MILANI staircase maker's rasp

Traditional steel stair builder's rasp. Hand hewn. For carving out deep hollows.

A traditional staircase maker's rasp was used to carve out the curves of spiral staircases. It can be used very well in wood carving as well as in stone carving to carve out hollows.

MILANI rasps are of a particularly high quality: each rasp is hand-cut and unique from the small traditional forge of Renzo MILANI from Pietrasanta in the Apuan Alps, one of Italy's marble quarrying regions. The rasps are particularly suitable for working marble, wood and soft stone.

MILANI rasps are forged from extremely pure steel and optimally hardened. All notches are thoroughly hammered by hand and arranged very carefully. The hardness of the steel, the even shaping of the steel body and the high number of notches, their regular arrangement and the depth of the cut are what make the rasps so special.

Care of the rasps:

We recommend using a file brush to clean the rasps.

Rasps cannot be resharpened. In order to maintain the sharpness of your hand-cut rasps for as long as possible, we recommend that you do not use the rasps for work on quartz-containing stones, such as sandstone. Some serpentine and soapstone can also contain quartz. As quartz is harder than steel, the rasp surfaces are abraded and become blunt very quickly. Carbide or diamond rasps are therefore much more suitable for quartz-containing stones.

If you use rasps in wood sculpting, they usually remain sharp for much longer than when used in stone sculpting. As optimally sharp tools are essential for wood carving in particular, we recommend that you no longer use rasps that have already been used on stone for wood carving. It is highly unlikely that you will achieve satisfactory results there. Conversely, use is generally less problematic.