A burin is a steel carving tool with a wooden handle used to create the drawing in wood engraving and copper plate printing. It has a cutting tip shaped diagonally at 45 degrees on one end and a wooden handle on the other. Burins are mainly made i

A rocker (berceau in French) is a tool for producing a regular pattern of tiny holes (and burrs) on a mezzotint copper plate. It is used to prepare the master plate by creating countless holes on the plate surface. It consists of a sharp, arched b

A roulette is a copper plate printing tool for making areas of regular lines and dots on the plate surface by rolling and pushing the toothed metal wheel on its tip. The shape of this toothed wheel is cylindrical (drum shaped). It has small protru

A needle is a metal rod with a pointed tip which is used mainly in copper plate printing to score drawings on the plate. The cross-section of a needle's tip can be round, triangular, diamond-shaped or rectangular. Each type produces lines of a sli

The chisel (chōkokutō), a carving knife used in woodcut printing, is a wood-handled, steel-bladed tool for carving into printing blocks. Chisels take their names from their tip shapes. In general, there are four widely used kinds of chisel: the cu

Komasuki is one type of U gouges, rounded blades in the shape of a half-cylinder that are used to carve into the surface of woodcut printing blocks.  “Komasuki” refers specifically to the ones that have a particularly narrow gauge. &