Socket chisel handle material

Re: Socket chisel handle material

Tom Colligan, Peoria


>Hi Bill, I think either of these 3 hardwoods would be fine - so long as you're going to use a wooden mallet. Do you have a lathe to make the handles? (I've turned over 20 chisel handles this past year and I've enjoyed it alot.)

Re: Socket chisel handle material

david.marcus.brown


>Maple would be great. Birch is almost as hard as maple. For a socket chisel, oak might be ok but it's prone to splitting so I wouldn't recommend it.

Re: Socket chisel handle material

Dave Thompson


>Hi Bill, I've been using a heavy mallet I made from maple for the past ~6 years, so I know that'll work. Actually, I think they would all be fine. You could split hairs on the differences if you like. I've been turning a different species for each of my bench chisels. I figure that will make it easier to spot the size I need when they are just sitting in my chisel rack.

enjoy,

Dave

Re: Socket chisel handle material

Thom D


>Barr Specialty uses maple they are socketed and hooped. My experience is that they need the hoops also. Be sure to turn tot he correct taper and dry the handles before hammering them home so that they swell into the socket.

I always thought Osage would make a nice handle. Also Elm since it is very split resistant.

The Japanese use heart centered handles on the better chisels. You find a branch hardly any bigger than you chisel handle and use that . The pith is very small so with most woods it will not be a factor. And the pieces will shrink evenly and the grain is extra even. White oak or ash might be good in this use, though one needs a wood with pleasng colour in the branches and early wood. Peel the bark and seal the ends for seasoning. If you are in a rush you might try microwaving the wood.

Would beech be OK?

Denis Ch�nard, Orl�ans, Ont.


>Don't have any socket chisels yet, but you never know what the future holds in store... I have some beech offcuts that could be used for that purpose...

DC

Great to be back home

Re: Socket chisel handle material

Dave Thompson


>I agree on osage orange being an excellent domestic choice... If you don't have a source, the last couple of weeks on e-bay someone was selling lots of 20 chisel size osage orange blanks with closing prices around $15 for the lot.

I've heard that about Japanese chisels handles, and have wondered how they do it. Every time I leave the pith in, I end up with nasty splits during drying.

Re: Socket chisel handle material

Teacher


>What kind of oak? If it's Northern Red Oak, it'll be too prone to splitting. If it's White Oak or Live Oak, it should be fine. The reason is because Northern Red Oak "pores" are (almost) interconnected, whereas in White Oak and Live Oak they aren't.

Re: Socket chisel handle material

Thom D


>Most of my experience with that comes from cutting sections off trees and using them as file handles Never had a split, in that case I leave the bark on.

I have a little bit of osage kicking around. enough for chisels if I ever figure out a practical way to forge sockets with the gear I have.

Re: Would beech be OK?

Thom D


>Any plane sized pieces???

Re: Socket chisel handle material

William Duffield, on the Cohansey


>Hard maple (sugar maple) is better than soft maples, including bigleaf maple. Beech (American and European) is almost as good as hard maple, and much better than birch. In your area, Pacific madrone is readily available, and is also an excellent material. Also, in your area there is a "soft" wood that you should find suitable, Pacific yew.

In New England, ironwood or hophornbeam is sometimes available, but you usually have to harvest it yourself. You couldn't ask for a better natural material for chisel handles. TLN refers to it as Maine Hornbeam.

Regular hornbeam, that grows further south, is not as resiliant to whacking with a mallet. It performs about as well as hard maple and beech.

I have several chisel and slick handles and a couple of mallets that I made from Osage Orange, and I agree with the others that it is also suitable for these applications.

If yu are not limiting yourself to domestics, you might even consider purpleheart or ipe. I have an EOBM chisel with a purpleheart handle, and it stands up well to abuse.

Re: Would beech be OK?

mikew


>Like this German Beech? 2 1/8" thick...nah, too thin.

But Denis...yes, Beech would be very good. I would make sure to cut as close to what one would get if it were rived for grain run-out purposes. But the stuff is nice to work and tough--at least it seems to me. They do make mallets from it.

Take care, Mike

Project board

jim reed @ tallahassee


>I once found a beautiful cherry board that was 12ft long and 18" wide. It screamed that it wanted to be a fall front desk, so I made that happen. What is your board saying to you?

Dogwood

jim reed @ tallahassee


>if you can find some dogwood, use it. Dogwood is alot like beech.

My theory about Japanese chisels

jim reed @ tallahassee


>Japan is very wood challenged. I think the resourceful craftsmen used oak branch juvenile wood because it was available and it worked. Doubt it was a superior choice decision. Certainly a doubtful choice here in the wood plentiful USA.

Re: Socket chisel handle material

Ernie Miller


>I thought I had some in my e-Bay store but I know there is some large turning blanks out in the garage if you want some let me know. Dry and waxed on the ends osage orange OOOh Nice.

Re: Theory about Jap. chisels is probably wrong

Thom D


>Come on!

Look into your heart, if it was you and you were selling chisels to some very demanding carpenters in Japan and abroad. You had, at least for the tourists, other woods like sandlewood, boxwood, macasar ebony all imported. You came from a culture that however challenged it may be is FAR more picky about exactly what species, or cut of wood goes where. Your telling me you would just get some crap twigs from the backyard, cause nobody will know the difference!!

Anyway I've had the white oak on my Ouchii chisels since roughly 1980, and in wet basements, basements with the furnaces 6 feet from the bench (plywood), hit them with steel hammers, and not the wisper of a crack.

Part of it is aesthetic they have a thing about cylindrical elements, particularly posts, where one 1/4 looks flat sawn, the next looks quartered, and so forth, as you rotate the piece or walk around it. They consider this inharmonious. So maybe they have an agenda that isn't purely practical, but it would also be inharmonious if the handles split.

You're as bad as someone claiming that they just use that fancy cast iron in the LN and LV planes, because it is readily available from sewer pipes!

Re: Would beech be OK?

Thom D


>Nice handle!

Re: Socket chisel handle material

Michael Recchione


>I don't think this is worth agonizing over. Any of the three woods you mentioned will work fine. For handles, I've used oak, maple, some exotic turning blank whose label had fallen off, dogwood, hickory, sycamore, teak, you name it. I've used branches, not branches, whatever I had that was hard, the right size and useless for anything else. I'd stay away from pine, poplar, basswood and stuff like that - but anything reasonably hard will be fine.

It's a chisel handle. Whatever you use, it will not last forever. But it takes about 15 minutes and pennies worth of wood (if even that much) to make a new one when you need to. It's not worth losing sleep over. :-)

osage orange qualities

Dave Thompson


>Thanks for the offer Ernie. I actually have a few osage orange trees by my house. They are among the most unfriendly trees to mow around. In the fall, I mow over the grapefruit size hedge apples, and during the summer, try to avoid getting scratched by the thorns. I usually repair a lawnmower tire puncture each year from accidentally rolling over a hidden branch in the grass. I think the wood has a hardness of ~2400 janka (twice as hard as oak), but the thorns are more comparable to a 6 penny nail.

I took some branch trimmings and turned some pens and a chisel handle. I really like the in hand feel from the dense tight grain. Like cherry (perhaps more like mulberry), it changes color when exposed to light from orange to a butterscotch brown, and has small medullary rays on the quarter sawn similar to maple. I especially like the color contrasts orange heart, cream sap wood, and brown bark inclusion/knots if I'm lucky. One of my one-of-these-days things to do is to look into finishes that might lock in the colors. (?UV inhibitors? if that's what causes the change). Up till now, I've just been playing with wax only finishes (beeswax and carnuba).

Dave

Re: Project board

mikew


>Handles, what else?

Re: My theory about Japanese chisels

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX


>Japanese oaks are very different animals than North American oaks, more akin to live oaks.

Pam

Re: osage orange qualities

Ernie Miller


>Check on the turning board I think people over there have allready played with the color change thing and they may be able to help you.

Osage orange that stays orange

David Barnett - SW Florida


>Argentine Osage Orange -- same species as domestic but doesn't color shift nearly so quickly or completely, a regional variation. Learned this from Ellis.

Re: Socket chisel handle material

Dan Moening


>Have you considered Manzanita?

It's a beautiful, deep red; heavy and dense. Should be readily available to you. The Mayacammas Mountains (or whatever that range is that separates your area from the Napa Valley) is full of it.

I have a couple "limbs" a friend gave me when clearing his land and hope to use them for handles myself. If you're interested I could saw off a length or two for your use. I'm told its prone to cracking but so far the limbs appear solid.

~Dan.