What tools can I use to outline a carving design on a rifle stock?
There are several methods for outlining a carving. A knife can outline designs with one tool, but it tends to follow the grain and requires a lot of skill and hand strength to control. A V-shaped parting tool is fast and needs only one tool, but it fights the grain on one side or the other and is tricky to sharpen and less suited to fine detail. Gouges give very crisp, detailed lines through a stabbing method but require many tools that are expensive to buy and maintain. A narrow chisel, roughly a sixteenth to three thirty-seconds of an inch wide with a rounded, screwdriver-like shape, is versatile and cheap, and can be pushed by hand, though it can leave jagged lines if you are not careful.