Thread: Why Did Bevel Edge Chisels Win?

do you mean non-belled as mortice/firmer chisel? Most shops use machine cut these days

Paul Sellers hasa. few observations on bevel vs firmer


https://paulsellers.com/2014/02/many-chisel-choices/

to quote an excerpt from Paul's blog:

"I know that many woodworkers believe massive mortise chisels are the best way to go for mortising holes in woods like pine and oak and mahogany. They were indeed designed for that purpose in a period when mortises were chopped out by bench joiners and cabinet makers (UK for furniture maker) using only hand methods. Where the chisel types cross over is not always definitive. Mortise chisels weigh in at three to four times that of a bevel-edged chisel. The handles are twice to three times the size and the steel massively increases by four to five times the bulk in comparing the same two chisel types."

I doubt anyone can answer your question definitively, Fergiz, but the most likely answer is that people stopped buying firmer chisels in quantity, so manufacturers stopped making them in quantity. Why did folks stop buying firmers? I guess they no longer needed them, because, as Sellars says, there are quicker ways of chopping out mortises and doing the sort of heavy-duty jobs they are better suited to. For e.g., when I was a kid in the early 50s, I watched carpenters framing in hardwood, & chopping out 'checks' in the top & bottom wall-plates to take the studs. No-one does that any more!

You can get by with just BE chisels, they can do any job a chisel can reasonably be expected to do, as long as you are careful, but I'd bet most serious woodies end up wanting a set of firmers or mortise chisels at some point. The good news is that there are so many oldies still kicking around, from the days when they were bought in large numbers, that you should be able to kit yourself out quite nicely for a very reasonable outlay....

Cheers,

In my experience, the firmers are easier for beginners to use because the higher sides have more registration for 90 degree chopping and paring such as with mortice walls, tenon shoulders etc. True, they suck at dovetails, but that's something that most beginners don't do.

Morticing machines and Festool Dominos have largely reduced the need to cut out your own mortices by hand. I still prefer to do mortice and tenons by hand when critical strength of a joint is needed, like on the feet of this Cheval mirror I made. ( See photos #3 and #4).

I have been busy making wooden stuff for over 10 years now....

I seldom need a sharp bevel edge chisel.. I could probably do just as well with all firmer patterns except for 1 or 2 bevel edges that make a fairly fine edge for cleaning up corners... And a standard firmer pattern gives you plenty of square back to hone before the width starts changing....

In all honesty - the sharp bevel corners are more of a distraction and vehicle for drawing blood from my fingers than they are a useful feature for me...

But - industry seems to have standardized on a semi-beveled chisel... Since thats what they sell - thats what I have....

I would bet it has something to do with being able to make beveled edge chisels more easily than in the past.

If you're using water hardening steel, thin parts are problematic, as would be leaving them square and then grinding them after heat treatment. If you're using oil hardened, not so much. On top of that, many of the chisels sold now start their shaping in a die under a drop forge (not sure how long that's the case). It's a whole lot easier for someone running a hammer with a die to make beveled sides than it is for a blacksmith to do it precisely on a grinding wheel. I'm sure die forged chisels are finished on a wheel unless they have really fat sides and are buffed heavily.

I think (but I'm nut sure because I don't have all of the historical books) that a lot of the original straight sided cabinet chisels tapered in thickness and were fairly thin at the cutting edge compared to what we have now. That would explain why modern cabinet chisels are easier to use than firmers, whereas if the modern cabinet chisels were thin like the old ones, you could just skew them lightly and make the cut you needed to make.

Originally Posted by Fergiz01

...... True, they suck at dovetails, but that's something that most beginners don't do......

Is that true, Fergiz? I would've thought most would at least aspire to doing dovetails at some stage, they seem to be perceived as the acme of woodworking. Isn't that why everyone buys a set of BEs for their first chisels? Of course most (all?) of the less-expensive BEs are quite unsuited to dovetailing, the corners are always far too coarse and would bruise the visible edges of your tails when you try to chop into the acute corners, so those are not the best tools to buy if that's your ultimate ambition.

I read somewhere, it would've been in the 80s or thereabouts, that some 'spokesperson' from Stanley was reported as saying that their market-research told them that most buyers of their handplanes at that time were spouses/children of the recipients, they were bought as birthday/Christmas/Fathers' day gifts and price was the deciding factor in their purchasing decision. The tools were seldom used much, if at all (not least, perhaps because the wretched things were un-usable!?), & they were still selling steadily, so there was little incentive for them to change anything. Not a great corporate attitude, for sure, but perhaps something similar applies to chisels?

I think manufacturers would soon respond to demand, & would crank out a line or two of firmer style chisels if buyers started clamoring for them. As I said, most of us could get by with just BEs. I only owned a couple of firmers and 4 or 5 BEs for the first 25 years or so of my wood-bothering activities, and managed to build some reasonably ambitious pieces. There were just too many other tools ahead of chisels on the 'wanted' list, so it was only about 15 or so years ago that I gave them some serious thought, and decided I wanted a 'proper' set of firmer style chisels. With some help from junk-stores, flea-markets, Forumites, etc, I now have a beautiful lot of socket Titan 'firmers', most of which came to me with badly damaged, non-original, or missing handles, so I had no hesitation in giving them new ones of Brigalow, set off with brass hoops: Titans.jpg

I've got a small set of mortising chisels, so I could still live without my Titans, but I have a 'thing' about socket chisels, they are beautiful things to behold(& to hold with handles sized to my hands), so even though they don't get used every day, they are definitely keepers!.......

Cheers,

Originally Posted by Fergiz01

I thought I'd start this conversation about why everyone seems to prefer bevel edge chisels to their non-beveled counterparts. Today, very few manufacturers make non-beveled chisels, so that is almost all people know. However, in the hand tool heyday there were many makes and models, all with their pros and cons. So what happened?

I don't think it's a matter of one style winning over another.

More that bevel edge chisels (or, I believe, more accurately, bevel edge firmers) became the last ones standing.

As hand tool use declined, paring chisels fell by the wayside as being just too fragile to be used with a hammer.

Firmers with their square edges were just too specialised for the plumber or carpenter knocking out a quick and dirty notch to fit a pipe or wire.

Bevel edge firmers were the kept in production compromise between the two extremes.

I'd just like to add that the thought of limiting myself to just one type of chisel is horrifying! You can never have too many chisels...

Originally Posted by Poppa

....... You can never have too many chisels...

'Cept when they are all blunt & need sharpening......


Cheers,

One thing not mentioned above is the substantial savings for the manufacturers in BE chisels over the plain sided jobs. There's a lot of extra steel in the early registered Titan 101's and 131's and heavy sockets (201/206's) compared to their beveled cousins 131/136's and 231/236's. I guess this is true for any brand though. Not just the steel saved on the bevel but the chisels themselves have got much smaller (shorter) and lighter over time. Pine framing rather than green hardwood, factory framing rather than site built, machine manufacturing, fashion, chisel design (longer necks now make up a substantial part of a chisels length, for instance), marketing and consumer demand have all played a part but, from a manufacturers point of view, the savings on metal content and flow on cheaper processing over millions of tools would have been an important influence in the triumph of the BE chisel.

When I served my apprenticeship, all the ground plates were morticed for the tenon on the studs. Timber braces were housed into studs. The timber used was hardwoods and generally unseasoned. Often we had to replace plates and studs and repair old wooden buildings, the timber was usually old and hard. This needed strong durable tools. Most of us had three or four firmer framing chisels, the most common one was 1". We had more because there was no power on the job and access to grinding wheels was in the workshop only. A lot of the door locks were mortice type, requiring a mortice 1/2" wide, 4" long and 4" deep. For this we used a 1/2" firmer chisel, a bevel edge just didn't stand up to the job.

We all had a "set" of bevel edge chisels on the job plus a 1 1/4" for fitting hinges and general use for finishings and the occassional bench work.

Now days there are few chisels needed by carpenters, and I suspect few recreational wood workers do much framing that requires good solid chisels.

Jim

Originally Posted by Doggie

........ Not just the steel saved on the bevel ......

I was about to question this bit, Dogs, imagining the bevels as ground on a flat blank, but as I started typing, I had a mental image of seeing a pic, somewhere, of a stamped blank for a BE chisel on which the bevels were already formed (probably in your book! ). So some metal would indeed be saved. All of what you say makes perfect sense; it would seem there are many reasons why BE chisels are the main game in town these days....

Cheers,

Originally Posted by Doggie

One thing not mentioned above is the substantial savings for the manufacturers in BE chisels over the plain sided jobs. There's a lot of extra steel in the early registered Titan 101's and 131's and heavy sockets (201/206's) compared to their beveled cousins 131/136's and 231/236's. I guess this is true for any brand though. Not just the steel saved on the bevel but the chisels themselves have got much smaller (shorter) and lighter over time. Pine framing rather than green hardwood, factory framing rather than site built, machine manufacturing, fashion, chisel design (longer necks now make up a substantial part of a chisels length, for instance), marketing and consumer demand have all played a part but, from a manufacturers point of view, the savings on metal content and flow on cheaper processing over millions of tools would have been an important influence in the triumph of the BE chisel.

Hi Doggie

I think you may be overthinking this one.
Over the period we are discussing (prior to 1970), plain carbon steel wouldn't have been any more than $800 per tonne, perhaps no more than $500 per tonne. That works out at 50 CENTS per kilogram, and at a guess -- because I have no comparisons to hand -- the metal saved making a bevel edge firmer compared to a regular firmer of the same thickness and length would be less than 1/2 oz (say 12.5 g, for reasons of easier calculation).
So you would need to make 80 bevel edge chisels to save 1 kg -- or 50 cents worth of metal. And 80,000 before you "saved" a tonne of steel.
So I don't think material saving was a consideration, given that the labour components of forging, grinding, heat treating, handle making and fitting, marketing and selling a chisel would have to be measured in the dollars per chisel.


I still think that the (now common) shortish bevel edge firmer is really just the last chisel standing in a world where mass manufactured chisels are used for nearly every chopping task other than those performed by craft furniture makers.


I am also of the opinion that the fast majority of people are unaware of the vast range of chisel types available prior to 1940.
For example, the Seaton Tool Chest (ca 1795) contains
"Mortice chisels" -- a set of 8, sized between 1/8 and 1/2"
"Socket chisels" -- a set of 7 what look to be sash mortice chisels, sized between 1/2 and 1-1/4"
"Cast steel chisels" -- a set of 16, sized between 1/4 and 2". Unfortunately there's no accompanying photo.
"Firmers" -- a set of 18, sized between 1/16 and 2". which look to be a firmer shape with a distinct taper from the bolster to the cutting edge.

In contrast, the Studley Chest contains 12 chisels, all of which appear to be a firmer pattern