Any info on this chisel?

Maker

P. Sylvestre

>It's written:

WM GREAVE____ ELECTRO

& SONS________BORACIC

S?LA? WORKS___STEEL

The "?" are letters that i can't read.

Any info on this maker and chisel?

Re: Any info on this chisel?

Joel

>Greaves was a mid-tier English maker. The handle has been trimmed down and is probably a early 20th century replacement.

cleaned up, with a flush bolstered tapered oval handle of the right length it should be most excellent.

Re: Maker

Don McConnell

>William Greaves & Sons were listed as merchants and manufacturers as early as 1825, though they were not explicitly listed as edge tool manufacturers until about 1833 - located in the Sheaf Works, Sheffield. They introduced "electro-boracic steel" in 1839 and ceased operations about 1849, which seems to narrow the date of manufacture for your mortice chisel to some time in that ten year period.

Don McConnell

Eureka Springs, AR

Re: Maker

todd hughes

>While Greaves and Sons it is true went out of bussiness in 1849 the name was continued being used by others for much longer. This apparently was very common with well respected English tool making names where other's continued it, James Cam started in the 1700's and the name was still being used into the 20th century.

In the excellent book "Some 19th Century English Woodworking tools" they show several advertisments from the 1910 Thos. Turton & Sons catalog where they are selling plane irons that are marked simular to this chisel... William Greaves & Sons Electric Boracic steel etc. as well as a blurb about this "special" steel that W.Greaves devopled. I think because of this it is very hard to give any type of accurate date to a chisel like this....Personaly I would say it is much more likely that it was made after 1850 and probably in the late 1800s early 1900s time period just because the very low survival rate of these early 1800's chisels ....Todd

Re: Maker

Don McConnell

>Todd is absolutely correct that Thomas Turton & Sons continued to use the William Greaves & Sons, electro-boracic mark for quite some time after 1849. I've looked at those ads in Ken Roberts' _Some 19th Century English Woodworking Tools_ many times, and had even noted that the Turton firm succeeded Greaves in a check-list of British edge tool makers which I've put together (using Ken Roberts' check-list as a starting point). But, I'd failed to include that note under the Greaves entry and neglected to double check it. Sorry about that.

For what it's worth, the Thomas Turton & Sons firm continued in existence until about 1980, though that doesn't necessarily mean that they continued to produce edge tools and/or use the Greaves mark through that entire period. I think it unlikely that they continued using the electro-boracic mark much past the 1920's - but that is just a hunch based on developments in the steel making industry.

Nothing wrong with my memory, it's just very short. :-)

Don McConnell

Eureka Springs, AR