I'm sure this has been a topic several times on these forums but I would like to know how to make the long chocolate curls for decorating cakes..any help is much appreciated.

This might help:

Here's a link that might be helpful as well:

http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-633146-chocolate.html+curls

two tools I use...

For longer curls, i use a sheese knife, for smaller/shorter ones like garnishing i bought a garlic slicer from Pampered Chef and they do great curls.