I made one of these so far as a test and will make more for myself. I also bought another $650 worth of the stock, which is more than it sounds like. That's enough to make five or so sets of chisels at some point in the future just because they would be a rare thing to have and I think sometimes there might be interest in that kind of thing. Western chisels of White #1 - the prime stuff.
This steel is 1.3% carbon and available through New Jersey Steel Baron, which is unusual in the sense that the seller is in the United States, and for a long time, we could not get White 1 or Blue 1 in the US. I don't know what Hitachi's angle is, but the steel is done in infrequent melts and probably due to the lack of much of a market in japan. That is, it's not hard to find white #1 tools, but if a melt of several tons is done, it takes a lot of chisel laminations or kitchen knives to use that much, and as big as the market may be, white 1 is only in a minority of knives and tools, in favor of other stuff to work.
Still, the old rumor that it's too brittle to use in a solid steel chisel never made sense to me, and having hand time on forging chisels from rod entirely by hand, I think the use of wrought iron was partially cost and then continued still some due to that, but also do to workability. it's a lot easier to work an iron chisel body, and less risky as far as cracking due to lazy or too hot or cold forging.
In the end, I did my normal process of drawing out the bar stock and tapering it in thickness, then freehand grinding, and the heat treat process is the typical post forge normalizing, a pre-quench to get better straightness in the final quench - then a series of thermal cycles followed by a final heat and quench. All of this goes by in about 10 minutes of elapsed time or less after forging courtesy of an induction forge, and the method is overshooting heat rather than trying to imitate a modern computer controlled furnace that goes for specific temperature and duration.
The quenches are done in brine and then to cold plain water at the very tail and pressed into the frost in my freezer to eliminate as much retained austenite as possible.
Quench hardness at the tip was 69-ish and hardness in the first inch or so after two 400F tempers is 66, and a little further up, 65. The chisel taper gets a little thicker and the steel has very little alloying in it for hardenability - about as little as you'll find - so I think that's causing the point variation over the usable length.
As part of the process, I create a false bevel and break the edge out to look at the grain and there is no visual evidence of grain growth at 75x optical.
The side and final bevel and top curvature (if present) are done after heat treatment and the result is this:
Some vigorous testing in beech, including especially, burying corners to see if they will be fragile, and everything checks out fine. 
In a wider test against an array of chisels, it fares better than anything western that I've used thus far, and probably on par with most good japanese chisels that are not budget chisels. This isn't really a surprise, but you never know until you do it.
The discussion of how hard it is to make something good with white #1 has always confused me. it's a clean steel. There's nothing about it that's tricky perhaps but for the high carbon level vexing someone using a computer controlled furnace and getting too much of the carbon out into the chisel and not stuck in iron carbides. Heat treatment without a temperature hold/duration was uneventful, the results are good and the warp was very minimal.
There is one catch. Anyone can go to NJSB and buy bar stock. 0.28" thick, 36" long and 1" wide is about $180 with shipping. That price is salty for what it is. It's good, it's user friendly as long as you will quench it fast, but voestalpine/buderus offerings that are very similar and well below the tolerance levels white 1 has for purity cost about a third as much, give or take. But there's a certain attractiveness to making something that doesn't show up commercially anywhere, especially if the result is plenty robust to use without any special dos or don't. From the feel of it breaking the sample out of the edge before final grinding, it's not really that brittle - less so than the narex ricther by quite a bit.
Solid Hitachi White no 1 Steel Western Pattern Chisel
Posts
Re: Solid Hitachi White no 1 Steel Western Pattern Chisel
#2I'm pretty surprised that you managed to find the stock from a US seller!
Interesting too what you say about durability and the old assumptions about forging it to a softer body. As cool as it is to make stuff that is simply not available for sale, it's also awfully cool to learn what is wrong with the internet lore (and there is a lot wrong with internet lore!).
I never tried the Narex Richter. The plain ones are fine for me, and I actually like that they are the budget model. Good chisels for cheap is something I like.
Re: Solid Hitachi White no 1 Steel Western Pattern Chisel
Edited #3John in NM wrote:I'm pretty surprised that you managed to find the stock from a US seller!
Interesting too what you say about durability and the old assumptions about forging it to a softer body. As cool as it is to make stuff that is simply not available for sale, it's also awfully cool to learn what is wrong with the internet lore (and there is a lot wrong with internet lore!).
I never tried the Narex Richter. The plain ones are fine for me, and I actually like that they are the budget model. Good chisels for cheap is something I like.
I'm surprised, too. Over the years, I've gotten some rikizai (prelaminated) steel in white #2 and vtoku, but that kind of stuff is for people to just cut and shape a knife , and obviously, never rikizai in a format that you could make a chisel. Cut and shape knife folks aren't going to want a blank a quarter thick. interesting thing in this case is after years of looking off and on for white 1 pieces being sold gray market, just to try it, NJSB sent all of us (people with registered accounts) an email that they were lucky to have been chosen as a US retail point for hitachi blue 1 and white 1, melt cert signed to the retailer and all.
Yessir on the internet lore part. Chasing making things not for sale just for the purpose of it often leads to making stuff not worth having in the first place. In this case, after using parallel steels, the idea that it wouldn't be suitable didn't make sense, and it would've been surprising if it didn't make a good solid steel chisel. the cost of the steel in japanese tools is overblown, too. it's very expensive for what it is, but it's only expensive in the scheme of a tool when it's used in solid like this. There's enough in a bar to make five chisels like this one. Fortunately, a couple of pairs of chisels will come out of one length, so there's at least enough there to make a 6 or 7 chisel set out of the $180 worth, depending on whether or not one becomes a lost cause.
Ricthers are the narex range that's made more traditionally - not austempered (inexpensive). I have only bought one just to test. It has very slightly enlarged looking grain, but a little goes a long way, and the chisel is brittle and needs additional angle to work well. Kind of a surprise given that sometimes, there are chinese chisels made to a really high standard as far as steel (not the usual 0.6% carbon stuff) and quality of heat treatment. Not sure what allowed the richter to be the way it is - probably could've been better a point softer. the one I bought is 63/64 hardness and looks like it was pushed a little too far to get there.
Added later 1 h 15 min 22 s:
I can just imagine in the spirit of Todd Hughes, that in the past, there would've been a long discussion about master this or that-san (not saying that in an insulting way toward the japanese makers, but rather the people who retail their wares and then the fans who make things into something they're not)....
....but Todd saying something like "I don't know...it doesn't make sense to me that a maker working 6 or 7 days a week would want to steel and iron that are really difficult to get right".
I would guess - just a guess - that the lack of chromium in white #1 is in deference to welding. it has very little in it that adds to hardenability - we are talking like 1/3rd of the hardenability of 1084 or something, but for a maker with a little more skill and no fear of a fast quench, that ends up being a pleasant difference and not a detriment. if it needed 0.5% manganese in stead of 0.2%, then it would have that.
voestalpine's 26c3 makes a chisel at least as good from what I can tell (maybe better - don't tell the true believers) and has about 0.3% chromium. i'll have a better feel for the two after I make half a dozen white #1 chisels. they both seem more forgiving to the guy who learns the brief overheat method vs. holding steel at temperature, at least based on toughness data for electric furnace heated samples.
todd made a subtle comment that went a long way toward my own skepticism that cap irons were little used and didn't do much or anything. "I don't know....", and then the rest briefly questioning why someone would go to all the work to do something that would've been fairly difficult in terms of making screws neatly, and chipbreakers, if there was no reason.
White #1 had an advantage that deferred this for a while - aside from not being available. it's not seldom that it comes from japan brittle, but why that is, I don't know. I had a mosaku plane iron (mosaku being one of the kind of celebrated older style makers) and it was just plain chippy. if I still had it, I would start tempering it at 350 and work my way along to see if it behaved better, but it's long gone. I'm more curious about that now, and there may be a reason for it...namely, that the end user gets to choose their level of temper, so it's left undertempered.
It's available in thicknesses for stanley plane irons and solid kitchen knives, but at the price, they don't make much sense. Edge life planing with it will be sweet, but short, and 26c3 and 125cr1 can already do the same thing, same hardness, and maybe with slightly higher toughness.