Some Weaver chisels arrived yesterday

Sharpening...

David Weaver

They're initially sharp, but should actually be technically better once the backs get more than just quick treatment on sandpaper and india.

No kidding, they're:

* india stone on the bevel and back (fine india, but settled in) - maybe or maybe not with a wire teased off with light work on a mid-fineness novaculite stone (washita or dan's hard)

* 5 micron yellowcake on the buff. Don't spare the rod. bevel side only with only the fluff corner touching the back if it feels like there's any junk sticking to the back.

Also, no kidding, I could tell the sweetness from the sharpening process varied with hardness when I put the orignial article together. You can add sweetness to soft chisels by adding fine steps, but it's easier to make the chisel the right hardness to get the sweetness.

The V11 chisel was an outlier as it wasn't any sharper than the others, but it's slipperier. The strike counts showed that. I couldn't get it to hold together under heavy use as well as a hard carbon steel chisel, though.

It could still very well be better than my file chisels due to the fact that the steel has much excess carbide and I can't get it fully into solution like industrial process can.

Winston's pair, the narrow is not so bonkers hard, but the wider of the two chisels as I recall is bonkers hard. The settled in india stone tells the story. It sharpens hard chisels fine. It sharpens really really hard chisels a little slow. The difference between the two is probably no wider than the spec range used by most manufacturers, but it's noticeable.

(The hope with these chisels and their possibly larger grain is that the unicorn trick will shut out any failure that may have occurred pushing the limits with flat bevels, and that they're the right hardness to get a lot of sweetness out of the common bits used here - no need for extra fine stuff. I didn't use any extra fine stones, and didn't use any linde A or anything like that).

The talk about ...rabbit holes...

David Weaver

This discussion about trying to engineer a chisel to go well with a certain abrasive set that's common and not slow is really the part about going down the rabbit hole....

....but if I didn't discuss that rabbit hole, it may not do well to explain why these seem sharp. The original chase of making chisels before using any buffer was to get a really crisp edge off of a washita after rounding the tip over a little - one that was well polished without using a really fine stone, and that didn't hold on to the wire edge much so that you could just do the minor tip rounding, very light stropping and have it seem strangely sharp given that one of the beginners rules of sharpening was just intentionally violated (that something isn't sharp unless it's two flat planes meeting).

When people get a hock iron or an A2 iron or something and describe it as being sharper than an older iron or whatever else they were using, I think it's the dynamic of their stone or sharpening process meeting harder steel. It doesn't really get sharper, it just gets sharper with the same process.

The buffer closed the loop on all of this, because all of the sudden, the very marginal feeling irons (like the one home depot sold for $2.99) can take and hold a very good edge - the little bits about sharpening that people have trouble managing (getting the work all the way to the edge, not damaging an edge with a heavy hand or something laying on a sharpening stone, and dealing with a wire edge on a soft iron combined with an apex with low strength.....all gone with the buffer. It erases all of that. I've come to like those soft irons a little bit - they sharpen so fast that the damage never accumulates on them).

(I did not look at your chisels under a microscope though, or fiddle at them, and you'll find some scratches at the corners, etc, on the back that will be gone with subsequent honings - buffer allows cheating on that, too, as the scratches now don't result in edge weakness or holding-on of wire edges).

Re: Some Weaver chisels arrived yesterday

Bill White

Bill,

I just got my Weaver chisels last week. Super sharp as were yours. They work very well.

I have some dogwood that you might want if you're making handles or mauls.

Let me know if you want some.

Mine did come with handles.

Re: Some Weaver chisels arrived yesterday

Joe shelton

That long handle would work well in the Weaver stance.

Re: Some Weaver chisels arrived yesterday

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

Thanks but an endless supply of dogwood grows around here