Kinda' Quiet....

Re: Kinda' Quiet....

Dan Donaldson

>I would use a cut nail (you can get them at the local borg as concrete nails). You can heat it to glowing red and let it cool slowly so that you can shape it. I have made small tools from them before and they seem to work fine. I will let the experts tell you how to reharden it after you get it made.

Re: Kinda' Quiet.... *LINK*

Luke Herzberg

>Hey David, there is a lot of info online about heat treating, primarily on knife and sword making sites. Here is a link to a pretty good general description of heat treating.

1 mm...that's a pretty puny chisel. I'm wondering if you might be better off to file an edge on a piece of saw steel, using the width of the steel as your chisel edge (like a saw tooth). You wouldn't need to heat treat, just scribe, snap, file and hone. Hack saw blades might be about 1 mm wide. Or maybe hone the tip of an old pocket knife to suit your width.

- Luke


Heat treat

Re: Kinda' Quiet....

Bill Lowrance

>I've had great success with exactly this simply by honing the tip of a 1-mm machinist's pin punch. If you sharpen the tip gently with fine stones or scary-sharp papers you don't even need to heat-treat it, as the steel stays awfully hard -- although at this scale re-tempering would be easy with a propane torch -- and the tool has a strong shank and a comfortable handle.

(I use mine mainly for finicky cleaning and squaring of dead-end incisions when carving oak woodcut print blocks.)

If you have trouble finding such a small punch let me know and I'll send you or your friend one, as they're inexpensive and easy to buy in Geneva where I live.

Flat gravers and narrow chisels *LINK*

David Barnett

>Although one can make a serviceable chisel from a concrete nail or punch (some of my best are from both of these), many luthiers use a #40 graver, which is a flat graver exactly 1mm. These are of available in either carbon or high speed steels and have the added advantage of being highly controllable (the flat sides aid in steering tools with such small cutting edges) and easily honed. The gravers are easily prepared (see link), but most luthiers forego any relief angle at the bottom. In other words, hone it just like a straight woodworking chisel.

You can, of course, make a similar chisel from a 1mm strip of tool steel (O1), and set it up like a graver, if you wish to make it completely yourself. The standard graver handle, turned round and then one side flattened, lets one hold the chisel in the most controlled manner and at a very low angle.

I make graver handles and handles for needle files out of exotic scrap I have lying about. As for a ferrule, use tubing (copper, brass, whatever), or drill out a piece of rod so it looks about right (find examples of graver handles on jeweler's supplier sites). Kinda fun.


Graver preparation

Re: Thanks guys!

David Hammond, in Powder Springs GA

>Ya'll have given me plenty of options - thank you. I haven't decided what I'll do yet, but if I make something, I'll see if I can post a pic.

Thanks again,

David