new chisels

Pickey arent we?

Ernie Miller

>I guess you are stuck with them new fangles Everlasting repo's I like my green lee's but you can't have them.

Re: new chisels

thomd

>"For the past several years, I've been using Stanley 900 series chisels (the metal capped chisels found in many hardware stores). They take abuse really well and seem to exhibit good edge retention in the softwoods that I mainly work. I use them quite a bit for dovetailing, paring and general clean-up tasks. However, when I work with hardwoods (e.g., hard maple or oak), dovetailing becomes a lot slower."

There really isn't much difference in speed that is mostly technique. You can regrind blades to have lower angles and they may penetrate better allowing more wood to be freed per strike.

"Will a more premium line of chisels speed up the chopping?"

They may, or not have better geometry, however you can regrind your set to provide perfect service as regards that.

"My current belief is that maximum achievable sharpness and edge retention bear a somewhat inverse relationship. Thus, my fear is that more premium chisels will have to be repeatedly honed during bigger jobs, like dovetailing a carcase."

Better chisels may take a better edge, or have better geometry, while having better edge retention, it's all improved. The only real downside is that some chisels are harder to sharpen in proportion to their edge retention. Even this last point varies depending on how you sharpen chisels. One thing i have noticed is that while the cheaper blister pack chisels work really well, often, in softwoods, they loose their edge really quickly in hard woods like maple and fairly fast in medium woods like cherry or mahogany. So better chisels or the blister pack chisels hardned, will vastly outlast the softer chisels. Where the advantage is less apparent is in something like blue steel vs. white steel. There the additional edge retention may seem to be proportional to the added sharpening time. Gets to be a close call. It's never been my experience that the better chisels have lower edge retention, or that sharper chisels have less edge retention.

"Are these preconceived notions off the mark? "

A little

"What say y'all? Should I retire the Stanleys? If so, which brand (Sorby, Ashley Iles, Crown, etc.) would you recommend?"

I think your current chisels are fine for softer woods. The next step would be hardening them. Remove the handles, and dub the end so it is 1/16" thick, and heat them in a propane torch (look up one brick forge for the larger ones). Quench in a lot of olive oil, mineral oil or lard. Put in the oven at 350, for 1 hour, sharpen and see what you have. try a 1/4" chisel that requires minimal heat and quenchant. This process represents some obvious fire hazards (though it was first printed by FWW etc...) so take normal precautions, have a tight fitting lid for the quench pot, and a fire extinguisher. The quenchant needs to be in a metal pot. I do this kind of thing out of doors.

The brands you mention will probably not outperform the cheapos handled this way. The ones you bought are normally intentionally heat treated soft. It's not that there is anything wrong with the steel.

If you like, you can regrind some special features like the bevel angle or sidecut before you harden. SInce you are hardening them again you can grind pretty agressively without worrying about changing the temper.

"PS: I would prefer to avoid metric sizes because the metric system is simply a passing fad (just like beer in cans and digital audio). Also, I'm not too hip on Japanese chisels."

Try the above process and you can keep your current chisels, or regrind them if they used client state sizes to start with.

Re: Pickey arent we?

John H. in Baltimore

>Ha -- maybe more picky than I realize. I'm just not sure if what I already have aint broke for working tougher material.

I bet those Greenlees have nice wooden handles and leather washers. My uncle had a few paring chisels, which I think were Greenlee's -- real long and pretty. I never got to use them though.

Re: new chisels

s.mackay@worldnet.att.net

>I finally got hacked with the onbe low-end stanley that "wound-up" in my belt some how and picked up my Craftsman "middling" set. I worried about "hacking" with them too. Sent them off to Dad and he did the above hardening "thang". Had 'em for, like, seven years now. While I don't do really fine detail with them they do what I ask from chopping out holes to clearing joints. Dad said that with wood the steel isn't realy the HUGE concern as design for the task at hand (read : swan necks, scews, etc.). While I do yearn for an LV set these'll do 'till I'm rich and famous.

Re: new chisels

wilbur

>Just curious -- why are you not too keen on Japanese chisels?

Re: new chisels

John H. in Baltimore

>Hi Thom,

Thanks for your reply. You've given me a dilemma to ponder -- improving my current chisels vs. buying new ones.

If my understanding is correct, you propose lowering the bevel angle - even for use with hardwoods. Please forgive me, but my intuition tells me that the bevel angle should be increased for hardwoods. Current product offerings seem to support this by having bevels of 30 degrees or greater. My chisels already have a bevel of 25 degrees, how low should I go?

Also, what hardness are you recommending that I target? Stanley advertises my chisels as having a hardness of 58-60HRc.

Thanks again!

John

Re: new chisels

John H. in Baltimore

>Hi Wilbur-

Nothing against Japanese chisels. However, I feel there would be a new learning curve with respect to Sharpening and usage.

Re: new chisels

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>I'd recommend that you fix up your existing bench chisels and see how they work; but put your money in some new special purpose chisels, such as paring and mortising, don't worry about buying sets of these. You may find that once you have the special purpose in the sizes you need, you may no longer use your bench chisels.

Pam

Re: new chisels

Wiley Horne

>John,

Two Cherries is a brand which usually ranks very highly whenever chisel tests are performed. I'm leaving out the Japanese chisels (my favorites). You won't go wrong with Two Cherries.

One other thought in regard to dovetails: Have you ever tried sawing the waste, rather than chopping?

Wiley

Re: new chisels

John H. in Baltimore

>Thanks for the tip. I usually just chop. It seems that whenever I use a coping saw, there's more paring & fussing to clean up the base lines . . .

Re: new chisels

paul womack

>I usually just chop. It seems that whenever I use a coping saw, there's more paring & fussing to clean up the base lines . . .

Do I gather from this that you're chopping "to the line" as opposed to just chopping away waste prior to final trimming?

BTW, whilst the metric vs imperial flamewar (I mean "discussion") has some small application to mortices, for DT's, one simply grabs the widest chisel that's smaller than the DT space. DT sizes are far more variable (being influenced by taste and judgement) than mortice sizes (primarily influenced by common stock sizes and the well known "third" rule.

BugBear

Re: new chisels

John H. in Baltimore

>Hi BugBear

I actually chop to the line (starting a hair away from it). With pine, I get pretty good results this way. How do you do it?

BTW, I noticed Roy Underhill uses a "cranked" frame saw blade in "The Woodwright's Apprentice." Anyone here ever try this?

Please forgive my sarcasm regarding imperial sizes. Like the wood, I'm not too particular. However, I have a few mortise chisels sized in imperial units and a plow plane with cutters in imperial units. For at least this reason, I'd like to stay consistent.

Regards,

John

Re: new chisels

thomd

>I'm not suggesting you lower your angles, all I was saying is that one factor that contributes to cutting power is the angle so you might try a different chisel experience a different degree of penetration and it would be hard to tell whether it was somethig about the steel or the geometry. If you bevel angles are already good then you can move on. I just finished making a chisel witha 3 degree angle, and this is way too extreme. but the idea is it will cut out dovetails in one wack from the back and one from the front. So no prying would every be even a temptation. SO compare that to a high angle. The angle is mostly going to reduce eedge toughness if it's levered. So a low angle chisel taking less cuts may end up with less damage due to levering. It's not for sure the lower angle hurts durability. I woudl see no reason to grind lower than 25 though, for the time being.

On hardness, there is something clearly afoot. Recent reviews have given some very high rockwell numbers to some very low performing chisels, as far as edge wear is concerned. So I can only conclude that either these numbers are bogus or that the rockwell test no longer serves to even roughly diferentiate on edge retention. It used to be that the better Japanese chisels were as many as 10 points harder on the C scale. Now in tests they often come off as only a few points different. I have some blisterpack chisels, they are rated at 58-62, first off that's a pretty wide range. A lot of Japanese chisels of awesome quality are in the 64 area. All I can conclude from those numbers is they are meaningless. I think a better approach is to harden your chisels (if you feel like it), and temper at aroun 350. If they are too chippy tthrow them in at 360, etc... Abstractions are a lot less useful that a good plan of action.

By the way you need only heat up the last inch. That should keep you for a good long time and it will serve to make the whole tool quite a bit tougher if the tang and waist are not hardened.

You can remove the translucent plastic handles and replace them, by the way.

Correction: "cranked bow saw blade"

John H. in Baltimore

>

Re: new chisels

thomd

>"for DT's, one simply grabs the widest chisel that's smaller than the DT space."

Or one lays out directly from the chisels so it doesn't mater what size they are, or one uses clearly undersized chisels and double hits. A lot of pros seem to favour the undersized approach. Possibly because they are confident the result of choping across the socket will not be betrayed by their workmanship, and they can then angle the chisels into the corners, not worry about side cut on the chisels, etc...

Re: Correction: "cranked bow saw blade"

thomd

>By cranked do you mean a progressive L so the blade cuts around the corner?. Like franz klauzs?

I don't really go for the method using a fret saw. i teach it to beginers since it makes some aspects easier. I don't cut to the line this way and therefor once one gets the hang of chiseling it often takes more time to use the fretsaw. Also any fretsaw blade that cuts reasonable well tends to also be too wide for some of the nicer DT saws. A good precision saw is good for cutting out the sockets, Here you can get away with the fine blades bcause the power saw is a lot faster and it is also easier to be accurate with.

Christmas present to self ... a new chisel

Ian (in Sydney, Australia)

>Treat yourself to one Lie-Nielsen bench chisel, say 3/16" or 1/2"

if you decide it's too good for your work style, you should be able sell it for about what you'll have paid. If not you'll have a great chisel and a reference to which you can compare other chisels (either as bought or after heat treatment)

Re: new chisels

paul womack

>Or one lays out directly from the chisels so it doesn't mater what size they are, or one uses clearly undersized chisels and double hits.

If you're using narrow (ish) pins, the waste pieces are rather large, so I guess a "chopper" would be into "double hits" (if I understand you correctly). Otherwise the required chisel would be wide, expensive, and need a hell of a mallet to make such a wide cut.

I'd rather saw this waste free and remove them, than use a chisel to turn that much waste into chips.

BugBear

Re: DT technique

paul womack

>BTW, to facilitate sawing waste, I always make a good clear baseline mark with a cutting gauge; this means I can use a fast cutting 14 TPI coping saw blade, close to the line, with no fear of tearing out the grain on finished surfaces.

I suspect from years of reading forums that the English made coping saw frames are stiffer than the common US ones, since I've never had any trouble with blade tension, which is widely reported as a problem by US residents. Bob Smalser even went to the effort of making a (very nice) small and rigid bowsaw to resolve this problem.

BugBear

Shallow learning curve

wilbur

>There's probably not as much of a learning curve as you might think. For me, the only things I had to learn was how to sharpen the bevel side with a waterstone (or ScarySharp), as opposed to hollow grinding the bevel on a grinder, and how to set the metal hoop. And I was (still am) a beginner at woodworking at the time. Of course, this also meant that I didn't have anything to unlearn.

Re: new chisels

thomd

>do you clean up with a chisel afterwards? I have a really good saw, but I don't find it cuts cleanly enough to follow the line. I have to come back in with the chisel. SO I leave about 1/16, just enough for the chisel to hold in the cut. That's probably the easiest way I kow, but the problem as mentioned is it isn't faster if one has to go in there with a chisel anyway. And the saw blades I use, nice quality ones from LV, break in hard wood.

With the double hit, I am talking about the whole joint, including the pin sockets, However, as you note the comes a point where these are so small a singel chisel may well get the nod.

One of the things

Wiley Horne

>I like best about sawing the waste, particularly with drawer sides, is that you can gang the two drawer sides, saw the dovetails together, and then while they're still in the vise, fret saw the waste on both sides with the same saw cuts. There's nothing left but paring cuts to finish both tail boards at that point.

I use a rip dozuki, and then follow with Olson #2 fret saw blades, which will just slide down the dozuki kerf. I am wondering how folks get a chisel into small pin entries without dinging the work. On the other hand, I can see how, on pins boards, where there may be wide tail sockets, and where it's not as easy to gang the cuts, it could be easier to chop than saw.

Wiley

Re: new chisels

Hub in Ontario

>Oh John,

As you know, we in Canada have been metric for quite some time and it is not so bad. In fact we are thinking of starting to drive on the other side of the road just like the Brits. We are going to go slowly on this however and start with trucks only first and see how that goes.

I will let you know

Just forget Crown!

Mark Harrison -- Brisbane, Australia

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