Can anyone recommend a good woodcarving set?

[Machiavelli]

I have been inspired by some of the fantastic recent wood carvings (Wayland, etc) and want to get a set of small carving chisels to add some detail to my own efforts.

Any recommendations? I have been looking at the Axminster set, but it’s potentially a bit more than I need.

 

[Nice65]

I get a lot of emails from Beavercraft. I don’t have any experience of their tools. They look about right as a starting point to me.

Wood carving tools manufacturer

Ukrainian manufacturer of wood carving tools. Whittling knives, Chisels, Wood Carving Kits, Accessories by BeaverCraft. Woodworking hand tools shipping to US, Europe and all around the World

beavercrafttools.com

 

[Kepis]

Most of my carving is done with knives rather than chisels and i really rate the tools i have from Ben Orford & Nic Westerman, i also use Mora an awful lot too.

Buuut, i do use chisels now and again and more often than not i just use a really cheap set from ebay or Amazon, something like these, they just need a wee bit of fettling to bring them up to shaving sharp.

Amazon Cheapo Chisels

I also use palm chisels, again a really cheap set from Ebay/Amazon, they took a bit of work to get them to where i wanted them, but they work well, something like these;

Amazon Palm Chisels

On the posh side of things i also use and really rate my Flexcut Carving Jack and my Flexcut gouges and knives, not cheap by any means but really good, i've used but don't own Pfeil & Narex tools too and they are superb but pricey.

As Rich said above Beavercraft offer different sets of tools, but i cant say ive ever been that impressed with any of them, poor grinds, poor geometry and poor quality, but it's horses for courses and a bit like Marmite, some love it, some hate it, personally, i don't like Beavercraft stuff, but your mileage may vary.

 

[Wayland]

My most used tools are a set of four chip carving knives from Proops Bros in Sheffield.

https://www.proopsbrothers.com/index.asp?function=search

( Type “Chip Carving” into the search )

Cheap, decent steel and easy to sharpen.

Not the “best” or fanciest, certainly not the most expensive tools I own but consistently the ones I reach for from my tool roll for 80% of the shaping cuts I make.

I also have a good whittling knife from Dave Budd ( Far left ) that I use for a lot of the roughing and smoothing work. Sharp as a sharp thing.

The rest of this collection have been acquired from a mixture of places and generally only get used for the odd, unusual cut that I cannot manage with the ones already mentioned.