Thread: The berg family.. (a berg show and tell)

Originally Posted by IanW

When I wore a lad in the '50s, it was common practice to call square-edged chisels "firmers" to distinguish them from BE chisels, so it's not just a current trend. Now we have the interweb, mixing & matching of terms from different eras & countries is going on apace, and I think we all get a bit confused, at times. At least I do!

Something got confused along the way, firmers were general woodwork kind of chisels, were they not?

Here's an intro on chisels in a 20s Stanley catalog: Stanley Tools for Carpenters and Mechanics : Catalogue No. 34 : 1926 : The Stanley Rule & Level Plant : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

The picture below is supposed to be from a 1933 A.E. Berg catalog, all the chisels in the page are firmers.

firmer_chisels.jpg

Seems like today, in the interwebs, firmer means only straight edged chisels, but apparently that was not the case in the past.

Originally Posted by raffo

..... Seems like today, in the interwebs, firmer means only straight edged chisels, but apparently that was not the case in the past....

I think that's sort of true, raffo, but not entirely, in my experience. The terminology used over the last century & a half has varied both within & between countries! I have never come across what I'd consider a totally reliable definition of what makes a chisel "firmer" vs "less-firm" (or should that be "infirm" ? )

Our own Titan made two lines of both square-edged and bevel-edged chisels, but rarely, if ever, referred to the heavier line as "firmers", they just called them "heavy" or "light" which reduces ambiguity a little, but not entirely.

Getting back to the post that revived this thread and whether square-edged chisels are all "relieved", I can report from extensive research (4 brands ), that it's not universal. Both my Titans (heavy sockets) and my Lie-Nielsen mortising chisels have square edges with no relief front to back. I have a single old 1/4" square edged chisel (Broad & sons), and a 1/8" (brand worn off), both with deep blades which are tapered front to back.

Intuitively, it seems to make sense that a tapered chisel will jam less when driven into the wood. The old "pig-sticker" mortising chisels are markedly tapered, and very deep. I've only used a couple of these and tbh, I found them just as liable to jam & more awkward to use than the thinner type mortise chisels that were very much more common when I started out. That's most likely because I was accustomed to the thinner type before trying a 'pig sticker' and every tool has its own learning curve.

If tapering makes a difference to a chisel's tendency to jam when driven into a piece of wood, then it ought to be most obvious when comparing a square-edged & BE chisel, but in my experience, how firmly a chisel can be jammed depends far more on the wood it's driven into than whether or not the edges are relieved. So in my book, the single advantage of BE chisels is that they fit into dovetail sockets, & if you regularly cut D/ts, as I do, a good set of BEs is very desirable, & preferably with sharpish lands. You can chop a mortise with a BE chisel (they were all I had for my first 10 years or so of woodworking), but their main drawback is if you lever against the edge of the mortise, even lightly, the narrower back is likely to bruise the edge of the mortise. They will still happily jam if driven into hard woods, and the smaller sizes are more likely to bend or even break if levered too enthusiastically to free them (damhik!).

My minimalist tool kit would always have two sets of chisels, some heavy, square-edged "firmers" or whatever you wish to call them, for heavy-duty bashing, and a set of much daintier bevel-edged types for dovetailing & paring. Of course, over the years I have acquired more than the "minimalist" sets.....
Cheers,