another file chisel...

Re: another file chisel...

William Duffield

I'm having serious problems lately viewing your IMGUR images. All I see is pitch black. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Re: another file chisel...

David Weaver

not sure - it's probably IMGUR. When I used to post the links, I'd get a full sized picture, but now I get a reduced size image when I click on them.

Reference servers and the App

Jim Matthews

I loaded the App to use Imgur for storage.

Just selecting the link often returns a null result, but opening the app shows the image.

I think it has to do with routing the link request, but that's above my paygrade.

question

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

How did you grind the edge bevel?

Re: question

David Weaver

hammered partly to shape and then held in a vise and cut with a vixen. It takes only a couple of minutes with a vixen to remove serious metal, and then clean it up with a file. It's just easier doing that to get the bevels even (they're uneven in this picture because I unintentionally had the chisel unequal thickness left to right and I've ground some of it down on the idler of a sander and that made the bevels a little wonky - I'll clean them up with coarse sandpaper on a block.

That english grinding video made me salivate a little bit because that's a wheel big enough to grind smooth bevels on chisels without having roll over or unintentional dubbing over edges that you'd get with belts.

The finer and larger the bevels are, though, the more the chisel warps in heat treat - probably why most of the later chisels other than newer boutique types had fat edges, and probably one of the reasons that nobody is making respectable paring chisels out of plain steel - both work holding (thicker parers like narex are fat enough to be stiff and probably easier to grind in some computer controlled machine) and in warping and follow-up grinding .

At any rate, in annealed steel, a vixen worked diagonally will just take off pigtails of steel in an inch long or more in some cases.

Re: Reference servers and the App

William Duffield

Curiouser and curiouser. I have had only minor annoyances viewing imgur images posted by Galoots over on "The Porch" * but I'm not about to install an app to look at another social media platform.

* OldTools https://swingleydev.com/archive/faq.html

side comment on this..

David Weaver

...the profile I've seen on any nice chisel is this (by this, I mean being really picky about the feel of the chisel)

* the tang is a bit wider than it is tall, but not too much. Ahead of the tang, the center of the chisel cross section is full height and then along the length of the chisel, there's some concavity and the end of the chisel is substantially thinner. The point of this is pretty simple - good stiffness/feel malleted straight in without having to have a fat end-heavy chisel.

* bevels are sort of a secondary topic then given the above - I forgot that even though I'm hammering this type, I don't do much hammering up at the tang and I hammer to get the profile of tapering thickness down toward the business end and then hopefully improve the steel toughness at the business end a little. Whether or not I'm doing that hammering at relatively low temp, who knows, but while I do cut these bevels by hand, it strikes me that it's wise (and this is what I do) that if one is going to make bevel edge chisels to start with a relatively thick half-round file.

Long story short, other than the first one, the last two that I've forged - i'm making a second one with this one (And the next two in process) have been squashed out of a half round file which cuts down on the profiling somewhat.

It becomes pretty easy to see that a competent blacksmith in the old days would've learned to forge to nearly complete shape and do as little other work as possible. I can facilitate that with the type of file used at the outset, but the skill to get shape particularly accurate off of the hammer......not so much! Squashing does help a lot with getting the taper in thickness with the classic concavity in the length taper, and then biases in geometry start to come in (like we generally talk about) to try to facilitate post heat treat movement not creating an unusable tool (I try not to make the backs of these chisels flat, but rather a little convex so that when they quench, the bevels don't pull them into being seriously hollow along their length - plus, a chisel that is flat in the last inch and then has some convexity on the back side is favorable for use.

I also taper them a little bit in width from business end to tang. They seem to work nicer when made that way and get stuck a little less in cuts.

Re: another file chisel...

William Duffield

I can see them just fine that way, with direct links to the imgur pics.

That's a nice looking walnut handle. It's a shame it is probably condemned to destruction by splitting. I would never make a handle for a tanged chisel (or file or rasp) without a ferrule. I learned the hard way. There is just too much leverage of the tang in the wood in typical use, not to mention the wedging action while installing it.

Re: another file chisel...

Steve Voigt

Looks terrific Dave, very tidy!

Re: another file chisel...

Steve Voigt

William…

Tanged chisels were made without ferrules from the 17th c (if not earlier) until the mid-19th c. I have re-handled half a dozen this way and have never split one.

Re: another file chisel...

David Weaver

the handle is actually beech - my hands were just filthy. I have brass tube to make a ferrule, but these handles actually hold up well as long as the force of the fibers is focused on the top of the bolster so that the outside of the chisel handle doesn't creep past the side of the bolster (That is, you leave them a bit cigar shaped so that the force is toward the center)

The handles a bit too fat, too - it's just the kind of quick thing that I can turn with wood out of the scrap bin in about 5 minutes. I know the last time I mentioned burn in, it wasn't appreciated here, but it's burned in also as getting the alignment straight with a narrow starter drill hole and then burn in is really easy as long as the burn isn't allowed to carry on too long.

It's still a bit funky looking, but...

David Weaver

..there's enough material left on it to clean up the lines. It feels a lot like the chisel I sent you, except the beech handle is light and the whole chisel might be a tad thinner (and it's a tiny bit softer - no need to chase ideal sharpness off of the washita with the buffer stepping in).

Re: It's still a bit funky looking, but...

John Jardin

David, thanks for sharing your process.

Learning from you is always a pleasure.

Going way deep in the weeds...

David Weaver

I realize in these responses that I thought of chisels as something I hadn't thought that much about and more or less made just because the knives made from files turned out so well....

....and then after typing out all of the stuff about how the taper should be, the proportions, etc, .....I guess I've noticed more than I thought about the chisels nicest to use when doing something like chopping half blinds, etc.

steel in the files...

David Weaver

..I've never had a lot of luck finding out exactly what's in the files, but it doesn't really matter as long as the original advice that I got years ago is not correct ("the files are just case hardened and the material in the center won't be suitable for anything").

Someone on the UK board mentioned that regular files were specified in a catalog as "made of best sheffield cast steel" (so probably same as anything for the most part - razors, carbon steel knives, saws, plane irons, etc).

I saw a couple of seemingly reliable references that nicholson's later mass produced american files used 1095, except their black diamond files, which use an ally with 1.3% carbon (and what else they use isn't specified, but one person referenced a catalog quote of 72 hardness - I'm guessing they get some kind of treatment to the teeth so that the tips of the teeth are that hardness). I haven't bought anything like that.

1095 should make a great chisel.

Separate from that, I saw an asian file listing which referred to T12 steel. This is confusing as ASTM specs a low carbon steel for tube making with the same number (which lends credence to the claim that some of the overseas files being cheap cores with supplemented carbon and case hardening on the surface). ...

...until looking further and finding a global (asian?) spec for 1.2% carbon plain steel that's "T12" (and remembering that the original woodriver irons were specified as "T10", which seems to be similar to W1 or 1095).

That's all I've got about that!! I thought perhaps nicholson and heller might use something a bit higher in carbon (but low alloying based on spark and tendency to rust easily) than 1095 (I'll have a nicholson file converted to a chisel within a week or so to see if it has the same excellent behavior that the heller files make, as well as the recent "India" file which sparked the same).

It seems surprising how much nicer the file chisels are in terms of edge behavior vs. O1 if they are just 1095, but I guess there may not be much around in solid steel modern chisels that is 1095 as oil hardening steel became common and is much better behaved in manufacturing than water hardening steel.

Re: another file chisel...

William Duffield

Bill T. is going to want to know your recipe for pigment staining.

Well, I appreciate info on burning in. In fact, several years ago, I tried burning in some file and rasp tangs. I was successful, but had some different results from yours on burn in rates. These observations were anecdotal, and I didn't make any measurements of time rate of mortise material removal vs. temp vs. wood species or Janka hardness, etc., so please take my ideas with a grain of salt.

Also, note that I do not expect to repeat my tests, as I have lately been using an easier, safer and more effective method of mounting tanged tools to handles: a modified hardware bonding technique, using plumber's epoxy putty.

What I noted with my burn-in method was if I didn't burn out enough of the lignum handle material on the first heat of the tang, and then reheated it to try again, the second (and third, etc.) burn went slower than the first. I attributed this to a build up of high carbon charcoal in the mortise, which did not combust as rapidly as the lignum it was made from, and also provided some insulating properties, keeping the lignum from getting as hot on the subsequent burns. Scraping most of the carbon out of the mortise seemed to speed up lignum removal in the subsequent burn.

Question whose answer i cant find

Bruce, a MN Galoot

How do you anneal these files? I’m sure my propane torch can’t handle even the cheap Mexican Nicholsons that I have.

paint can forge

David Weaver

I use a paint can forge and the bernzomatic TS4000, and mapp. I'm sure propane with that torch type and a paint can forge would anneal just about anything short of a sword - just the housing of a cheap diy-ish setup like that (paint can with refractory blanket inside) can hold an incredible amount of heat.

The TS4000 torch is a nice torch, but when it's inserted in the side of a small forge like that, the igniter is terminated in one session (I keep a striker - I'd rather use the torch in the forge than preserve the igniter).

I've got bigger setups (refractory bricks and a multi hundred thousand BTU propane burner), but I find them pretty hard to use due to the heat level.

I bought a second brass torch and cut a second hole in the can forge, but I rarely have to use it.

strangely enough...

David Weaver

..the first handle I burned in was rosewood. All in one shot. It didn't burn as fast and easily just like you say about lignum, and I had trouble getting the handle back off (the tang was forged to a point and was a bit rough).

with beech, the wood burned so much more readily that I did the same thing and the first one ended up loose, so I was a bit more cautious on the second.

I can believe lignum because of its density would make a cake of ash and insulate itself. With as much mass as it has, it's probably not as easy to heat it high enough to get it to burn behind the ash layer.

I, too, thought about epoxying the handle on the chisel, but too lazy to wait. The burn in method takes about two or three minutes (and some wasted gas).

Far as the hand-style earth pigments on the handle.....I specialize in those. Through the door there is not just one, but two separate sinks, but I guess I just can't wait that long to see how something will turn out. The dark metal filth doesn't look authentic on the handle, but with some time and other types of dirt mixed with it, it ages quite nicely! I need to experiment with some fatty fingerfoods to imitate the animal fats people used to use.

Thanks, John!!

David Weaver

making chisels is probably not ever going to be a popular thing, but I am to do something weird at this point. Not just to be weird, but not to avoid something just because there's no real need to do it.

Re: Question whose answer i cant find

William Duffield

You just need to get high carbon steel up to the temperature (color) you would use to harden it, and then let it cool slowly instead of quenching it. Todd Hughes used to just bury it in a pile of ashes that had accumulated at the edge of his forge and walk away for lunch or to go stain a handle with a pile of dirt and linseed oil (basically the same method David used). The ashes have a lot of insulating capacity.

Re: strangely enough...

William Duffield

Sorry for the minor misunderstanding. When I used the term lignum, I just meant generic wood you might use to make a tool handle and that you had not yet reduced to graphite , and not lignum vitae, Guaiacum officinale.