Thread: Narex blunting quickly

Are these brand new Eddie?

If so maybe grind a couple of mm off and start over. Or do this with one and not another and see what the diff is.

PS, if doing it by hand is too much bother, you're welcome to use my grinder, or mail them to me and I'll do them. I'm in Reservoir.

Yeah they are brand new, how might that make a difference? The three I've used a bit perform similarly. I might send one to you to have a look at, you can be a better judge than I of whether they're behaving as they should. But why might new chisels have soft tips?

Eddie, in my limited experience, with some support from posts in webland, the heat treatment process with A2 and HSS tools leaves a soft edge. Grinding that away is necessary. Have had to do that with two Hock plane blades and one Veritas.

I expect your Narex are high carbon steel; the same may apply; dunno, I'm no metallurgist.

I recall you don't have a bench grinder so I'm happy to grind the bevels for you or have you drop around and do it together.

But you have a #120 Sigma ceramic whetstone IIRC? and that'll do the job too, much as you hate flattening the black beast.

Very kind offer, as always. I'll persevere with them for now, at least until I can get the Titans up and running to do a proper comparison. In any case I should end up a few mm back from the edge pretty soon anyway at this rate. If all's not well in a few weeks, though, I'll most certainly bring a few along for you to take a look at, if you wouldn't mind.

The thing is, I'm still not really sure what to expect as far as edge retention goes. As a beginner, I don't have any benchmarks from experience, and it's tricky to request a general estimate on the forum because it is so dependent on the type of chisel, the bevel angles, the wood, and how they're being used.

I'll keep you posted...

Happy to help.

Comparing is always good.

I'm not much of a user and mess around rehabbing Titans and Bergs. General impression is that the Titans are harder steel and better at say paring Radiata end-grain but prone to nicking (as you'd expect) when doing dados in old hardwood studs. Could be my poor technique. And yes, bevel angles matter.

Good luck.