Thread: Pay Dirt A Chisel Gloat

You're doing a great job on the chisels - congratulations.
I am concerned by the bare foot within dropping distance however.
Get some boots on my friend - your feet are too valuable to risk.
Looking forward to seeing the finished products
Stay safe
Tom

TS, while I condone your desire to preserve the handle on that old chisel, I'd bet London to a brick it's not original. For a start, there is no ferrule, which would be highly unusual for what looks like a firmer chisel (it may not be, it's hard to judge by a picture). At first I thought it was probably a carving chisel, in which case the lack of a ferrule would not be so surprising, but looking at the closer-up pics, I very much doubt it was a carving tool., too thick for that, I reckon.

It's hardly surprising the handle has been replaced given the potential age - most of its contemporaries would've long since been used-up to the hilt & cast away. This one is a real survivor & I would hesitate to put something like that back into service, but not being a collector, I can't think what else I could do with it......

Cheers,

Scribbly it is a bad habit - I hate shoes.

Ian I would probably just restore it and store it for prosperity. Would not be a user personally.

that handle (beech, no ferrule) is pretty common for early 1800s firmers here. they seem to suffer break out at the top of the chisel or off of the sides more often than breaking at the tang.

Firmers weren't prying chisels, they were what we think of as bench chisels, but just with straight sides.

The definition of what they are got lost at some point and we started assuming the name implied heavy, but they are rather a generalized chisel used "to form"

I just looked through the seaton book briefly. that style of chisel is probably closest to mid 1800s based on the style chart by date, and the handles would've been made buy the buyer on most cases. All of the chisels in the seaton book have that style of handle, and some chisels are broken, but none of the handles are damaged (and I've never damaged one like it made of beech, but I have used other woods like louro preto and had them split)

One might assume ferrules weren't common at that point, but the file and rasp handles in the chest have them - I assumed the former might be the case, but they shot my guess out of the water.

that leaves a question of what do you do if you're prying? there wouldn't have been much of it for a cabinetmaker, and there is a full set of mortise chisels for mortising, a huge set of firmers (heavier at the bolster and thinner at the business end than what is made now), and then cabinetmaker's chisels that are thin and solid steel and have a profile that is more like carving tools, except they do have a heavier tang and shoulder area.

But then there is a set of socket chisels that look like construction chisels and leave one confused if you just look at the pictures. Fortunately, the text explains that the chisels are an oddity as they would've been targeted to construction workers, but they were there regardless.

Short story long, middle of the 1800s, no ferrule was probably more common, but the handle would've always been some kind of fruitwood that has a combination of give along with difficulty splitting. Beech is good at that. you can jam a handle in a blank with force and then trim it back to the bolster and it won't split. Louro Preto split on me just installing the handle before it was even trimmed back. Rosewood would also have a decent amount of give if the blank isn't super old.

this discussion encouraged me to go out to ebay and see if I could find some mid 1800s or earlier chisels on ebay. There are precious few. I couldn't find many, but this listing reminds me of the pitfalls of looking at handles on old chisels and assuming they're original (at least on ebay).

Barton Chisel

Not sure if you guys can view this link. I have a box full of handles like this - they're for files, of course. some of the nicest made file handles I've ever seen, I put them on rasps - but they're all marked USA. That chisel is turn of the century in the US. The way the file handles are made is a nod to learning to stamp things of decent quality. The long ferrule on the handles is thick enough to be stamped with the name of the maker - i can't remember what it is and would have to go look.

Here is a listing that has some original handles on it, or original style.

The chart in the seaton book suggests mid 1800s - and the fact that they're some thickness of steel and that large, probably right.

Green, Law are two that come to mind trying to find something earlier, but I never see them. Why that is, I don't know. Were they discarded on purpose because people in the early to mid 1900s never thought anything like a tool would have some future value? The same is true for bench planes - there isn't much around pre-1800 or early 1800s other than moulding planes, which never changed much for the better after 1800.

OK D.W., I recant, perhaps that IS an original handle after all, though the chisel is likely of later date than mid 1850s. There can't be many chisels round these parts that survive from before ferrules were used routinely by most manufacturers.

I've re-handled a good few chisels in my time & have to say that we don't have a lot of woods down here that will resist impact without being a bit more fissile than you'd wish so I wouldn't try fitting a handle on a tanged chisel without a ferrule myself. Even with a ferrule, I've split a few by not preparing the tang hole sufficiently & getting too enthusiastic with a mallet trying to seat the handle!

Cheers,

Interesting to and fro- however for me the handle has a lovely patina, it has a distinct bow in its length due to distortion over time and it is stamped on every facet with a craftsperson name these alone make it worth saving. Even if it was a later addition.

A teacher and anthropologist once told me that objects and cultural traditions passed down through time are not time capsules they are like old houses, with each generation adding and renovating parts of the house and each of these modifications becoming part of the history of that object.

As each generation passes away our histories are carried forward in the objects of our cohabitation.

TS, interesting that the chisel has had so many owners yet is still half there. One would expect the average chisel to typically go through only a couple of owners before it's used-up if it gets regular use in a busy workshop. So a chisel that has had so many owners is in itself worth something, if only as a curiosity.

These days I take a less romantic view of tools than I once did, I simply don't have the space to keep anything that doesn't see at least occasional use. We (LOML & I) have been talking more seriously about downsizing of late, so I'm trying to make some difficult decisions about what goes with me to a much smaller workspace, & what has to find a new home when it finally happens. I have tried being coldly practical & making a list that prioritizes only "daily users", thence down to the "once a year or less" tools. But that doesn't work as well as it should because a few of the tools I use very occasionally are the only ones that can do what they do.

I suppose it's a dilemma I would love to have had 40 years ago....

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

O

I've re-handled a good few chisels in my time & have to say that we don't have a lot of woods down here that will resist impact without being a bit more fissile than you'd wish so I wouldn't try fitting a handle on a tanged chisel without a ferrule myself. Even with a ferrule, I've split a few by not preparing the tang hole sufficiently & getting too enthusiastic with a mallet trying to seat the handle!

Cheers,

I had the same thoughts as you do, that chisels should have ferrules and those that don't probably are carving tools with no serious bolster.

Don't recall what introduced me to handles without them, but Warren certainly pointed them out because he only likes the very early industrial chisels.

Since then, I've gotten a lot more exposure because people request chisels with a bolster set up for wood only handles, and of course making a couple of very thin late 18th century styles.

and, too, I have actually split a handle on a ferruled chisel - above the ferrule. At the time, i was just starting to make chisels and really worried the handles would become slack a little if not really fitted tight. Louro preto again - it splits easily, but other woods would.

Beech won't, so I'm sure the standard in europe and the US was beech or something similar and no ferrule due to cost.

My earliest catalogue is 1895, and that one has handles in it. On the socket and firmer chisels, there is no option to buy without them. Turning tools and carving tools still come without handles, but those are sold separately (apple). The handles on the american construction site /socket chisels are hickory. At that point, Montgomery Wards still sold English carving tools.

The firmers show a turned handle style with no ferrule, but I don't know if I believe that. I have a few with similar kind of flashy style (big butt tapering down toward the tang) and they all have ferrules. Some of my early pre-made handles have cheesy thin steel ferrules on them. Functional but ugly!!

I think some of the chisels like those in the auction are original style, but they could've been replaced.

I've only broken handles on oval bolstered mortise chisels so far, and the chisels I've made with all wood handles are probably good for decades (the beech ones). I've broken two laminated chisels at the back of the lamination, though. One japanese, and one vintage american, i think.

Interesting that you say beech won't split when driven onto a tang. I used a bit of beech for various projects when I lived in Canada (the back board of my bench is beech), but never made handles from it, I thought it was just too bland for using on anything to be seen. I also chopped up a couple of windfall beeches for firewood & I don't remember it being very difficult to split, but it was more than 30 years ago & my memory is very unreliable over that distance! I do remember it wasn't the greatest firewood...

A while ago, I cut down a Brazilian peppercorn tree (Schinus terebinthefolius) in our yard - it's an environmental weed here that has gone feral thanks to birds spreading the seeds. It is a bland-looking wood so I thought I would use it for firewood & tried to split some short billets about a foot in diameter. After the splitting maul bounced back at me for the 10th time on the same block, I gave up - I have never struck any other wood so resistant to splitting! Dunno if they are all as tough as that particular tree? I sawed a few bits up with the bandsaw and put them aside to dry. They ought to be ready by now so I might turn up a handle or two & see what it's like, I'm so pleased with the chisel I made from a file a few weeks ago, I want to make a coupe more....

Cheers,

Beech and Ash are both very bland, and so is hickory.

If you want to make beech look nice, it needs to be tarted up with varnish or something, because the lighter color with a clear finish just screams inexpensive euro furniture.

Especially if it's flatsawn - kind of like maple. Maple quartered and then finished with something with warmth looks far less commodity. Flatsawn, and it's just "too american industry made" for me, and both beech and maple are not easily found quartered. The whole flatsawn rays thing wore out on me as a kid because oak is *everywhere* here and a large group of people saw it as an improvement over pine commodity stuff and thought of it as quality.

https://ofhandmaking.files.wordpress...5757582114.jpg

These are just mules as I get an idea of what I might like to do repetitively. The two orange handled chisels are the same wood - chakte viga. One is finished dull and the other has amber varnish. The varnish really picks it up. The beech is oiled, wax and has a very thin coat of varnish on it, but that chisel is going to someone else and the handle is just on it so I could test some things out. My view of beech has changed and is probably tainted by appreciation for its properties more so than just looks, but I have none of it flatsawn, and very little euro. American beech is just slightly different looking and doesn't look like hardware store handles.

I don't care for hickory, but after resorting to gombeira for a hammer handle, I did buy a digger handle at the hardware store last weekend to have on hand- those handles are cheap here and the big diameter ones let you pick your own orientation for a few dollars a tool.

Birch, Ash and Beech are the three I've seen here without ferrules, and once in a great while, apple.

A couple of things this thread reminded me of, first, tube making in the 19th century became more economical to manufacture at some point, that is a factor to consider as to when ferrules became common in chisels. Second, beechwood "has particularly high resistance to compression, though less so to bending or tension because of its short fibres." That makes it sound like a good material for handles.

Rafael

Many English handles were turned out of branches with the tang generally aligned on the pith. It makes sense, as their domestic supply of large "Forest" trees dried up around the 1500's. High end Japanese chisels are also frequently done this way. American handles were generally made of stuff like hornbeam, ash, and hickory. Fruit/nut tree wood also comes to mind. I've used oak and was happy with it. Box is frequently grown for hedges, and the Japanese prize handles made out of Autumn/Russian olive branches (they call it something else.)

I like the early style backwards tapered octagon handles. They're probably second in my preference to the "carving" style handles.

I'm not convinced that the early octagon handle it is always an indicator of an old tool, as they were listed in catalogs even fairly late. I think you take it as part of the total package including style, markings, patina, and such.

If I was down under, I'd strongly consider some sort of interlocking grain plantation Eucalypt. That or one of the sheoaks. Makes fine handles. Or, you could go full English and just make the handles out of branches from your yard... . They work great, and are all but free.

Originally Posted by raffo

A couple of things this thread reminded me of, first, tube making in the 19th century became more economical to manufacture at some point, that is a factor to consider as to when ferrules became common in chisels. Second, beechwood "has particularly high resistance to compression, though less so to bending or tension because of its short fibres." That makes it sound like a good material for handles.

Rafael

It's far easier and nicer to work by hand despite that hardness - vs. more splintery woods. Maple is blunting. Slightly damp apple and air dried beech are like "antiblunting". You can rasp back against their fibers by accident and not chip wood off of a transition.

Blunting is probably an industrial term - it's not like you can't chisel through maple - just that for almost the same hardness as beech and less surface durability, you get a wood that is more resistant to a chisel going through it and more likely to bounce a chisel out in a heavy cut.

As ash disappears in the US, Beech and Birch are making a comeback in lower cost wooden bats. They're both exceptionally dumb for those because they absorb shock without reflecting as much back.

maple probably dominates in pro baseball, but it's easy to shatter - I haven't played baseball for 28 years, so I don't know what the mindset is with beech. Maybe it's harder to break. When I first heard that there were beech bats, I looked up a review on them, and sure enough, the ball comes off of them at a lower speed.

there's an interesting subtopic there - bats are "boned", a weird term, but generally means the ash bats were compressed on the surface after they were termed to case harden the outside. In my youth, we only screwed around with a few wooden bats. If you had one, everyone wanted to use it and it was soon broken, so "pro" level wooden bats were out of the question.