Bill Tindall, E.Tn.
Your efforts to see what you can make of this are much appreciated.

same here. I am impressed by the photomicrographs. They are as good as we got from a Nikon before I had access to the metallurgical scope and lighting. Lighting metal is difficult as I am sure you have discovered.

The morphology of the dulling is what we have observed in our work. Nice to see confirmation.

For a chisel that is too hard you will see microchips instead of the rounding profiles.

What kind of pine are you chopping?