lot more in wood carving. Thus, if you want a tool to be utilized for various projects, select the one with versatility in blades. A new form of artistic wood carving can be made from them and help you explore more opportunities. Our basic aim here is to tell you that sticking only to one tool doesn’t mean versatility. 

6. Security Grip

Finishing of handles says a lot more about the whole tool. To check the security grip, you can also consider the quality of the tang. Now, tang resembles how the handle is attached to the tool. It can be a full tang as well as a partial tang.

Full tang tools are known to the best providers of safety grip as compared to the partial tang. A secure grip of the tool is also worth noting to prevent its accidental sliding.

Conclusion

We hope you understand now what are the main things to be considered when choosing right tools for carving wood. Check out our Top 7 Wood Carving Tools for Beginners Review.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the best wood carving tools? 

We have examined the Top 7 Best Wood carving Tools with pre-made kits. They are eagerly waiting to be your next best choice because of the exciting features available with them.

1. BeaverCraft S13 Wood carving Set Tools – A set of three spoon carving knives
2. Flexcut KN500 Starter Set Carving Knives – Set of three-chip carving knives
3. Helvie Carving Knives Starter Set – Variety of options
4. Xacto X5175 Wood carving Set Deluxe – Contains different wood carving tools
5. BeaverCraft S14 Wood carving Set Tools – Set of three different wood carving knives
6. Flexcut KN250 Knives Set Deluxe – Variety of high-quality wood carving knives
7. Morakniv Wood carving Knives Set – Set of two stainless steel wood carving knives

What are the best wood carving tools for beginners?

Wood carving Starter Set is normally a smart choice for beginners. It will definitely serve as a better solution for beginners in the following way. 

Our top three pics: 

BeaverCraft S13 Wood carving Set Tools 

Flexcut KN500 Starter Set Carving Knives

BeaverCraft S14 Wood carving Set Tools

Who makes the best wood carving knives?

To make a good decision on what tools to buy as a beginner, you should consider the following factors before buying wood carving tools. It will help you to pick the high quality and durable wood carving tools

1. Quality Assurance
2. Type of wood carving tool
3. Number of tools in the set
4. Sharpness of blades
5. Versatility
6. Security Grip

What tools are needed for wood carving?

As a beginner, we’d recommend you to start with spoon carving. It’s easy, interesting and practical as you get some kitchen woodenware at the same time. Below listed spoon carving tools that can help you making better spoons with remarkable cuts and hollows. Consider and decide to include them within your starter kit.

What are the tools used in wood carving? 

Do not take your step forward before knowing these basic wood carving tools for beginners. They will help you achieve the best possible success in your passion. We can name a few of those: chisels, whittling knives, spoon carving knives, gouges, chip carving knives, hook knives etc.

What kind of knife is good for carving wood? 

To get mastery over complex carving processes, a whittling knife is worth considered even as a beginner tool. You can find them in different shapes and sizes. Even sometimes, the chip-carving knives or detail knives are called as whittling knives in the chapter of wood carving. 

What is the best whittling knife?

The general sloyd knife C4 from BeaverCraft S13 Wood carving Set Tools. The brand is a master in fulfilling the requirements of both the professionals as well as the beginners. The company originates from Ukraine, which is rare thing, most tools are made in China. This tool set comes with three spoon carving knives and some stropping supplies. The full carving set provides a kind of shout out to the lovers of bowl or spoon carvers to think twice before ignoring this multi-purpose kit.

How do I start whittling wood?

What’s the difference between whittling and carving? To learn about whittling knives, you should go through a slight difference between carving and whittling. However, whittling refers to an American term which ultimately means wood carving. But, for the good details, you can say that carving is a kind of hobby while whittling is a kind of passion or profession.