Thread: Stanley Made in Australia chisels - quality of steel?

That's some beautiful work you have there on those Stanley chisels.. I really like the look of those handles. And the work you did on the tangs gives them a truly vintage look..

Thanks truckJohn , I enjoy using them.
I love that handle shape. Some of the slim plastic types I’ve held feel useless compared to the grip a good wooden London Pattern handle like this gives . There may be some decent plastic ones as well with a bit more to them . I haven’t touched a lot of them .

One thing I never realised was , they were made in Australia. I just thought they were imported .
Is that right ? Made here from Aussie steel , Aussie plastic handles ?
Made where here exactly if any one knows ?

Rob.

Originally Posted by auscab

Thanks truckJohn , I enjoy using them.
I love that handle shape. Some of the slim plastic types I’ve held feel useless compared to the grip a good wooden London Pattern handle like this gives . There may be some decent plastic ones as well with a bit more to them . I haven’t touched a lot of them .

One thing I never realised was , they were made in Australia. I just thought they were imported .
Is that right ? Made here from Aussie steel , Aussie plastic handles ?
Made where here exactly if any one knows ?

Rob.

Moonah, Hobart, Tasmania. The old Titan works, not that far from the old Blundstone factory. Similar tools (a parallel range, actually) were also made (maybe still are??) in Sheffield, England but with conical shanks.

Originally Posted by Ratbag

Moonah, Hobart, Tasmania. The old Titan works, not that far from the old Blundstone factory. Similar tools (a parallel range, actually) were also made (maybe still are??) in Sheffield, England but with conical shanks.

Thanks Ratbag,
Well there you go !
Think Ill go put a picture up on instagram and brag about it now.

Rob

Originally Posted by IanW

Nice looking bunch of chisels, Rob. I take it the wood is a genuine Ebony (Diospyros sp.) and not the 'Solomonor'; or 'Queen'' ebony(Xanthostemon sp.)? There are a couple of species of Diospyros in PNG that grow to large trees, but I can't find any information on the colour of their wood - these botanical blurbs always seem to leave out the most important info - obviously not written by woodies!

Cheers,

Yesterday I was looking through a bottom drawer of my bench for a nail collection I have misplaced, and I came across this piece of NG Ebony that was a left over from the chisel handle making . Not the off cut I was talking of , that is a larger longer piece with cracks running through it .
This shows the natural colour from a few sides well .

Rob

Well, fwiw Rob, it does look like the piece of 'queen ebony' or 'Solomon islands ebony' (Xanthostemon melanoxylon) I had a while back. It started out more brownish-black, but went black pretty quickly. It also had the wavy pattern of diagonal slightly lighter-coloured bands like the piece you've got there. However, "looks " is far from a reliable id! X. melanoxylon is endemic to the Solomons, & doesn't grow in PNG proper, according to what I can find, so if your handles came from the big island, it would have to be a 'real' ebony, i.e., Diospyros spp. Doesn't matter a hoot, of course, they are all nice woods, but it demonstrates how difficult it can be to put a name to a piece of wood after the fact!

I used some of the Q. ebony I had to make screws for a pair of wooden bar clamps; it turned nicely and took a perfect thread: Moving jaw assembled.jpg

The clamps get a lot of use, & the screws are coping very well, so whether or not they're the same wood as your handles, they are all ageing well...

Cheers,

That's a nice use for it Ian ! Looks great .
How was the male and female thread cut ? It was a while back I saw a thread cutting post you did here somewhere .

I was just doing some thread cutting last week with a friend . 5/8 and we did it on some Sassafras . We soaked it in some paraffin oil first . It worked very well . Its got me all fired up on thread cutting ATM

Rob

Originally Posted by auscab

.....How was the male and female thread cut ? It was a while back I saw a thread cutting post you did here somewhere .....

.... I was just doing some thread cutting last week with a friend . 5/8 and we did it on some Sassafras . We soaked it in some paraffin oil first . It worked very well . Its got me all fired up on thread cutting ATM ...

Rob, I tap nuts for smaller sizes with a metal tap, & cut screws with a router jig. It's quick & reliable and you can thread any wood from to Lignum vitae (not that you'd be likely to want to thread either!). I've used a threadbox a few times, but they are a bit too finicky for me, & don't like the really hard woods I like threading.

Here's a screw blank being turned up ready to thread: Screw blank turning red.jpg and being fed through the jig: Threading red.jpg

Sometimes using a bit of oil, or waxing the blank helps, but by & large, I find it's better not to put anything on the screw blank with the router method, because the oil acts as a binder & you get sawdust buildup in all sorts of places you'd rather it didn't.

However, using a bit of linseed when cutting nuts with the old "medieval" tapping apparatus often helps, it softens the fibres & makes them cut more easily. :Tap set up.jpg

The sawdust/swarf still sticks in the oil, but because you are taking light cuts with each pass, there's not so much of it & it doesn't cause me much of a problem: Shavings buildup.jpg

Wood threading is definitely an addictive hobby - I started out to make a few handscrews 35 years ago, & got a bit carried away - there's wooden screws in all sorts of places round my shed...

Cheers,

Lovely Ian !
How do you drive the male through the router at the desired pitch ? is it an angled blade I see doing that ?
And how would you cut a female if its a large size like a bench thread and you don't have a tap that size ?

Rob

Rob, this is hijacking the thread a bit, but briefly:

Originally Posted by auscab

....... How do you drive the male through the router at the desired pitch ? is it an angled blade I see doing that ? ....

Nope, there's a threaded hole in the back half of the guide. The bit sits just in front of the first land of thread, so that as the blank contacts the bit, you just twist it in the right direction and away you go (provided you've got the bit in just the right spot!).

For this system, you start with a tap of the size/pitch you want to use.

Originally Posted by auscab

....... And how would you cut a female if its a large size like a bench thread and you don't have a tap that size ? ....

That's easy, & all explained in AWR #s 92 & 93.
All you need is a lathe to make the wooden shank for the tap. You saw a kerf in the shaft of the tap, which a piece of steel plate sits in & drives a cutter through at the correct pitch. The cutter is mortised & wedged into the end of the tap. By advancing a little at a time, you soon have a nice nut. The 'jig' is the one shown in post #39 above. This is a cross-section of a nut produced by that setup: Sectioned nut.jpg

The thread is a bit manky at the start & exit, but the bulk of it is amazingly clean. It certainly does the job on bench-screw-sized threads.

I'm happy to go into more detail if you wish, but we'd better start a new thread - this is getting a bit far away from chisels!

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

Well, fwiw Rob, it does look like the piece of 'queen ebony' or 'Solomon islands ebony' (Xanthostemon melanoxylon) I had a while back. It started out more brownish-black, but went black pretty quickly. It also had the wavy pattern of diagonal slightly lighter-coloured bands like the piece you've got there. However, "looks " is far from a reliable id! X. melanoxylon is endemic to the Solomons, & doesn't grow in PNG proper, according to what I can find, so if your handles came from the big island, it would have to be a 'real' ebony, i.e., Diospyros spp......

Hi Ian & Rob

When I lived in PNG a little bit of "ebony" - referred to as black, zebra and white ebony - came from Woodlark Island in Milne Bay Province. No idea of the latin name.

Never heard of any from elsewhere.

Cheers

Graeme

As the OP, I am amazed this thread is still alive although it has morphed off into a completely different topic.

Originally Posted by paul.cleary

As the OP, I am amazed this thread is still alive although it has morphed off into a completely different topic.

Yeah, sorry about that, Paul. As the moderator of this section, I am supposed to whip any strays back on the track, but I'm often one of the offenders!

I take a pretty liberal view of 'topic'; as long as it's likely to be of interest and close enough I don't see any point in killing a lively conversation when it wanders of the main track a little. The only problem is, I often read something in an aside & want to find it later & if it was in a thread that started out on something related, but different, it makes it awfully difficult to find with a search...

Cheers,

Just about all the common name chisels from around the early eighties, will have plastic handles, which in my experience last very well despite modest "hammer abuse".
I have a variety of Stanley, Marples & Sandvick; the Sandvick hold an edge best & take an edge better.
Sure wooden handles look better, but do not perform any better.
I would not recommend any Stanley tool made after about 1990.
BTW just a point of interest: my favourite wooden handled chisel carries a hard leather "cap" atop the handle. I have not seen this before, how common is this & is it effective?