granadillo vs. granadillo...

A customer's report

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

If you are making more than a few chisels I suppose the more than you need are going to others. Personally, I could care less what the handle of a chisel is made from, beyond a lighter weight wood is better than one heavy. I don't like a top heavy chisel. I am becoming fond of the lightweight beech handles on the Narex chisels. They are plain but light and I like light weight.

What the benefit of this wood you describe is escapes me as a "customer". It arrives wet and not ready to use and doesn't appear to my eye to be more attractive than lots of other wood. The effort and expense of using it would be lost on me.

Because it is readily available locally, a dogwood limb can not be beat for a chisel handle. Nothing turns better, it is split resistant and light weight.

boxwood...

David Weaver

most of the chisels that I like have boxwood handles.

I noticed that the chisels I've made (including the ones I sent to raffo) generally balance around the bolster or on the ferrule, even though they look like they're handle heavy. This is similar to most english chisels - the handles are longer than a blade holder would like because they're designed to be long enough to get your hand on the handle and then not accidentally strike the web of your thumb with a mallet (you'll remember that).

The market to get to beginners and charge a lot is to make a fat little chisel with a highly polished blade and a short stubby handle. that's not what I'm aiming for. I'm aiming for a chisel that feels like an english chisel made in the mid to late 1800s.

As far as arriving wet - I guess I don't have too much of a preference except that I can do the following:

* saw the wet blank by hand more easily

* quickly turn all of the squares as shown in the picture here

* put them on top of my furnace to dry, and once taken off of the furnace, they will gain weight the next couple of days (it's probably about 110 degrees on top of the furnace, give or take). Once they're turned wet (which is easy and less dust) down to those cylinders, it takes about 3-4 days on the furnace for them to get dry.

The only wood I've had issue with so far is gombeira - that will crack if dried too fast, but i'm not likely to use much of it. It's beyond reasonably hard and dense, but the handle smoothness would be nice on a parer- there's no visible pores in it and no balance issue on parers.

Beech is OK, apple is wonderful (limited availability) without much difference in weight over beech), and woods like chakte viga have the smoothness of those with more interesting color. Dogwood isn't widely available, and aesthetics are a bit behind.

Because I'm a handle gripper, I tend to like the woods more in the boxwood weight range. I suspect almost everyone who used chisels 150 years ago was gripping the handle or they'd have been shorter with more weight focused in the blade.

I think you liked my trash knife better than the chisels!!! hah!

(I call those trash knives because they're made from scrap and they're great to have near a recycling bin to cut apart boards, etc, and they can be made so quickly from an offcut of metal that there's never a reason to be careful with them - just keep them as sharp as possible).

Re: boxwood...

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

I think you liked my trash knife better than the chisels!!! hah!

No, chisels were fine. I am ambivalent about what wood gets used in the handle. For me, for what that is worth, just does not seem to be a beneficial place to spend money or effort. I can see tinkering with size and shape, but exploring the world for handle wood? Can't share your enthusiasm in the search for handle wood.

Minimal dollars...

David Weaver

..it takes me about 2 hours to make a chisel. I could probably pin down something acceptable and straight at a dollar a chisel for a handle (all the way to slipping onto township land here and taking beech branches off of the high side of fallen trees), but the real issue is like the steel used in the chisels.

52100 would probably be fine. Even 1095 would be fine (and very cheap - cheaper than locating vintage files thick enough to make a good chisel), but the latter doesn't measure up to files in terms of edge strength and the former might, but I haven't been forced to go there yet.

I'm looking to make them suitable to the highest degree across the board, but suitable to an experienced user. Every aspect of them, from a tasteful aesthetic to the feel of the handle in-hand when holding by the handle and malleting.

Initially, I wanted boxwood - that faded (you'd have to live in china to get inexpensive boxwood) - I like playing with the others.

For pure utility, there are plenty of chisels around that already have that. I want something that feels like it almost disappears from thought in use because there is nothing not pleasant about about it or sinking in comparison elsewhere...

....except for the folks who like to pinch a thick blade heavy chisel. Can't please them.

Chakte viga is the frontrunner so far. It's as hard as dogwood, looks three times as good and comes green and turns easy for not much money ($3 a handle). For what it costs me to get supplies, and sinking 2 hours into a chisel, adding an extra $2 to the cost is negligible.