AN INTRODUCTION TO WOODCUT TOOLS

Woodcut tools are made in New Zealand using the finest materials available and have been designed for woodturners by a woodturner.

 

I have been using a selection of Woodcut's tools for over 15 years, I first saw them on a trip to New Zealand in 1990. I spent a very enjoyable day and a half in Rick Taylor's workshop in Rotarua, I was an very enthusiastic hobbist that Rick very kindly let loose in his in his studio. I turned a Walnut nutcracker bowl as a present for the people we were staying with using Rick's Woodcut gouges. and his Geiger lathe. I remember I bought a 19mm bowl gouge from him when I left, which is still in use today. A year or so later Rick and his partner Sue visited the UK, Rick brought with him the first deep adjustable hollowing tool that I had seen, it seemed only fair to repay Rick's workshop hospitality so we had a huge play in my unheated workshop (it was the middle of winter) which Rick videoed and took home with him.

A couple of months later I went to one of the national woodworking shows and was watching two blokes demonstrate some hollowing tools when one of them looked up and recognised me from the video that Rick had taken. It was Ken Port, the then owner of Woodcut Tools and Shane Hewitt his demonstrator who where at the show promoting the Mighty Midget which was a less expensive version of the DAHT that I had. It was good to put names to faces.

Over the next few years I won a few national turning competitions with vessels and hollow forms made using the Woodcut hollowing tools, most of them quite deep, up to 24 inches (600mm). The piece on the left is one of them, which is 24" tall in Yew and Bloodwood. They are still my tool of choice for medium to very large pieces and I since have seen the tools evolve into one of the easiest to use and most robust hollowing tools available today. A simple explanation of the Pro-Forme hollowing tool is to liken it to a plane or spokeshave mounted on the end of a round bar, when cutting it will only take a shaving as thick as you have set, which means that you can not get a ‘dig-in'.

Like any new tool the user needs to familiarise themselves with it. When I am teaching I quite often get students to waste a lump of wood using the straight Pro-Forme tool without trying to make something.That way they get used to the tool without being frightened of messing up an item that they have invested time or in a precious piece of wood. All too often we buy a new tool and want to make something immediately without practicing or getting familiar with it and then blame the tool when things go wrong. The other tip I give students is to start with an open topped form rather like a large brandy glass so that they can see what the tool is doing rather than working blind through a small aperture. Another tip is to start with a wood that is easy to turn. In the UK. Maple, Sycamore, Ash, Silver Birch all of these are east to come by, especially if you know or cultivate your local tree surgeon.

 

Click on the arrow in the centre to watch the tools in action.