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Happy October Everyone!
Would you please post your favorite brace carving chisel with make and model (length, thickness, width, straight of curved etc.). If that is not fun enough, post a pic.

Any sharp chisel will work. My first choice is my 15mm Two Cherries curved chisel. It has a curve to facilitate carving scalloped bracing. The curves paring chisels are toward the bottom of the page:

https://www.diefenbacher.com/Special%20Chisels.htm

Depends on what is being carved, and where. It varies.

I rough them on the sander and only a small amount of shaping is needed when I voice them later

Like John says, roughed and shaped before installation, then just a little shaping with the chisel. Any good chisel, usually about 5/8 - 3/4" wide, bevel down. Whatever is sharp on the bench. I see no benefit to a curved chisel:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruby1638/ ... 029319394/

Click left and right

Ed

For me the sharpest in my chisel drawer at the time I need it.

I much prefer finger planes whenever I can use them. Extremely controllable and they will do most of the carving as fast or faster with a lot less "surprises'". Takes a little army of them in the 1"-3" range, so more expensive than chisels. Way more fun to use for me.

I'll use a variety of chisels and planes to achieve the final result, but the primary chisel I use to shape braces is probably a 5/8" Stanley Sweetheart.

As said above, a sharp chisel. I use a 25mm straight chisel (Swiss, I think). I have taken videos of the ladies at Martin doing full tops in 3 minutes or so and also like this one on utube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz-2OL_b-oU .

That guy at Martin sure did that quickly. Remember that they build so many guitars they don't have time to individually voice them - they are working to averages. That guy does the same thing to every guitar of that spec that he sees, and you could do that too with a little training. Martin produces a whole lot of good sounding guitars, some that are amazing, and some that are dogs - because they are working to averages.

On the other hand, Dana Bourgeois personally voices every top that leaves his shop and I have never heard anything but good things about his work:

https://vimeo.com/96155522

Problem for you and me is that there is no way we can properly voice a guitar based on the few instruments that we will ever make - even after watching 100 videos like that one. I am just finishing (literally) my 8th guitar. I don't scallop braces because that is not the sound I am after. I just shoot for averages, and I have 1 amazing guitar, 1 dog, and 5 that are pretty good, dammit. We'll see about #8 shortly.

Ed

PS - I meant to mention above that I have a lot of chisels, but my favorites are a couple of pre-1900 Buck Brothers, a 1/8" James Swan millwright chisel, and a set of Marples bevel edge chisels with boxwood handles that my wife got me on our first anniversary in 1972 - they are fabulous.