Ray Iles Chisels

Re: Ray Iles Chisels

James Watriss

>Popular woodworking sure likes em...

Re: Ray Iles Chisels

Jack Guzman from Maine

>I got the 5/16" size and it's all they say it is.Just a well made version of an old classic hand tool. Except the steel it's made of is something that wasn't possible years ago.So in that way way it's even better than the tool it copies.Ray Iles does nice work.---Jack

Re: Ray Iles Chisels

McKay Sleight from Utah

>Sure like my new 3/8". Beautiful tool. I am saving for the next one as I type.

Re: Ray Iles Chisels

lrobins

>Great! Thank you for your replies.

Re: Ray Iles Chisels

Hank Knight from SC

>I ordered three form Joel early on and I've been using them for a couple of months. They are great! I like them a lot.

Re: Ray Iles Chisels

James Watriss

>Just got mine in the mail the other day. The handles are HUGE. They screw with the sense of scale in the picture, and make the chisels look smallish in the picture... they're not. The handles are just enormous.

I just chopped a couple of quick half-assed mortises with em. Out of the box... er, packaging... they're very beefy. The site advertises that the huge blade and handle have more inertia which helps the chisel go further with each cut. I'm guessing they're right in that assessment. They just chomp right in and start hogging out wood. Very nice indeed.

Re: Ray Iles Chisels

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>...if your mallet's big enough. If it's too light for the chisel, then a lot more of the force of the blow than you want is redirected back into your hand, wrist and arm.

Re: Ray Iles Chisels

James Watriss

>Agreed. I skipped my small mallet and went straight for my 18 oz. urethane coated mallet. Definately need a goodly sized thump to go with these goodly sized chisels. Given that, they work very well.

mallet size

Steve Kubien

>I have a piece of teak measuring approx 3" x 3" x 24" long with I use for my holdfasts. Is that big enough? I'm impressed with how well the teak takes a beating ( it was a scrap from a long lost project).

Steve Kubien

Re: mallet size

James Watriss

>Well, I suppose if you're going to be using the whole thing, that's more than plenty. :)

Size isn't as important as density. You want each impact to be solid, not bouncy. A heavy mallet head will drive the chisel in solidly, and the piece being chiseled will absorb the shock, resulting hopefully in short grain failure as you hammer out your mortises. A bouncy mallet head won't deliver hte force, and will rebound off of the chisel handle instead of driving it into the wood. Whatever kinetic energy is left over will be absorbed by your hand and arm.

Size will count if the wood is dense enough. Teak is reasonably tough stuff, but depending on the style of mallet you choose to build, you might want to add some weight somehow. I suppose with 3" wide stuff, you could either glue up a block to turn down, or you could go for one of those mortised out heads and slide a handle through it. That way you can have a much bigger head on the thing, which will weigh more.

My urethane mallet is the same as the 12 oz ones they sell, only it has a 6 oz slug inside. I think if I decide at some point to turn another wooden one, it'll involve a variant of rosewood, probably cocobolo, and purpleheart.

At the end of the day, the job of a mortise chisel is to get hammered into the wood like an oversized nail, again and again. It's not for paring, or for light chopping. It's going directly in at a 90 degree angle, which is a rough task for any tool. So you need something in your other hand with enough authority to make that happen, and prevent any bounceback.

Re: mallet size

Steve Kubien

>Hi James,

I have the large turned mallet from Lee Valley (not sure of the species) which I tend to use with my chisels. The hunk of teak is designed for a specialized kind of abuse. Literally, it is 3"x3" rough cut, 24" long. It was to be the handle ends for a frame saw but I hated working it so much (I had lying around) that I opted for cherry. I had already started to make a narrower area for my hands (on the frame saw) when I went with the cherry. It feels good in the hand but it's a bruiser. Not bouncing back with this sucker. It'll be interesting to see how well it holds up to working with a froe.

Cheers,

Steve Kubien

Re: mallet size

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>Good explanation.

I'll add a couple of fine points. Most important, when a wooden mallet meets wooden chisel handles, you want the mallet to be a little more compliant than the handle. Too soft, and energy is not transferred efficiently, but too hard, and the chisel handles are damaged. It is easier to turn a new mallet than to replace all your chisel handles, and, since the radius of curvature of the mallet is much larger than the radius of the struck end of the chisel, the mallet will not split as easily.

Teak is pretty soft, and compliant. I also prefer harder, denser, stiffer woods, as James suggests. Save your teak for what it does best: withstanding weather. Some species I have found useful for mallets are osage orange, rock maple (Acer saccarum), cocobolo (Dalbergia retusa), and Euro beech.

Some others I want to try include hophornbeam (ironwood, used by L-N for their chisel handles) and persimmon (golf club head material, also a rosewood), mesquite, ipe (Tabebuia), and black locust. I made one mallet from dogwood (Cornus florida), but haven't yet gotten durability feedback from the cabinetmaker who is using it. Like ironwood, it is difficult to find dogwood stock large enough to turn into a mallet.

cocobolo...

James Watriss

>How do you glue up your turning stock when you're using cocobolo? Do you treat it with something to thin out the natural oils? (I've heard recommendations to use everythign from garlic cloves to paint thinner)

How quickly do you glue up afterwards if you do?

Or have you found some place where you can just buy 16/4, and turn the whole thing?

Re: cocobolo...

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>Sorry, I have no experience with glueing up cocobolo for this application. For other, less demanding applications, I just use gorilla glue. If I had to glue it up for a mallet, I would give the mating surfaces some teeth using 80 grit sandpaper, wipe down with acetone and glue up with West System epoxy with a bit of 407 colloidal silica for added structural strength. I might also add some vegetable black pigment to hide the seam in the dark wood.

For the mallets, a friend gave me three or four blocks of 16/4 cocobolo, that were tapered down to about 5/4. They were just right for mallets. neener-neener