eclipse style honing guide

Re: eclipse style honing guide

paul womack

>You could regrind the sides of your chisels :-)

lots of work

BugBear

Re: eclipse style honing guide

David Charlesworth

>Much easier to file and adapt the shape of the grooves of the guide.

Alternatively lay the chisel on the two thin bars, and work out some new projections. This is what we always do for mortice chisles.

Another tip; use finger pressure near the edge of the chisel, NOT on the guide itself. This works very well and I advise pull strokes only for my beginner students.

Clamping of tool does not need to be extreme, it only maintains the angle for you.

best wishes

David Charlesworth

Re: eclipse style honing guide

les winter

>Thanks for the help, David. By the way, I think your Chisel Techniques dvd is great.

regards

Les

Re: eclipse style honing guide

David Charlesworth

>Les,

Most welcome, and thank you very much, I was very pleased with it.

The chisel is often underrated as a precision tool.

David Charlesworth

Chisels are underrated?

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>OK, David, that statement calls for some serious questioning. Who underrates chisels as precision tools?

Pam

Re: Chisels are underrated?

David Charlesworth

>Well Pam, clearly not by you ~;-)#

I get many relative beginners in my classes. Their chisels are not sharp enough to take light paring cuts in hardwood endgrain so they don't use them for this kind of job.

Shoulder lines are not cut in deep enough to make location of paring cuts easy.

Chisels are pushed with arm muscles rather than leg muscles or body weight, therefore having less power and no "brakeing system". Grip on handle much too severe so no control of fine cuts. Too much grip often twists edge out of shallow guage lines when chopping with hammer.

Failure to use firm thumb pressure on the back of a chisel to keep it paring in a plane once the cut has started.

Unfamiliarity with the added precision that long handled parers give.

Feeling the need to pare the sides of mortices.

I could probably go on but how's that for starters?

best wishes,

David

Re: Chisels are underrated?

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>Oh, beginners. Don't forget "cut your fingers when you accidentally grab by the arrises" method, those cuts are very precise. :)

Pam

How much more time does this forum spend

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>on planes than on chisels? At 59, I'm finally learning how powerful and precise a tool a good chisel can be - partly because I've finally acquired good ones over recent years, partly because I've improved my skills to the point that I can see what they can do.

Re: How much more time does this forum spend

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>I don't really know since I can safely avoid reading all the Stanley plane stuff, and most of the nono-exotic plane stuff as well. I suppose it's considerable. Maybe that's why it doesn't take me long to process messages these days.

Personally I don't consider one tool type more important than another; so for me it all counts: planes, chisels, stones, etc. However, all it took was for me to use a chisel, can't even remember how good it was, probably close to junk, to realize how extraordinary a number of tasks it could accomplish. It's digging in? Work it bevel down. And the like.

Perhaps the fact that I didn't have very many tools at the time: a little Stanley block which I could never put to use, 1 or 2 Marples or equivalent, a large hand saw and a Tyzack back saw, a Stanley marking gauge, and an Arkansas stone. With those tools I made a dovetailed box from teak, a teak base for the stone, a darkroom (also had a small crummy Craftsman homemade table saw for the sink) and various accessories like drying screens, a workbench, and the like. With such a paucity of tools you learn a lot about chisels.

So, welcome to the "chisels are precision instruments" society. :)

Pam

Pleasure

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>and it feels so powerful shaving that gnat's-epidermis-thick shaving off something to get to a final fit, using nothing but holding the tool right.

Re: How much more time does this forum spend

Bob Strawn

>I can understand someone considering a chisel clumsy, for years I considered it an adjustment tool.

Until you learn grain, a chisel is risky and random. Until you can sharpen, a chisel is clumsy. When you learn to use a marking knife and gage, and precut, then a chisel becomes a brilliantly precise tool.

A long chisel with a perfectly flat back and no back bevel, will quickly and easily make precision surfaces. My lathe gave me the first real clues on chisel use.

Bob

Re: How much more time does this forum spend

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>What about the turning work caused you to investigate chisel care and feeding?

Pam

Principles

Jim Shaver - Oakville, Ontario

>Hi Pam,

The lathe also taught me a lot about using chisels fuuny I had the same feeling as Bob.

For years I struggled with cutting tools on the lathe, catches problems sharpening just a series of misses and the odd hit. About 3 years ago I set out to learn how to use and master one tool, the skew. It has a lot of the same principles as a chisel. Understanding how to sharpen and hone a skew and how to use it lead me to it's functional ablities and more to my skills with time.

Learning how a planing cut with a skew can leave a perfect surface if done right is a special moment when it happens. I also found that tool control and "reading" grain with a skew helped me to undertstand the powerful tool I had in my hand and enabled my confidence.

A few years ago I found I was in a similar place with bench chisels. I had seen them as lees important to me than some of my treasured tailed tools and that one day I might actually lean how to sharpen one properly. In the last year I have crossed that continental divide big time, I have taken the time to learn how to sharpen them properly, use them properly and now apply them with increasing efficiency than before.

Perhaps my experience with the skew led me to seeking out how to apply improved technique with my chisels, but it is not my first experience where one fundamental woodworking process has helped me to improve in another one.

Take care,

Jim

Re: Principles

ThomD

>I don't really do much carving. But what good carvers do with chisels goes so far beyond the accuracy and joinery tasks we seem obssessed with. I love planes, but a lot of their appeal comes from the fact that they are easily mastered compared to other tools. They are the table saw of hand tools.