I think I may have invented the ultimate carving tool, at least for us razor knife carvers. Rather than buying blades, make your own! And tiny!

http://www.atlasquest.com/gallery/viewalbum.html?gAlbumId=809

Be sure to zoom in twice. I dunno why you have to, but the first "zoom in" only takes you to a slightly larger image, you then have to click on it to see the full size image.

I haven't carved a stamp with this thing yet, but I have made a few trial slices. It seems to work splendidly. I'll report again after a stamp. I'll probably carve a stamp with it this weekend.

One nice thing about the idea: Like hypodermic needles, music wire comes in any gauge you want. In fact, the selection in music wire is even greater; I have wire on hand ranging from smaller than a human hair all the way up to 1/4". You could conceivably make a wire knife from any of them, provided you can get a pin vise to hold it.

I chose the 0.9mm wire for this first one because it's the biggest wire that will fit in the X-Acto collet. I had to cram it in, too, but it seats fully. I was considering the possibility of drilling the centerline of the collet to permit fitting larger wire, but then it couldn't hold smaller wire. Besides, I have a pin vise that'll hold most anything.

This is amazing!! You should sell them! There is no way I could make one of those for myself :)

Great JOB!!

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This is amazing!! You should sell them! There is no way I could make one of those for myself :)

Selling the blades themselves might be a plan, although I'd probably have to charge a few bucks for each one since it takes a while to make it. With practice, maybe I'd get quicker.

Selling the X-Acto handle would be more involved, because first I'd have to find a supplier for the X-Acto handles with the cross split in the collet -- I have no idea how common that is. This particular handle is a couple of decades old and I have no idea where I got it. Second, it would complicate shipping, since the blade could just go in a regular envelope but the X-Acto handle would require a shipping envelope or box. Perhaps a better idea all around to let people come up with their own pin vise.

If you could make a groove cutter out of that wire, I'd buy one.

*S

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If you could make a groove cutter out of that wire, I'd buy one.

I've considered trying to make a groove cutter out of a hypodermic needle, cutting the existing point off (or just using the back end) so you're just working with a squared-off piece of tiny tubing. I think it would involve three steps:

1) Chuck the needle up in a drill or Dremel and sharpen the edge of the opening at the end. All of the bevelling of the tubing should be on the outside edge, and the bevel should be rounded rather than a straight taper. After bevelling it can be honed to a razor sharp edge while still chucked up in the drill or Dremel.

2) Bend the tubing slightly, giving it a gentle curve.

3) Grind away the upper half of the tip, leaving a U-shaped gouge.

Steps 1 and 3 are easy. The challenge would be that step 2, which must be accomplished without kinking the tube or mangling the cutting edge you just made. And the bend needs to be pretty close to the tip, which just makes it that much more difficult.

A do wonder if step 2 could be omitted. A couple of the woodcarving tools that people have provided links to don't seem to have any curvature, and they supposedly work well. Might it be possible that the bevelling of the edge on the outside of the tubing is enough to make the tool cut a groove without digging in?

There's also the possibility of adding a step between 2 and 3 of squishing the tubing to oval instead of round. Hence, when the top half is ground off, the remaining gouge would be closer to V-shaped than U-shaped. This probably wouldn't be difficult.

Once made, it'd be a simple matter to chuck one of these things up in a pin vise and carve with it.

My problem is that I'm a razor knife carver rather than a gouge carver. I own gouges, I even own a Staedtler 1v, but I'm not practiced at using it. Hence, even if I made such a homemade gouge from a hypodermic needle, I dunno if I could tell if it worked worth a rip.

Since I originally reported on inventing the "wire knife" early in March (follow this thread back to its origin to review) I've been using it almost exclusively. I have tried to revert to regular razor knives for a couple of tasks, notably cutting long, straight or gently curved lines (where you'd expect that a blade might work better than a wire), but each time I've found my wire knife worked better. It works better than any other tool I've used.

The other day I was pawing through my beloved 51-piece carving set from Big Lots -- which hasn't seen much use lately -- and I realized that all seven handles in that set are designed to work as pin vices as well as blade holders (well, one of them is designed to work only as a pin vice, won't hold a blade). Of the seven handles, five are designed to hold a really fat pin, about 2.4mm. The other two fit a smaller pin. I found that they would grip a 1.4mm piece of music wire, so I went ahead and created another wire knife.

The first wire knife was only 0.9mm so this one is more stout. That's a mixed blessing; a thinner wire obviously results in a tinier cutting tool, always good, and it also results in a lighter tool which is good. A stouter wire is stiffer, though, and flex in the tool while carving needs to be minimized. The very tip of the tool is scarcely different, since they were both ground at about the same angle and therefore ended up with similar points.

On the plus side, this new wire knife fits into a Big Lots handle, which with its plastic collet and cheap handle weighs almost nothing. The original wire knife fit an X-Acto handle with an aluminum collet and much more substantial handle, meaning it is a bit heavier.

The one unfortunate thing is that one of the two handles in the Big Lots set that will hold a 1.4mm wire knife is also the only one that will hold a long, double-ended blade and let you bury it as far as you want. There are six such blades in the set, and four of them make good carving tools but only when mounted in this handle. So one must choose which thing to use that particular handle for. You only need one tool at a time, so I'll probably use that one for the double-ended blades and the other for holding this wire knife.

I'll be trying out this new wire knife with my next couple of carves. I'll report on how it works and how well it compares to the first wire knife.