Thread: Chisel Hardness Study, the first step.

Originally Posted by truckjohn

Then - when the magazine article or web page takes the web by storm - you have some product that's already worked out that you can quickly get out into the market to sell to folks... I think this is a whole lot better solution than constantly being surprised and caught with your pants down.... Or just doing nothing innovative...

As far as advertising goes in the area of woodworking tools it's 99.99% opinion IMO. Objective testing is so scant that it's notable mostly for it's rarity.

These are very simple measurements to do and I'm surprised that nobody else has done them. Given the de-industrialization of America the tools aren't prohibitively expensive and there are plenty available second hand if you just look around.

My read on the situation is that the status quo in this area is a lot like the intellectual milieu of Middle Ages - hand-me-downs from prior era's, opinions and more or less self appointed authorities but practically no data or objectivity.

This fug is (again IMO) promoted and perpetuated by the Key Opinion Leaders of woodworking in ways that serve only their short term goals of personal aggrandizement and, ultimately, profiteering at the expense of their customers.

I've been on the receiving end of too many shoddy to substandard products of the woodworking tool Renaissance makers. I mentioned above my experience with the product of a boutique saw maker that was so bad that it motivated me to take up saw making. Likewise with chisels, I have a good bit of money wrapped up in expensive chisels that don't perform well. There are some good chisels out there but they're in the minority.

I think it high time that the community moved into it's own version of the Enlightenment and left the mythology behind.

Originally Posted by truckjohn

Rob my friend - I think it points back towards how the companies are run and what the makers are "optimizing" for....

With a $100+ chisel - you get mad if you don't like it because you *expect* it to make you happy..... And there's the trap huge companies like Stanley are trying to avoid.... And so they leave the customer intensive position of "Making dreams come true" business for the likes of Tasai, Lie Nielsen, and Lee Valley...

When the $5 Craftsman/Western Forge is about as good the $75 Lie Nielsen and it beats the pants off of the $100+ Blue Spruce there's a problem.

When I'm in the market for a chisel I'm not seeking an optimum or perfection in a high-dollar specialty chisel but I do want (demand actually) it to perform better than the chisel in my handyman's tool bag.

For example, I can buy a sheet of the RG45(?) powdered metal stock that's 1/4" thick, 6 inches wide and three feet long for about $1000. Assuming I'm efficient in working it up I should realize about 30 standard size woodworking chisels amounting to about $30 for each blade. Add in another $10 for a handle and ferrule and the material is $40. Assuming the cost of materials is ~25% of the customer cost that makes a $160 chisel, comparable to the Tasai dovetail chisel Neil sent for testing. A blade made from D2, O1 or A2 would be a lot cheaper and I'm sure that a quantity discount would apply if you ordered a decent lot of any of these alloys.

Thus, it should be easy to make a really good chisel for $100 and it should be obligatory for the maker to ensure that his or her $100 chisel is at least as good as a $5 Craftsman.

You mean like the realization that if you could contract Western Forge to forge you full length blades - using the same alloy and heat treatment as the Craftsman chisels you have... And then you make/fit the handles, grind attractive blade profiles with decent side bevels, and flatten the blades... You could be pushing "world class" performance....

And shoot - if they can sell packaged chisels with ground and lacquered blades, fitted with steel-cap plastic handles, in the store for $10 each retail - surely the blade forgings can't cost more than $1.00 each....

The thing is.. Could you figure out what sort of alloy gave great performance all the way around - sure... Could you sort out heat treatments - sure..... Stanley, Pfeil, Two Cherries, Ashley Iles, Lee Valley, and Western Forge (!) have already done that...

The thing is - You can't rest on your laurels... And you can't let up... You have to keep at it to ensure that somebody in Procurement didn't short you on alloy or 3rd shift didn't mess up the entire heat treatment regimen... And you gotta make sure that somebody in China didn't make something that beats yours for 1/5 the price...

Originally Posted by truckjohn

You could be pushing "world class" performance....

I'd hope to be at least as good as an average quality Japanese chisel which is far better than any of the Western hemisphere brands I've tested to date.

Originally Posted by rob streeper

I'd hope to be at least as good as an average quality Japanese chisel which is far better than any of the Western hemisphere brands I've tested to date.

Just use a good quality high carbon steel hardened around Rc 60 and hone the factory bevel to 30 degrees. .

You may not have seen but I do have plans to make test chisels out of O1, A2, D2 and 440C. I didn't find W1 in the 1" X 1/4" size that I bought for the other alloys but I may give my supplier a call, they often have non-cataloged sizes in stock, much like the D-4 temper alloy 25 beryllium copper I bought for hammers.

I would suggest the PM versions of 440C and D2.... I think they could make some fantastic chisels.... Plenty of people have tried the conventional versions and they don't fare nearly as well with the exception of Ray Iles mortise chisels.....

On "conventional" steels - make sure you have a way to get the C content that you need. O1 runs from about 0.85-1%. I would want a solid 1% C O1 for a good chisel test...

W1 is classic chisel and file steel... It looks like stuff resembling W2 is popping up in chisels perhaps due to better behavior hardening.... W1 runs from 0.70-1.5% C.. W2 runs 0.85-1.5% C... I would be all over a 1.15% W1 or W2 for a chisel... Not so much for a 0.7% C flavor of W1 or W2 though...

Another option that seems to have gained popularity is 1%-1.2% C bearing steels like 115CrV3, EN31, and 52100 being used by folks like Stanley and Pfeil....

Those Ray Iles mortise chisels are another story. I tested a couple of them and they were in the range of HRC 30 or so. I reported it here, I'll see if I can find the link.

Here it is: The importance of testing.

Speaking of the importance of testing.... Carbon content....

I read a couple white papers somewhere talking about the life of agricultural implements - plows, disks, scraper blades and tines, etc... The authors reported that the 1 single factor that very strongly correlated to edge life was carbon content of the implement... Now keep in mind that often - these are on the tempered on the soft side so they don't break when drug across a rock or stump.... But even so - carbon content ruled the day.... And some of the most long lived implements were chilled cast iron (~3-4% C - but it comes out as Carbide when the cast iron is chilled.. And it's incredibly hard and wear resistant...)

I would put money on the other factor missing out of "edge life" is Carbon content... The thing is - it's hard to source stuff like good O1, W1, and W2 with C>1%... Most of the stuff I see out there for sale runs around 0.8-0.9%.. But then look at PM-V11, White #1, and Blue #1 - all these have carbon that can push up around 1.3-1.5%... Certainly that's the allure of good A2, D2, 440C, and M3.... But it makes me wonder if the suppliers just aren't shipping the stuff with sufficiently high C for what we need - especially when the cutlery guys are really happiest with C ranging from 0.6-0.9%.....

That may be what you are seeing with the LN chisel - it may be from a batch of steel at the low end of C for A2 and LN is simply not big enough to push the mills to make him a batch up at the very high end of C.... Likely Craftsman was big enough to hold sway with a steel mill - and so they ran off a batch of good high C steel for the chisels.....

But... There is also opportunity there. There are folks brewing up single crucibles of steel just like Huntsman did back in his back yard there in Switzerland when he needed good high C steel for his watch springs..... And that may be the way we end up going here in the USA.....

Surprising coincidence that you mention ploughs. I was just reading in Sheffield Steel and America, A century of commercial and technological interdependence 1830-1930 by Geoffrey Tweedale.

<In 1833, John Lane, an Illinois blacksmith, began experimenting with steel bladed ploughs, an idea which was fully developed by John Deere in 1837, who utilised strips of Sheffield steel from discarded saw plates...>

The steel referred to in the text is crucible cast steel, i.e. something like our modern 1095.

Here is a good one showing wear resistance of agricultural implements - done down under no less.... Not too long out in the past either....
http://search.ror.unisa.edu.au/media...12388290001831

Their interesting conclusion is that once the carbon content is sufficiently high - increases in Hardness once it's "hard enough" don't have a huge effect on wear life.... But the additional hardness does make them very brittle - which is bad for farm implements which will hit rocks and such....

When carbon content is lower - hardness becomes the critical driving factor in wear life...

I think this mirrors what the users of old Titan chisels, your current Craftsman chisel, and some of the Japanese chisels with White or Blue #1 show - hardness isn't nearly as critical so long as it is "sufficient" (probably above 58).. And often we westerners like the Japanese chisels tempered back to Rc61-62 rather than Rc 66-67 because they still hold up very well but they don't chip as bad.. This sort of behavior all points to a very high Carbon content in the steel...

I have no idea what the actual Carbon content or the Buck chisels actually is - but it's interesting that except for the Soft/Low angle which saw immediate edge failure - the other 3 all had approximately the same test cut force after 10g of oak pared - around 150g... But the fact that Hardness had approximately the same impact as edge angle - I have to assume that they were probably "lower" carbon rather than "higher" carbon....

which leads to the next question... How can we directly test Carbon content?

Here's an interesting result of wear resistance vs hardness of EN31 steel (aka the same stuff used in Sheffield made Stanley chisels..)

These guys basically show a linear relationship with wear and hardness... But - they also aren't dragging it behind tractors bonking it off rocks like the last paper was doing...

https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article...8/53_1471/_pdf

Originally Posted by rob streeper

When the $5 Craftsman/Western Forge is about as good the $75 Lie Nielsen and it beats the pants off of the $100+ Blue Spruce there's a problem.

When I'm in the market for a chisel I'm not seeking an optimum or perfection in a high-dollar specialty chisel but I do want (demand actually) it to perform better than the chisel in my handyman's tool bag.

------

Thus, it should be easy to make a really good chisel for $100 and it should be obligatory for the maker to ensure that his or her $100 chisel is at least as good as a $5 Craftsman.

Rob my friend - I think what you are "discovering" has to do with the seedy underbelly of undisclosed paid sponsorship and paid promotion..

The reality is that often as not - many of these "Articles" are actually created by PR and Marketing firms and then "Edited" by the magazine/web "Editors"... Another strategy is that a Marketing or PR firm hires the magazine "Author" to pen the "Article" as a way to maintain the air of objectivity and authority of the familiar and well known name... And of course last - nobody wants to make their best advertizers mad (and lose ad/product placement/sponsorship revenue) by panning their products or allowing big $$$$ advertizers to place mid/bottom of the pack....

And so we often see "First look" reviews which feature unboxing and holding it in your hand - and of course talking a lot about it without using it.... Or we see "Shootouts" with several categories which are slushed together or separated out to highlight certain features of the tool.. Or perhaps we see the tools prepared in a way which ensures a lot of fall out of otherwise strong competitors...

For example - I see magazine "Shootouts" sharpening LN A2 chisels at 30 degrees with a 35 degree microbevel (oh - because A2) and then running them against Marples and Two Cherries ground at 20 with a 25 degree microbevel - then claiming the "Edge lasted longer" - look at your own tests with the four Buck chisels for what happens there.. The $10 Buck sharpened at 30 degrees outperforms the LN at the same bevel angle according to the raw data .. But the magazine runs full page LN ads every month - they are not dumb... They know which side their bread is buttered on... So they just take care of it with a bit higher bevel on the LN and a nice low bevel on the Buck... The LN performs well and the Buck gets a nice low ranking due to early edge failure....

For example - in my own personal testing.. You can sharpen a cheap Sheffield made Stanley FatMax to a 30 degree bevel and just pound the p!$$ out of it with a heavy deadblow mallet chopping some pretty hard wood - and the edge is still fine - it still shaves arm hair.... Yet look at magazine reviews - where Stanley consistently places low/mid pack in "tests"...