Sometimes you find a toolmaker through research.
Sometimes you just happen to walk past the right building.
That was more or less how I found Michihamono.
While living in Tokyo, I was walking home from my in-laws' workplace when I passed the Michihamono headquarters in Akabane. I could hardly believe my luck. Here was one of Japan's most comprehensive and unusual carving-tool makers sitting almost on our doorstep.
Many years later, we are very proud to carry a broad and steadily growing selection of Michihamono tools at Japanese Tools Australia.
More recently, I was invited to tour the factory and spend time learning how some of their more specialised tools are made, maintained and sharpened.
Every time I visit a blacksmith or toolmaker in Japan, I come away with the same feeling: enormous respect for the concentration, repetition and accumulated skill involved in making good hand tools.
Please enjoy the video and a closer look at some of the processes behind the tools we use and love.
What Makes Michihamono Special?
An Enormous Range
Michihamono's carving-tool catalogue is extraordinary.
Around 600 different items are available to us through the maker, covering a remarkable spread of widths, profiles, sweeps and specialised carving shapes.
That range matters because carving is a very specific craft.
One carver may need a broad, shallow gouge for sculptural work. Another may need a tiny V-tool for lettering. Another may be carving spoons, masks, print blocks or detailed decorative work.
There is no single carving-tool set that suits everybody.
With every order, we continue refining the JTA range so that it covers as many of those practical and occasionally idiosyncratic needs as possible.
We are proud to carry one of the broadest selections of Michihamono carving tools available outside Japan, and the range continues to grow.
Steel and Construction
Laminated construction is common across traditional Japanese carving tools.
A hard cutting steel is joined to a softer supporting steel, combining a durable cutting edge with a body that is easier to shape and less brittle overall.
Depending on the tool, Michihamono works with high-carbon steels including traditional Japanese tool steels such as shirogami — White Paper Steel — and aogami — Blue Paper Steel.
These steels are valued for their ability to take a very fine edge and respond well to careful sharpening.
Where Michihamono Gets Particularly Interesting: HSS
Michihamono also produces laminated carving tools using High Speed Steel, or HSS, at the cutting edge.
HSS is more heavily alloyed than traditional simple high-carbon steels and is generally associated with industrial cutting tools that need to retain hardness under demanding conditions.
That alone would not necessarily make it ideal for a fine carving tool.
What makes Michihamono interesting is how they use it.
- They laminate HSS. Rather than treating it as a conventional monolithic tool steel, Michihamono combines it with softer backing material in a distinctly Japanese style of construction.
- They use it for extremely small profiles. Their 0.5 mm U-gouges, V-gouges and flat gouges allow carvers to work at a scale that would be very difficult to achieve with more conventional carving tools.
- They produce remarkably fine bevels. Their HSS carving knives are a particularly good example: thin, keen edges with a cutting feel that becomes very hard to give up once you are used to it.
The result is a range that feels both traditional and experimental at the same time.
The forms are familiar, but the materials and dimensions open up possibilities that are difficult to find elsewhere.
Tools for Very Fine Work
Michihamono clearly understands that carving can become extremely detailed.
For makers working on miniature forms, lettering, facial detail, ornament, netsuke-style carving or other intricate work, conventional tool sizes can simply be too large.
That is where the tiny profiles in the Michihamono range become particularly useful.
A 0.5 mm gouge is not merely a smaller version of an ordinary gouge. It gives you access to marks, grooves and transitions that a larger tool physically cannot make.
This is one of the reasons we find the range so compelling: the tools allow the carver's idea to dictate the scale of the work rather than the limitations of the tool rack.
Making Carving More Accessible
At the other end of the spectrum, Michihamono also does an excellent job of making carving less intimidating for beginners.
Experienced carvers can look at a rack of gouges and quickly understand which profiles they need. For somebody starting out, that same rack can be completely overwhelming.
Width, sweep, profile, bevel, steel, handle shape — there are a lot of decisions before you have even made your first cut.
Michihamono gets around this brilliantly by developing project-based kits.
Instead of asking the beginner to understand the entire carving-tool universe on day one, the kit gives them a project, the required tools and often the material itself.
The Teaspoon Kit
One of our favourite examples is the teaspoon carving kit.
It gives a beginner — or even a child with appropriate supervision — a straightforward project that can be completed in one or two sessions with a small number of tools.
The finished spoon is simple, useful and achievable.
More importantly, the carver finishes the project having actually learned something about grain direction, cutting angles and tool control.
Spoon Carving and Block Printing
The same philosophy carries into Michihamono's spoon-carving and block-printing kits.
You do not simply end up with a finished project.
You also finish with a set of genuinely useful tools that can continue to be used as your skills develop.
That is a much better introduction to the craft than a disposable kit that becomes irrelevant the moment the first project is finished.
And Then Things Get More Ambitious
Michihamono's project kits range from wonderfully simple to gloriously specific.
Depending on the range available, that can include:
- Cat-themed cutlery carving sets.
- Hanko stamp-carving kits.
- Spoon-carving projects.
- Block-printing tools and materials.
- Full Noh-mask carving kits built around a substantial block of Hinoki.
We love this approach because it turns the tool into the beginning of an activity rather than the end of a shopping decision.
You are not simply buying another gouge.
You are buying a way into a particular kind of making.
Prefer to Start with the Timber?
If you would rather choose your own tools and keep the project simple, we also carry a range of Michihamono carving materials and blanks.
These can include:
- Walnut carving blanks for small trays and dishes.
- Hinoki spoon blanks.
- Shina plywood for relief carving and printmaking.
They are an easy way to experiment with Japanese carving materials without committing to a much larger project.
For Beginners and Experienced Carvers Alike
What we like most about Michihamono is that the range makes sense at both ends of the carving spectrum.
A beginner can start with a small project kit and a few carefully chosen tools.
An experienced carver can go searching for a highly specific profile, an unusually narrow gouge or a specialised HSS edge for detailed work.
Both are being served by the same maker.
That combination of accessibility, depth and experimentation is a big part of what makes Michihamono such an interesting company to work with.
Need Help Choosing?
If you are not sure where to start, give us a call on (02) 9527 3870 or email info@japanesetools.com.au.
Tell us what you want to carve, the scale you are working at and the tools you already have, and we'll do our best to point you in the right direction.
Happy carving!
