Thread: Hamlet Bevel Edge Chisels - any good

Originally Posted by IanW

See the thread DW linked to...

I responded in that thread with my experience of a Hamlet chisel - a dud of a thing by any measure. However, that was quite a while ago & as I said at the time, one should not judge an entire breed by a single horse - they may have lifted their game since.

That chisel is definitely not M2 by any stretch of the imagination, but it doesn't mean they haven't started using M2 since (though like David, I very much doubt it). Despite my inexperience & near-complete ignorance of the process at the time, I did subsequently try re-hardening said chisel. My next-door neighbor at the time was a farrier & his forge sure got that chisel proper hot (too hot!) in jig time. He was also using a brine quench & the result is a chisel that is half the length of the original (the steel was too hot & the quench was too severe & caused a crack right across the middle of the blade!). But after a more cautious attempt on what was left, it is now harder and actually usable, I use it as my 'beater' when there is any danger of grit & nails...

Cheers,

Oh, Ian, you party killer with real world experience

rehardening chisels with bevels on already, I guess with the exception of air hardening steels - is a tall order! But halving the length of the chisel does make the task easier.

Second part may sound like snark, but not kidding - the warping issue is probably exponential. I've got tricks to settle the steel before the final quench, but they only work if the steel is straight. And something like a parer still requires multiple quenches if going in brine. W1 here and a paring chisel, brine is the only thing that will really get it right.

In chisels, the lower carbon steels leave me a bit cold (not impractical, just missing something), but I can see why they are used by the non-boutiquers.

Boutique A2, O1, V11 (1.6% carbon!, but it's tied up in chromium and behaves more like a 0.8 or 0.9% carbon steel if guessing)....all 1% steels, but only O1 of those behaves like one and is only fully hardened that I'm aware of by Iles. Well, most of the time. I had two sets of their chisels - the carver handled mk2 and much earlier, an enormous set of london pattern chisels that was just OK. LV underhardens O1 - there is probably a reason why, but I don't know what it is. Hock france undertempers, but certainly doesn't underharden, and the two US made hock irons I have (one 62, one 56) don't really lead to much useful information given the disparity! One was from a brese lever cap and iron kit long ago - it could have been overheated in finish grinding or maybe a hardening process didn't account for the substantial thickness.

I don't have a notch tester, just a hardness tester, so I can't get hardness and toughness numbers together. If I could, I'd consider getting some M2 bar to see if I could come up with a process with the induction forge. i doubt it's impossible. the toughness figure is necessary to know if you're matching book or wasting time, though. Prescribing an induction forge for getting into heat treatment isn't terribly shareable, either.

Originally Posted by D.W.

....rehardening chisels with bevels on already, I guess with the exception of air hardening steels - is a tall order! But halving the length of the chisel does make the task easier. .....

Ignorance can be bliss, where a more knowledgeable & experienced person would shy away from a dubious procedure, I too-often just plunge in, unaware of the potential pitfalls. Too often perhaps, the results are not quite what I was hoping for, but I always learn something of value (like don't do that again!), but occasionally the gods are looking elsewhere & I get away with what I shouldn't...

For the half-dozen chisels I've made from old files, I ground the side bevels while the metal was soft (a decision born entirely of laziness). The first one I quenched in water and got some nasty cracks! So I switched to canola oil for the remainder & that seemed to work nicely. I only re-hardened the first 30mm, mainly because that's as far as I can conveniently heat in my coffee-can/mapp-torch 'forge', the rest I left as it was. My annealing hadn't made them dead soft anyway, & I thought I'd leave a little extra 'flexibility in the upper shafts . I did get some very slight warping on most, just the barest concavity across the back. I actually liked that as it made flattening the backs easier.

I tempered them very lightly, thinking it would be easier to remove the handles & give them a bit longer if they were too hard & brittle than go though the whole routine again if I made them too soft. In any case, I'm quite happy to have paring chisels (these are small parers) a little hard, they are never going to be driven into bull-oak or the likes.

They've turned out to be among the nicest home-made tools I have produced - they take & hold an exquisite edge & I already wonder how I lived for so long without them...

5 set re-handled.jpg

Not knowing all the things that can go wrong sometimes has benefits...

Cheers,

I rehardened a couple of chisels with bevels in the last 6 months. and failed at a couple of others.

One thing I won't advocate is listening to all of the "can't" s!

Sometimes something that's not as easy still works out. My view of a chisel that is so gross that you don't like to use it is you have nothing to lose. Hard enough to use and half the length is still better!

I think I was thinking initially along the lines of belt grinding most of the bevels off and having a narrower chisel, but that's not a particularly reasonable proposition. Steel of that type (below the eutectoid limit by a good bit and then with alloying to make sure of it) has a ceiling, but it's something like 59/60, which is miles better than 56.

the actual experience here is valuable, though - even if the answer isn't ideal.

Too, it's not costly for someone to bounce along sometime and run the same machines with a 0.9% carbon steel and have 62 hardness chisels. Nobody ever does it, but they could make good chisels for bench work cheaply just as easily as they can make edge folding wonders. Same could be done in China for a couple of bucks. I saw literally one instance where someone used Cr100V steel (1% carbon, otherwise similar alloying) and that won't yield a chisel that can be used to pry open doors and survive just bending, but it could actually make a good chisel. For really cheap.

And then haven't seen it since.

Since speculation only goes so far I emailed the manufacturer for the Hamlet chisel steel spec. They use C75 tool steel in the chisels. Have followed up asked for the tart-get Rockwell range.

Rockwell potential varying on exact tempering process. suppliers note it has good cutting properties. AISI 1075 Ck75 C75S 1.1248 Spring Steel - Quality Products & Best Prices

1075 with a 400F temper should have the potential for 60/61 hardness without any faults traded to get it.

if they're not making a good chisel, they're not getting to that, but it's on them, I guess. Opportunity lost. The steel is dirt cheap and capable of making a decent chisel without the complications of getting good toughness out of a 1% carbon steel.

Put differently, they went the same route that ontario ultimately did with knives after they ditched their heat treat specialist and couldn't get 1095CV to be any good. My reading from folks talking about it was they wanted to trade skilled guys on salt pots for a computerized oven and with water hardening steel, there is nothing that will do as well as a skilled person.

But 1075 takes away some of the things that a skilled person would be needed for.

80crv2 has about as much carbon in solution as 1075 and I have not had trouble getting 61/62 tools out of it that have excellent edge stability. it'd be dandy to talk to someone who developed the process hamlet used - they may be giving up some hardness to reduce warping, but the result for the user isn't great other than the price and lower defect rate.

thanks for tracking down what alloy they're actually using by the way, it helps a lot to figure out who gets the blame.

here is slightly more brief literature from NJSB. i don't have any 1070 or 1075 stock or I'd go do up a couple of samples to show the grain - it can create an ultra fine looking micrograph and it definitely would make a chisel that's hard to break by bending. They're leaving something on the table, but there is probably a reason they are that isn't incompetence.

https://cdn.newjerseysteelbaron.com/...Treat-7-20.pdf

this helps also to illustrate why ian's half length chisel is pleasing him now. It's a little harder to get much improvement out of 1060 as the result is a point or two softer and starting to border on unusable for stuff like 1060 and 5160 if everything isn't perfect.

Hi

The Hamlet Bevel Edge Chisels are also manufactured from grade C75 carbon steel so unfortunately this high speed steel mention is incorrect on the Timberbits website so I will pass this on to them.
The rockwell hardness of these chisels once manufactured is between 57 and 60.

Kind Regards

Becky Wragg
Sales & Marketing Executive

Originally Posted by MartinCH

Hi

The Hamlet Bevel Edge Chisels are also manufactured from grade C75 carbon steel so unfortunately this high speed steel mention is incorrect on the Timberbits website so I will pass this on to them.
The rockwell hardness of these chisels once manufactured is between 57 and 60.

Kind Regards

Becky Wragg
Sales & Marketing Executive

Becky Wragg... Hmmm I have Wraggs from Sheffield in my family tree, from my moms side. Maybe a family discount LOL.

Originally Posted by MartinCH

Hi

The Hamlet Bevel Edge Chisels are also manufactured from grade C75 carbon steel so unfortunately this high speed steel mention is incorrect on the Timberbits website so I will pass this on to them.
The rockwell hardness of these chisels once manufactured is between 57 and 60.

Kind Regards

Becky Wragg
Sales & Marketing Executive

Excellent work, detective.

57-60 is a huge range, but the process may not offer anything tighter than that. if you're doing this as an individual, I could teach you in a couple of sessions to do this hand and eye with no more than 1 point variation - especially if the 1075 being used is near the top of the range with manganese (more of that makes it easier to get full hardness from one sample to the next).

It shouldn't be a surprise that tools like this were tiered with quality and pricing. They usually follow a good/better/best/custom sort of strategy. Same for today with your huge production shops.

So for example, one of the most common deals today is that the cheap chisels are something like 1060, mid-market is like 1080, and best standard production is like W1. Custom, you get whatever you are willing to pay for.

Next, you get heat treatment, where the budget lines get a quick once and done induction heat/quench/temper. "Premium" lines may get a multi-step salt bath heat treatment with proper quenching and tempering, or whatever you are willing to pay for.

All in all, it makes a massive difference in performance. I've got several made out of 100CrV (a W1 analog.). All are Chinese. Some are terrible and others are great. Interestingly, the best of those advertise both the alloy and good heat treatment. My general impression based on performance is that Narex Richters are basically quality W1 steel that is properly heat treated.

But, they aren't the only ones. Stubai's ad copy shows the same thing. They have at least 2 different alloys and at least the same number of heat treatment variations.