iSculpt.org

I love tools. I spent the first two years after I started sculpting buying up just about every sculpting tool I could find, as well as looking in dollar stores, hardware stores, automotive stores, and just about anywhere else for items that could be used as sculpting tools.

It wasn’t until I bought some hand-made tools from other sculptors that I actually built up the courage to try my hand at making tools, though. The idea of making tools seemed so intimidating. In hindsight, that was downright silly. Making tools is fun and rewarding. In fact, I’ve reached a point where probably 90% of the tools I use regularly are handmade. I have a couple of dental tools that I rely on heavily and for specific jobs now and then I will pull out a clay shaper or a Kemper tool or some other store-bought item, but easily 90% or more of my sculpting time now is spent with a homemade tool in my hand.

Here is my work area right now; as you can see, the bulk of my tools are handmade, not store bought.

I thought it might be worth a post to talk a little about tool making. There are a great many approaches to toolmaking, but it seems that most hand-made sculpting tools are made out of metal and/or wood. My woodworking skills do not go much beyond assembling a Pinewood Derby car, but I’ve gotten to be a fair hand at making metal tools, so that’s what I’ll talk about. Maybe Noadi will grace us with a tutorial on how to make wooden tools sometime.

On Purchasing Tools

When you’re first starting out, it’s not a bad idea to buy some handmade tools from experienced sculptors. They’re more expensive than those mass-produced tools you can get at Michaels or Hobby Lobby, but generally are worth it. I own tools made by Philippe Faraut, Wayne Hansen, Sandra Garrity, and Gene Van Horne. I’ve also been eyeing Noadi’s nifty little wooden tool. Having tools made by experienced sculptors will give you a good starting point and they generally will be sturdier than mass produced ones.

For mass-produced sculpting tools, I’ve had excellent luck with Kemper tools, and have heard good things about Glyptic tools, though the idea of having to change loops seems like it might interfere with the flow of your sculpting session. I have not been impressed with the nigh-ubiquitous Loew-Cornell sculpting loops and rakes that you can find in just about any hobby store in the country, especially the metal-handled ones, several of which have broken on me. Regardless of quality, however, for the most part, mass-manufactured tools simply don’t come small enough for doing good detail work.

I have also heard good things about Perfect Touch sculpting tools so if you’re really opposed to rolling up your sleeves and making some tools, check them out, but otherwise, let’s talk about making tools because you know you should, right?

Other Resources

Katherine Dewey’s excellent sculpting book has a lot of information on making tools. Sculptor Dan Perez has a good tool-making tutorial on his website, and there’s an epic thread over at ConceptArt on making sculpture tools. I advise reading all three of these to get different perspectives and to see some different approaches.

Raw Material

As I said earlier, there are many materials out of which you can make sculpting tools. I make the vast majority of mine out of metal. I started out using brass because it is soft and can be worked without heat or a grindstone. But that softness is also a detriment when you’re making very small tools, so I now make the vast majority of my tools out of hardened spring steel.

Music Wire from Small Parts, Inc.

There are many sources of hardened spring steel, but I generally start with piano wire, also sometimes called “music wire” or “strengthened spring steel”. You can buy piano wire from Small Parts and it’s also available in some hobby shops. Another good, cheap source for hardened spring metal is out in the street. No, I’m not kidding. Street sweeper brushes are made out of high-grade spring metal and they come off regularly as the sweeper does its job, so keep an eye out while walking near roads, especially in a city, and you’ll likely also come across the occasional wire bristle; they're about eight inches long and a quarter of an inch wide. They’ll be dirty and corroded, but they clean up great and they’re top quality string steel. Another interesting bit of trivia: those street sweeper bristles also can be used to make lockpicks. Not that I should have reason to know that, or anything.

Anyway, if you're going to order music wire, it can be a little daunting: the stuff comes in increments of a hundredth of an inch. I generally buy .020", .032", .047", and .078", and .093" because those are the most common sizes, and the ones that come in smaller lengths. If you want other sizes, like .023", you have to order five foot long wires. The .020" wire is great for making small loops and micro-spoons, the .032 is good for larger loops and small tools, the larger sizes are good starting points for various small sculpting tools.

One of the few purchased tools that I use regularly is this dental wax carver known as a "Zahle", it is nearly identical to a popular tool in the mini sculpting world called the Wax #5 made by Tiranti and currently designated the "SG Dental" in their catalogs.

I will also sometimes buy cheap metal tools to use as a starting point, mostly using them for the metal. One of my favorite sculpting tools in the world is one particular variety of Zahle dental wax carver, but the spatula is too large for a lot of the work I do, so I've actually bought several of these and have ground them down to a smaller size.

On the right, you can see the spoon end of the Zahle Wax Carver. On the left is one that I have modified with a grinding stone to work better for detail work.

Handles

Your tools need to have a handle, and there are many options for this. Many sculptor use wooden dowels that they drill a small hole in and then stick the shaped metal into. You can also use old toothbrush handles, or the handles from other discarded plastic tools. Another option is to use polymer clay to shape a handle around the music wire and then bake it. This method gives you a lot of freedom to create a tool with a handle to your liking. The last, and probably the easiest option is to simply pick up some brass tubing. You can insert the music wire into the smallest brass tube into which it will fit, and then crimp the brass tube around the wire with a crimping tool or ordinary pliers and you're done. If you want the handle a little bigger, before crimping, slip the next size brass tube over the first tube and you have a thicker handle. This last technique is the one I always use for creating loop and rake tools and is, in fact the technique I use the vast majority of the time because I like thin-handled tools. You should experiment and figure out what you like in a tool and customize to make yourself happy.

Here are three different types of handles for homemade tools. The leftmost tools use wooden handles, the middle tools use brass tubes, and the right-most tools have handles made of polymer clay. Don't feel limited to these three, though.

Making Loop Tools

In order to make loop tools, you'll need a few things. You'll need the raw materials mentioned already (the hardened steel and something to make a handle with). In order to make loop and rake tools, you'll need something to bend the music wire. Music wire is called "hardened steel" for a reason: it is very hard. The .020" and .032" can be bent with a sturdy set of pliers, but it can be difficult to get a precise, clean bend. You can use a vise along with pliers, or you can buy something called a wire bending jig which will help you make precise bends. There are also some kinds of metal forming pliers that can be helpful in shaping the wire the way you want it.

Another option is to make a template that you can wrap the wire around. An easy example of this is to stick a drill bit into a vise, wrap the music wire around the bit and insert the ends into a drill. Twist the ends together in the drill until the wire has formed a tight circle around the drill bit. I've had the best luck using this option with round templates, but other people have reported success using triangular templates and even more complex shapes. I often don't twist the ends together, either. Doing so tends to make it a little easier to insert the loop into the handle, but provides few other benefits.

Here is an image I borrowed from the ConceptArt tool-making thread, showing how to use a template form to make a loop tool. I have not personally had luck with shapes other than circular with this technique, but as you can see from the picture, others have. This picture comes from ConceptArt user rschrader.

How you secure the loop into the handle is going to depend on the type of handle you choose to sue. For brass tubing, simply crimp the soft brass down on the music wire with a crimping tool or pliers. If you're not able to get it secure enough, you can use some epoxy to secure it. Epoxy putty or glue tend to be the best choice for securing the loop in plastic or wood.

Loop tools are a great first choice for tool making, because they are easy and they are a main staple of most sculptors. I probably spend more time with loop and rake tools than any other type of tool with the possible exception of spoon tools. Once you've successfully made a few loop tools and have exhausted your need for new ones, we can move on to grinding and shaping the metal to just the shape you want to broaden the types of tools you can create.

Making Tools by Metal Working

Let me just start out by saying that I have no background in metal working and what I've learned, I've learned by experimentation, so I could very well be giving you some bad advice here. If there are any metalsmiths out there who want to correct anything here, I will gladly incorporate your advice into the article. That being said, I've had good luck using tools made with the techniques described here.

To start out, you need something to grind metal with. I use two separate things: a desktop grinder and a Dremel with a grindstone bit.

Here is an inexpensive desktop grinder that I use for rough shaping.

The desktop grinder is completely optional; it just makes things go faster in some cases. Often, for smaller tools, I don't use it at all, and I always switch to the Dremel for the fine work because I just can't see well enough with the desktop grinder to do the really fine shaping. If you do decide to get a desktop grinder, they usually come with a course and a medium grindstone. Make sure you buy a fine stone for toolmaking.

Dremel with a grinding stone attached. Any model rotary tool will work fine, although I particularly like the shape of the Dremel Stylus for this kind of work.

When it comes to buying a grinding stone for your rotary tool, you may find it a little overwhelming. They come in all shapes and sizes, and at least three different materials each with a different color. Grinding stones can be made from Silicon Carbide, which are usually green and Aluminum Oxide which come in pink and orange. Now, even though the pink and the orange are both made of Aluminum Oxide, there is a huge difference between them. The pink are made of unfused aluminum oxide granules and are rather soft; the orange are made of fused crystalline silica, which is very hard. Therefore, you want the orange Aluminum Oxide grinding stones such as the Dremel 932 - the other two are too soft to effectively grind hardened steel and are designed primarily for deburring not grinding. You should pick a cylindrical shape grinding wheel to start with, though you might choose to supplement with other shapes later.

Many rotary tools come with a starting set of bits, and many include an appropriate grinding wheel, but if yours didn't, you should be able to pick one up for under five dollars at any hardware store or hobby store.

Now, if you're going to be making very small tools, another optional but highly recommended item is a pair of magnifying glasses or optivisors. You want the tool to be free from burrs, jagged edges, and imperfections, and it's going to be hard to see those with the naked eye, no matter how good your vision is. I use an Optivisor brand with a #5 and a #10 lens.

An optional tool, I personally find my Opti-visors to be indispensable for both sculpting and tool-making.

If you're going to be grinding metal, you also need a glass or bucket of water. Grinding is friction and friction generates heat. If you let the metal get too hot, it can cause problems, including weakening the metal and making it brittle and useless to use as a sculpting tool. If you see the metal start to change color while you're grinding, you're letting it get too hot. Periodically dipping the metal into water will keep the temperature down. The thinner the metal you are grinding, the more often you will have to dip it to keep it from overheating.

A glass of water can keep your hard work from becoming molten slag or useless, brittle junk steel.

It's difficult to explain how to grind the metal other than to say you press the metal against the spinning wheel. Beyond that, you need to learn by doing, so your best bet is to grab some scrap metal and just start playing. Oh, and make sure you wear safety glasses. Take some time and just work for a while so you get a feel for how fast your stone grinds, how quickly the metal gets hot, and how you can get the shapes you want. Grinding metal is almost another form of sculpting.

Grinding music wire with the desktop grinder. Make sure you wear safety glasses - those sparks are superheated bits of music wire that can really ruin your day. Don't expect the spark guard to stop them all.

Here I am grinding the music wire with a grinding stone on a Dremel. Notice the discoloration of the metal? Yeah, that's bad. It took me longer than expected to snap the picture, and the metal got too hot. Also notice that I'm using one hand to hold the dremel and the music wire. Don't do that. I just needed the other hand to take the picture.

In addition to grinding the metal into a specific shape, you may also want to bend the metal at times and you'll be tempted to grab a wire jig or pliers and just yank it into the shape you want. With the smaller gauge wire, this is fine, but with the larger gauge wire (.048" and up) it can be a bad idea. You can stress the metal this way, weakening it and causing surface imperfections that make it difficult to get a smooth surface on your tool. A good sculpting tool has a very smooth finish.

So, how do we bend the metal into different shapes? We heat it.

But didn't I say heat was bad? Yep, it is. Overheating is bad. But heating the metal up also softens it and allows it to be bent without stressing it. If you overheat it, you will make it brittle, but if you do it right, you will be able to shape the metal without stressing the metal.

I generally use a propane torch, although a small butane torch is capable of producing enough heat to do the job also. Now, remember, steel conducts heat very well, so use pliers to hold the metal, or wear welding gloves. You can get a nasty burn off of metal that's been heated either from using a torch or from grinding with a stone so be careful! If you place the metal so that the flame is heating the spot where you want to bend it, it will soon start to glow orange. As soon as it does, use pliers to bend it to the shape you want, and then plunk the hot metal into your water. It will make a satisfying little hiss and then you can take it out and inspect your work. If you did it right, your metal will now be cold, hard, and the shape you want with a nice smooth surface.

Finishing Work

I'm going to assume that you've now ground and shape the metal into the tool you want, but what you've got in your hands doesn't look like those shiny metal tools you buy. Well, yeah, that's because you're not done yet. You need to deburr and polish your metal. This can be a moderately time-consuming process, but it's vital to making a good tool.

I usually start with a steel wire brush attachment on my dremel, and run it over the metal - but being careful not to push hard, just letting the wire brush glide loosely over the surface. Running it over the surface should remove some of the burrs as well as any remaining surface corrosion. Gently rub it over the working surface of the tool, and please keep your safety glasses on, those little pieces of metal have to go somewhere, and it's best if "somewhere" is not your eyes.

After a quick working over with the wire-bristle attachment, it's time to buff and polish the tool's surface. For this I use nail files - the kind that manicurists use. I'm not particularly attached to a particular brand but you want a nail file that's got at least four different grits from rough to very smooth. You can find these in the beauty section of any pharmacy or department store.

A selection of nail files from the beauty section of the drug store. You're looking for ones that have at least four different grits, including at least one called "buff" or "polish".

Now, just start working your tools with the nail files. Start with the roughest grit on the file you have, and work to the finest. I generally work toward the edge or point both because it's safer and also because that's the best for removing burrs that tend to occur there. I try to work in the same direction the entire time, although some odd tool shapes make this impractical. You'll know it's time to move to the next finer section of the nail file when the surface of the tool is uniform in appearance. Use a magnifier when determining if it's uniform otherwise you may not be able to see the differences between the surface created by different sanding grits, especially if you're using more than four different grits.

Once you're done, your tool should shine and have a glass-smooth finish. At that point, you're done. Go try it out on some clay.