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Carving Gouge Set

Carving gouges are chisels with curved blades, good for carving concave shapes or removing slivers without creating raised “shelves” on either side of each stroke. This is a common problem for beginners while whittling or using straight chisels.

Carving gouges can be used with hands only, or with a mallet for more aggressive, less detailed work. At $120, this 12-piece set is fantastic for beginner woodcarvers. It comes with nine gouges of various widths and curvatures, plus a flat chisel, skew chisel and V-tool. (More on those later.)

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Straight Chisel Set

Straight chisels are a woodcarving mainstay. In my experience, it pays to own a large set.

Straight chisels of various widths and bevel angles are good for shaving off thin slivers, defining straight rectangular parts and carving pockets and openings for interlocking components. I rarely tackle a carving project without reaching for my straight chisel set at some point.

This versatile, well-made 10-piece set comes with a nice box. It contains chisels of various widths, ranging from two inches down to 1/4-inch.

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Skew Chisel

Skew chisels are similar to straight chisels, only with slanted blades. They’re usually beveled from both sides rather than just one.

Most often used for woodturning on a lathe, skew chisels are handy for delicately “planing” bits of wood off your project, and can double as an effective chip carving knife.

As a beginner woodcarver, you probably won’t need skew chisels often, which is why the gouge set mentioned above makes sense. It comes with one medium width (8-mm) skew chisel, so when you need one, you have it!