Karlsson 70-50 double hooped bent gouge
Description
Hans Karlsson’s double hooped straight gouges are made of high quality SS2258 steel.
These are big, heavy gouges - the 70-50 is the largest one at 13” long & weighing 15.5 oz.
The wooden handles are reinforced with two brass ferrules (or hoops), which make them suitable for use with a mallet. To that end, there is a shock/sound absorbing polyurethane insert in the end of the double hoop handle.
These large, heavy duty straight gouges are designed for carving large bowls. They are also used by wood sculptors and for hollowing Windsor chair seats by chairmakers who don’t use an adze and inshave.
There are times when a straight gouge won’t perform, like on a carving job that has a lot of concavity. Some bowls, platters or sculptures have an edge or rim which prevents a straight gouge from following through on a cut. These kinds of projects call for a bent gouge to get in under an overhanging area for the final finishing excavation.
A selection of both straight and bent gouges is helpful for carving wood.
To get the most of your effort, we suggest that you utilize a straight gouge whenever possible; straight gouges are more efficient at cutting, especially if you’re removing lots of wood.
The bend in a bent gouge causes some energy from the force of the push (or the blow of a mallet, on a double hoop gouge) to be lost.
The Karlsson’s sweep system has two numbers, the first number indicates how cupped the gouge is based on the curve of a diameter of a circle measured in millimeters. A larger number indicates a flatter cup or sweep. The second number is the width of the gouge at the cutting edge in millimeters. Because these tools are all handmade, there can be a variation of a few millimeters in tool width compared to nominal size.
The Karlssons produce three sizes of double hoop straight gouges: 35-30, 55-40 & 70-50.
We carry all three sizes.