Coordinated Set

Re: Coordinated Set

Bruce, a MN Galoot

Nice! That’s an impressive set. Do you know how many hours of work you put into it?

Re: Coordinated Set

David Weaver

Thanks, Bruce - I think somewhere around 2 hours a chisel total for chisel and handle.

Intermittently, though, as some of the things like sawing the old files (still do that by hand) and hammering, you can do bits at a time but you can't do it for an hour.

A coarse belt on a belt grinder helps greatly in wide flat work, etc, and on long parers where the chisels aren't that stiff (especially before heat treating) and filing heavy amounts isn't very easy.

Re: Coordinated Set

Bill White

Sure look good David.

Re: Coordinated Set

Oskar

Very clean work. Looks fluent. Really like the black surface and overall simple look.

Well done

Handles turned 

David Weaver

I figure I make the handles a little bit big, but that makes them a lot more comfortable to push.

Re: Handles turned

William Duffield

If they're comfortable for you, they're not too big. One should not model one's own tools on model parameters decided by the MBA in the corner office who spends most of their time contemplating stock options.

Re: Coordinated Set

Steve Voigt

Those look terrific, Dave. Well done.

Re: Coordinated Set

Scott Lipscomb

Those look great, and I apologize if you covered this, but, how are you welding the bolsters?

Shrunk.....

David Weaver

these bolsters are hammered on and the last heat after they're fitted they come on hot and are shrunk to the tang after hammering by cooling.

I've forge welded a couple which is the same process but the last heat is high heat and then a quick forge weld. I'm concerned that the oxy/mapp setup that I use may burn the tang steel and weaken it when I forge weld, but haven't experimented.

These are just mild steel with a center hole drilled in, driven hot on to the tang on and off until the hole is stretched to fit, and then the last time they're driven on the bolster is deliberately hot without much work to do so that it can shrink a lot.

If the tang isn't tapered, they can slip a little bit when malleting, especially if there's no ferrule on the chisel to help out. Thus, I try to taper the tang just a little.

Long story short, not as strong as they would be if they were integrally forged, but stronger than no bolster. I think the top part in a coal forge is necessary to get to forge welding heat without much oxygen (the oxygen is burned out below in the fire - but I saw a video describing that part of a coal forge is also an area where it's easy to have forge welding temperature competing with burning, thus a relatively deep forge with high heat above the actual fire is best).

I have no such thing available. I guess destructive testing is in order.

Thanks, Steve...

David Weaver

you know how this goes - they get a little better each time. At some point, I'll get them just right and then lose interest.

A cleaner picture of these is below. Rafael gave me an apple board that made these nice handles (and 9 more blanks left), so these chisels went to him.

Thanks, Oskar!

Thanks, Bill!

David Weaver

If I close the loop on these things when I run out of steam making them, and they're subjectively better than the early ones, I'll send you a couple more.