Amateur Chisel Making

[Buster Bolster]

I didn't expect this topic to be here. I'm a sometimes amateur guitar maker, sometimes amateur woodworker and often amateur toolmaker with a nod mostly toward wooden planes and chisels in the pre-1900 English styles because those are the ones I like most when actually working wood. 

I've mostly tapered flat stock at the anvil and then forge welded on a steel bolster to my chisels - they're always all steel and not wrought with a welded bit or anything, heat treated by eye. But I am pretty serious about that - about trying to beat the book stats on tested samples and shrink grain so that hardened samples are finer than commercial stuff of similar alloy. it also has some advantages in terms of how the chisel is hardened through the business area (the first half of the length) and then up through the shoulder and tang vs. furnacing the entire chisel and quenching or not quenching parts. I understand that it can be contentious to claim you're good at heat treating in a way that's now seen as unconventional - or at least have learned that, but I think it was probably a bit more typical when most of my favorite tools were made. 

Most of my chisels have been in 26c3 solely because it is relatively easy to use to make a good chisel and in wood, it holds up better than anything commercially offered. But I'm moving to draw the metal out by hand out of rod at least for some things to have the chisel be entirely one piece.  

I'm not a pro, but I try to make things well enough that it's not apparent that I'm not. 

[LarryFahnoe]

Beautiful work Dave. I think your fascination with the integral bolster shows well in the results. Given your introduction I'm assuming you probably turned the handles and made the ferules as well. Are the ferules sheet brass, silver soldered or turned from solid? Chisels for wood are another thing on my lengthy to-do/interest list...

--Larry

[Buster Bolster]

Thanks, larry - yes on all of the parts - I try to make everything and I try to do it mostly freehand and by eye so that I end up with a certain look and feel and get some hand time on the tools. 

The handles are just turned and similar to what Marples used to call a "carver's pattern. I've made more elaborate handles, but they're never as comfortable - even the common types like London pattern, etc. They look great but they don't disappear from your mind in use like the more common handle types do. Sometimes what is nice in the hand isn't the flashiest, I guess. 

the ferrules are brass tube - .025-.03" thickness with the tenon/stub of the handle cut for a very tight fit. A bit heavy compared to the thinner ferrules on commercial chisels that are set in place with a punch, but I typically give them a tiny shot of glue when fitting the handles- if they should ever come loose in a dry climate, they can always get another small dot of glue by whoever I send the chisels to. 

I make as an amateur so that I can choose who gets the tools - usually based on either someone who is a friend, or often a pro who makes a request. I think if you make reasonably good tools, you can probably sell them, or you can just charge the cost of materials (which is what I do) or trade for something else and send tools to professional users who are more predictable and a pleasure to deal with. I don't have enough time to consider going pro and probably only make 50-100 things a year, whether those are plane irons or chisels or whatever else. 

[Daswulf]

Very clean work Buster. 

[Frosty]

Years ago when I was looking for others interested or involved in blacksmithing the people I met were those who made their own woodworking blades, carving chisels, special plane blades, etc. most were doing stock removal and a few were forging. All had gotten involved because they couldn't buy or afford to buy commercially made blades. Then they discovered more passion for making the blades than working the wood. 

It's all good though I prefer working steel but appreciate makers of all kinds.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[Buster Bolster]

57 minutes ago, Daswulf said:

Very clean work Buster. 

 

Thanks!

[Unnecessary quote removed.]

I've spent gobs of time on the heat treatment part so that I can do it quickly but not give up anything. You can normalize and thermally cycle 26c3 and then heat for quench in several minutes and have carbides and grain in a snapped sample that are much finer and stand up better than just reheating a file or using a commercial file - which will have fine grain, but you can make it more compact. I got a sniff of all of this eons ago making a replacement iron for an old English plane that someone just gave to me - a bullnose infill. They were going to throw it away. And it's taken off from there. The heat treatment for me is the core of it because you ultimately want to make your chisels something you prefer to commercial tools or when you're working wood, you'll go to using something that works better and it won't be yours. 

what's out there steel-wise in most woodworking tools is cut and computerized heat treat (a lot of A2, some O1, some CTS-XHP and then maybe in europe there's a little more salt bath stuff and use of steels like 80crv2, or actual forging of O1 (like ashley iles will do with chisels and carving tools). 

So, the moral for me is the toolmaking caught on because if you work wood by hand, you're going to end up needing to do it. Sometimes a slapped together single use tool is nice, but then maybe getting deeper into it and making tools to make them well is good, and it's all part of making. I like to keep my feet in both worlds - it's really easy to know what you like in chisels and planes if you use them a lot and have bought a lot of fine older tools. it would be harder for me to work with no reference - for me, there has to be something to try to match or better, and it's not always what someone else will prefer. For example, amateurs will read things in ad copy and perhaps they'll get the idea that anything freehand ground without jigs is crude. The solution for them is simple (aside from the fact that I don't sell or trade with amateur users), the market already has a lot of options for them. I want my tools to be used, and receive feedback if possible (especially if it's negative and I can learn from it). 

Edited September 13, 2023 by Mod34
Excessive quoting

[JHCC]

Speaking as a former professional woodworker (cabinetmaking, violin repair, and art restoration), I must say that those are lovely. Nicely done, and it looks like they perform well.

51 minutes ago, Buster Bolster said:

You can normalize and thermally cycle 26c3 and then heat for quench in several minutes and have carbides and grain in a snapped sample that are much finer and stand up better than just reheating a file or using a commercial file - which will have fine grain, but you can make it more compact.

Working with a known steel with predictable qualities and established heat treatment procedures is almost always better than making your best guess with mystery steel, even if it's not much of a mystery and you're pretty good at guessing.

[Buzzkill]

2 hours ago, Buster Bolster said:

I'm not a pro, but I try to make things well enough that it's not apparent that I'm not. 

Based on the pictures, you have succeeded.  If they perform anywhere nearly as well as they look any woodworker would be proud to own and use those tools.

[Buster Bolster]

Thanks guys, they do work well - perhaps a little better than they look. Which is the case for the English stuff, too. I used a ward chisel as the bar to get past malleting and 26c3 seems like the steel to do it. 

The English chisels of higher make (solid steel) are lower in carbon - I can tell from planing with them and looking at the surface that shows up in a metallurgical scope - there are probably carbides, but they are very small and any big enough to be visible are very few. But those chisels are often around 63 hardness, more consistent than people give them credit for, and 26c3 is a bit of a cheat to get to the same place because it will get to 63/64 on the bit end more easily, but without suffering low toughness that pushing another steel might cause. 

 

This is a chart - so, O1, I had done a fair amount of using and I did four samples at separate times - one of the test coupons got lost in my forge (or lost from my mind) and sat too long, so I don't know which one of those it was, but suspect it was the one top left. I do something that's a little unusual, which is to get to magnetic and then learn the fast overshot the steel would need to get to higher hardness. These samples are double tempered an hour each temper at 390F. 

26c3 is a little more variable when heat treating by eye and judgement, but you can see that there's not much reason to use O1 if actual use bears out what the chart shows (it does). 

The red 1095 dot that I put in shows exactly what JHCC says. I use a lot of O1 for plane irons and 26c3 in chisels, but I don't use much 1095 and never 1084. 1084 actually tested similar toughness - where I tripped in this exercise is taking a routine that I use for O1 and 26c3 and applying it to 1095 and 1084. I guess people would think they're very similar, but they just tolerate the overheat less well. 26c3 likes it as well or better than it likes an electric furnace, and I think this has something to do with the lack of a longer soak putting excess carbon in solution. 

1095 and 1084 seemed to come up short in use before this, but I made one or two tools of each and wrote them off. The testing let me know that they need a more gentle upshot after nonmagnetic if working by hand and eye, and then I didn't send more samples to be tested because I don't think it's really worth Larrin's time (he doesn't care for the heat treating method and I think that's perfectly reasonable as an opinion), and I don't have a reason to give up on it. Snapping some 1095 and 1084 samples after getting embarrassed clued me in on those - I just don't have a reason to use them. 

But I'm in a little bit of a pickle now because my love for 26c3 type steels relies on being able to get them, and forging a chisel from rod is out because it's not available in rod, and I can't find anything with more carbon than 52100 in the US other than 115crv3 rods from one supplier, and they failed to harden and were full of graphitization when I snapped them (even before forging). 

I guess this is evidence that I'm in this pretty deep!! what I didn't ever really want to get back from someone is a report that they used my chisels (or knives if I made the a knife) and said something about having something else with a better combination of durability and sharpenability. 

Short story long, it takes less time to work up a routine for 1095 and 1084 that keeps the grain fine and the toughness higher than it does to make one chisel, but I didn't do it and got wrapped up in thinking the method could be used without any adjustment......didn't do my homework and got burned. I obviously drew the dot of 1095 in there. The chart looks like the ones on knife steel nerds. it would hurt my heart to send a chisel out that looked great but performed substandard to something inexpensive and common - for sure!

I got wrapped up a little bit further in drawing out material because I think it is going to hold the key to why i can't use bar stock of something 0.9% carbon or whatever and get the same feel and look under the microscope as the older tools, which are just very simple water hardening steel, but very stable edges at high hardness without relying on the surplus of carbon that 26c3 has. 

[JHCC]

Oh, you're going to do just great here.

[Frosty]

Heh, heh, heh, From the number of wood workers I know that are now spending as much time blacksmithing I'm beginning to think of fine wood work as  a gateway to the blacksmithing addiction. 

When I don my Carnak The Magnificent turban I see in your future lots of questions directed coming your way.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Buster Bolster]

4 hours ago, JHCC said:

Oh, you're going to do just great here.

A little much on the heat treatment, i guess- it's the focus, the aesthetics are later, and I'll keep it to myself mostly outside of specific discussions. I did a fair bit of experimentation and still do on a regular basis (snapped heat treated and snapped W1 samples at lunch today, and hardness tested some things and archived pictures). But that's the thrill stuff for a maker and it's kind of like a burger. I like burgers, but I don't want to watch chefs talk about them. 

 

 

 

Frosty - I don't know how many people come from the forums that I migrated off of - the woodworking side of things seems to have died outside of the social media sites and youtube. Those things are much more superficial. I did know a couple of blacksmiths, but one of them died and the other is an antique dealer now. I'd have to search their names on here. 

Literally came here just to try to leave a legit bit of information on the competitor, or stick around long enough to do it, and had no idea so much other content or topical stuff was here! Even learned in the process that the anvil that I thought was probably not a soderfors is probably a soderfors and probably a columbian marked soderfors. Certainly didn't expect that, either. 

 

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

If you are going to search their names here, you will probably need their log on name. The best way to search anything is to use your favorite search engine like Google or Bing and add this to the end of the string site:iforgeiron.com  as the forum search leaves a lot to be desired and will give you a lot of false hits.

I can't control the wind, all I can do is adjust my sail’s.
Semper Paratus

 

[Frosty]

Oh no Buster, you are NOT the only member who speaks at length on subjects where they are acknowledged professionals and experts. We THRIVE on that kind of thing, I may not have a handle on 2% of what you've related but I cherish it. If I need to  know something specific I'll have a much better idea of where to start reading. Of just ask you of course but we give folks grief for asking without doing some basic research first and I wish to remain the shining example I am. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[JHCC]

I will add to what Frosty just said that many of our discussions about metallurgy and heat treatment here tend to revolve around knifemaking primarily, with occasional excursions into anvils and other blacksmith’s tooling. Expanding the discussion to include woodworking tools can only be a good thing, if only as an exercise in the application of familiar principles in unfamiliar circumstances. 

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Also since Frosty sometimes gets forgetful.   I will add that pictures, we love pictures and the ones you posted are outstanding. I love the display of chisel blanks, shows some very good work.

I can't control the wind, all I can do is adjust my sail’s.
Semper Paratus

 

[Buster Bolster]

10 hours ago, JHCC said:

..many of our discussions about metallurgy and heat treatment here tend to revolve around knifemaking primarily....

I learned that on the blade forums. I've made knives, but not sure how many - 50, 75? I learned some things and we probably all have - from discussion about custom or production knives. Like staining and breaking being the horror of knife makers because - especially at the commercial level - because they result in returns. 

Chisels are a lot more like razors in terms of what's liked at the edge, but with an apex around 30 degrees or slightly more and a grind that may be a little more shallow (razors probably more like 15-18 at the apex). But the issues of steel staining or bending toughness, just like with razors, not really on the radar for chisels meant to be used at the bench by a cabinetmaker - especially because those other aspects have a negative effect on the first several thousandths of a chisel edge that's being pounded straight into wood. 

The market for knives and the interest in making it is strong. There are little niche markets for woodworking tools, but it's hard to get motivated to make them if they aren't going to be used, and I think that's where the fuel is for makers looking to pay bills - selling to white collar (I'm white collar, by the way) people looking for some escapism and something nice. I can make chisels in a variety of shapes and make them better than people expect they'll be and pay the bills another way - it has given me the freedom to be bonkers about what really makes a chisel nice to use rather than how can I make it for $13 and sell it for $100. 

[Buster Bolster]

I have a lot more pictures, of course. I want to feel my way around here rather than dump media everywhere, though. So as not to get hyperfocused on the topic for some extended period of time and talk a lot without listening. 

In response to what Frosty is saying about the heat treatment sort of being above and beyond in detail, if someone has a customer for chisels, I'm always more than happy to talk about not just what I think is ideal, but what I've found in the better old tools in terms of heat treatment, proportions, etc. It seems to me that someone could make tanged woodworking chisels similar to the older English type and have a solid niche market and a long order list. If I didn't have a day job, I'd think about it. Thus far, there are a lot of common (a word my dad would used) chisels being CNCed or cut and assembled and highly finished or polished by machine, but they are lacking in use compared to something made in England or Scotland 175 years ago. If nothing else, for the folks who have already bought 10 sets of chisels while they're frustrated with lack of time outside of the surgical ward or corner office, an 11th set that's different would almost certainly sell. 

My mother was a teacher and spent all of her time serving the craft market (painting and decorative stuff). I watched as she went from sort of dreaming about things and really pondering them to finding profitability. She really wanted to justify her time (I'd hate to have to) and when she found profitability in the wood crafting circuit, she went that direction and the things she really dreamed about getting good at fell by the wayside. It was the right answer for her, but it wouldn't be for me - to officially go pro and focus on who is buying vs. what I want to learn and explore. 

I'll share one more picture here, though- this is about 1- years ago now, maybe a little less. 

I made a few planes at the time, but didn't want to get into doing it professionally for reasons stated above. I also wanted to do all of the actual work with the wood by hand, which is the case here aside from drilling a couple of small holes in the mouth area of the plane to start before doing the rest of the opening by hand. You can see that the iron that I used is an old one - I didn't care for the later plane irons in a plane like this, and the taper style is factory made with curvature on the back and flat on the front for better fitting in the plane if something should ever dry unevenly in the wood or wear even just a little unevenly. 

My point in this case is the style of iron met the needs of the plane and a blacksmith (earlier than this 1800s iron- made in a factory by this point, but not hands off) was able to do what was needed. There is another planemaker making this style professionally and I kind of bend his ear about why copying the best of the best made around 1850 is worthwhile. I think industrially, just getting an iron with two flat tapers is about as good as one could hope to do because the market is small and the price a plane commands is not like a $4000 custom knife. 

Slowly getting to my point - for the first time in the last year or so, I've realized that I can actually irons, and freehand grind the features into them on a contact wheel, just as would've been done 175 years ago in a factory on a large grinding wheel. 

blacksmithing will be a big part of that regardless of whether the iron is bitted or solid steel - it gets old grinding the taper into flat stock - even though it's not time prohibitive. It's far nicer to get close with the hammer and finish on the contact wheel.

[Frosty]

Do you have a large diameter wheel? If not how do you expect to match the grind  of one with a little wheel?

Frosty The Lucky.

[JHCC]

1 hour ago, Buster Bolster said:

It was the right answer for her, but it wouldn't be for me - to officially go pro and focus on who is buying vs. what I want to learn and explore. 

This is very much my approach to smithing. I'll take paying jobs, as they help pay for steel and propane, but I enjoy the freedom to try out new tools, techniques, and projects as the inclination leads me. A job that combines both is even better!

23 minutes ago, Frosty said:

If not how do you expect to match the grind  of one with a little wheel?

Easier to grind a large radius hollow with a small wheel than a small radius hollow with a large wheel.

[Frosty]

Is there a reason one would want a smaller radius grind on a wood chisel?

Frosty The Lucky.

[Buster Bolster]

1 hour ago, Frosty said:

how do you expect to match the grind  of one with a little wheel?

JHCC hit it exactly - I have an 8" contact wheel. if you try to do fine work (i'm saying this from my point, not yours - you may do fine work. I wouldn't say my work is all fine, but I try to and I'm sure there is neural eye development and adaptation), you can look at a tool that's being ground like a plane iron and grind a very gradual even curvature into the back. If you measure a couple of points, like the top and bottom of the tool, and then at the center of the hollow, there will be very little difference from one to the next that your eye won't see. 

For me to grind taper and curvature into a large iron, I budget myself about 20 minutes. For a hobbyist, it's not that long. For production, it would be off by a factor of 20 or 50 probably. I do the grinding of the hollow after hardening and the taper before then. it's not critical what the hollow is in size, its function is to have the plane iron sit on a flat plane bed and touch with a bias at the bottom and the top and not in the middle. 

I have a wide and tighter radius contact wheel on another belt grinder attachment that I could do almost the same thing on with about the same accuracy. Anyone here could. it's a matter of I think what a lot of people do but don't think about - the maker's art of doing only what needs to be done for something to be practically no better. As in, if I talked to a machinist and said that I ground a 5 thousandth hollow in an iron that I'd checked on a few points, they'd laugh at me. I think if they looked at them, they'd have a bit less of a problem with them and be surprised that there's not much variation, but offended that it wasn't specific in some way that it was measured and could be repeated. 

What's actually critical for not getting embarrassed from my point of view is the curvature needs to look decent, but it's critical that on an iron that was tapered in thickness, no part on the thin end is fatter than any prior part. *that* looks bad. 

I grind everything freehand and by eye at this point, including all of those chisels. if I had to do it monday to friday, I'd try to not do that because what do you do on a tuesday afternoon when you're not feeling good or your eyes hurt or your wife is telling you she's unhappy or whatever

[Buster Bolster]

45 minutes ago, Frosty said:

Is there a reason one would want a smaller radius grind on a wood chisel?

I'm not sure what you mean here. The bevels on the side of a chisel would probably have been done in the early 1800s and later on a wide round wheel - so the grinding is "crossed". I grind mine linearly by eye most of the time for several reasons, but one of them is heat. The old wheels would have a film of water on them at high speed.

If you're in my position, the smaller radius and slower process is some freedom if you can visualize what you want and then grind it, and perhaps (as I do here) hand finish the bevels so that they don't look like they were done linearly on a small radius or large radius wheel. 

Not sure how much discussion there is here about work that would've been done by job grinders and glazers (glazing just being fine grinding tending toward polishing). The video below shows a job grinder doing a chisel - though little was done this way after maybe the 1950s or so - semi-automated grinding setups and lathing for the bolster area were put together (bolsters went to being round). 

I'm not doing the crossing which I see evidence of on chisels in the 1800s mostly because I don't have any way to do this kind of thing and I'd lose some of the ability that I have controlling the bevels. 

 

You can see what I'm attempting to do on the side bevels - i think i only posted the top picture earlier. you can vaguely see the nuance of a slight curvature - there's less of it on the narrower chisels because they can't be  as thin and not spring too much or break. The chisels are nicer to use if some of the bit end is similar thickness and then the taper has top curvature and one of the reasons I really wanted to go to forging rod is something you can see here - the tang can only be as thick as the 26c3 stock less finishing. That flat tock isn't think enough and they'll look better and the bolster less bulky if it's actually all from a single piece of steel.  

[Frosty]

I apologize for the test question John. Virtually ALL wood chisels are ground on an 8"dia. / 4" radius wheel. I've been sharpening my own wood chisels since Jr. Hi woodshop. There is a good reason they are hollow ground on a 4" radius it was found I don't know how many centuries ago that a 4" hollow radius is ideal for breaking the cuttings without jamming the chisel or splitting out the parent wood. A wider wheel tends to cause the chisel to wedge itself into the cut, smaller splinters it. 

Bister if you're making moulding irons why not buy 8" wheels in various thicknesses and stack them on the arbor in the desired order. If you were doing production you'd use a "crush" grinder. 

Grinding cutting tools other than knives, etc. on a belt grinder makes for bad edge geometry, you either have to drag the edge making for excessive and hooked wire edge or pushing it causes a too steep convex contact edge. Both require hand finishing on a stone to get right. Knives on a belt grinder come out nicely because a slight convex edge is a stronger edge, especially if you finish with a buffing wheel or leather strop. 

I see we're typing at the same time. Wood chisels were being ground for, as I said above, many centuries, the 19th. is very recent historically.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Buster Bolster]

ahh..i see what you're talking about, the bevel radius. 6 or 8 inch wheels are fine. I'm fascinated with the side bevels because that's where you differentiate the design of the chisel and I guess the function - if you're crossing, to grind the sides, it's harder to have some freedom. 

I work entirely by hand in wood sometimes, and have done so with more than 1000 board feet of wood. When doing that, grinding and sharpening of the cutting bevel starts to reveal things. What takes less damage, what's faster to sharpen, and so on. I came to appreciate grinding fairly shallow and honing only the tips of tools, and saw it here and there on older tools (like 175 years old old) when the tools hadn't been passed down and their history erased by later careless users. 

On the woodworking forums, this is considered not a historical method, but it's better. The issue with the forums is they are not correct. Nicholson and holtzappfel both talk about grinding shallower and then honing a smaller tip of the tool to get longer working time out of a tool (it's about freehand control of how steel the very tip is more or less - it's easier to get that right over and over between grinds if the bevel is shallow). 

long story short, the grinding part doesn't matter - it can be a 20" wheel or a 6" wheel or an 8" wheel. the idea that one will hone on the two flats created by a wheel or hone an entire flat bevel is relatively new unless you have a reason to use the bevel for something like you might on a carving tool, riding the bevel itself. 

There's no merit to the idea that one radius will make for a weak edge and another won't (within reason). I spent a lot of time sussing out details and found that most of the damage that sends us back to resharpening happens in the first few thousandths of an inch. Like 4, and even if you get to that big of a damaged portion, something needs to change. 

I'll spare everyone going bonkers into sharpening and really getting the most out of edges, but I found commonalities with what's done between chisels and plane irons and what linen and leather do to straight razor edges to make them stand up a lot better than they would with a fresh bevel. 

I've got both 6" and 8" grinders, though, and haven't noticed any difference in edge life because the bevel is shallower and not a factor in edge failure, nor is the upper side of it ever in contact with my stones. long and flat on a platen is OK, but water needs to be introduced and care needs to be had to make sure flat is actually flat and not convex outward. 

As far as grinding of chisels, I would guess that significant grinding is a pretty recent thing. 

Most chisels before 1800 were wrought with a bit. There are some finer cabinetmaking chisels that are an exception to that, but not too much. When tools went from being a locally made smithed product to being factory made, I don't know, but factories were definitely going at it around 1800 and then grinding was more prevalent, but there are a lot of as forged areas left even on all steel tools. 

Chisels didn't start to get side bevels ground onto them until later, except as a matter of user taste. I don't know exactly when, but shapes changed over time from having thin flat chisels with sides tapering in width to less taper, and now pretty much none - they're mostly even width from end to end. Bevels appeared in the 1800s on all steel chisels, which necessitates grinding post heat treatment (chisel turns into a banana otherwise when there are bevels up and down one side before heat treatment). 

At the shop level for a bevel would've been a round grinding wheel (speaking centuries ago) and if one wasn't affordable, a big flat sandstone. 

What we think of as a general chisel design is an 1800s thing, though. The seaton chest chisels other than mortising chisels are more like carving tools in their design - fairly thin with any bevels needed added just to the tips for clearance. But the thickness is like .05-.08" at the bevel end. Possibly due to lack of powered grinding but also very likely to ensure through hardening. 

this is a pair of that style, though they're a little more plain than pictures show. 

For reasons I don't know, it's pretty hard to find woodworking chisels made prior to the early 1800s. Even the early 1800s chisels are pretty rare. this style was factory made in England, but I think that factory base instead of a blacksmith shop also made it possible to have grinders and glazers on staff to do much more grinding later. 

Even the seaton chest chisels have file marks on them from manufacture and don't look the same as later chisels that were all done on wheel and then further glazed.