Thread: Hamlet Bevel Edge Chisels - any good

Hamlet are well-known for making excellent lathe chisels. I imagine that, since the steel of their lathe chisels is considered highly, that their bench chisel steel may be in the decent range. Googling for them shows nice handles and decently shaped BE blades.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Originally Posted by derekcohen

Hamlet are well-known for making excellent lathe chisels. I imagine that, since the steel of their lathe chisels is considered highly, that their bench chisel steel may be in the decent range. Googling for them shows nice handles and decently shaped BE blades.

Regards from Perth

Derek

At one time Hamlet were an independent Sheffield company but I have no idea when Henry Taylor took them over.

Agreed on steel quality of the lathe tools but!! (LOL) All turning chisels for the past 30 years have been HSS so it's hard to produce a subpar tool. Not so with bench chisels, which are carbon steel, chrome vandium... It's definitely suspicious when they're offering a 3/8 at $25. Makes me wonder if it's made in India infact - even worse quality than china. Especially when you consider another Sheffield company, Sorby, are ~$90...

Probably made in sheffield in a drop forge and on an automated grinding machines. this style of chisel, and the tang type with the round bolster, have been fully machine done probably since the 1960s.

Most of the chisels of that type are a touch soft, but you can work with them if you have a need .

No clue on the brand here, either. They were gray marketed by retailers, including one local, but mail order only. Which is a bit dippy for a local dealer. Same dealer was also selling on the internet, though.

There have been fairly few chisels that are drop forged that rival something like an iles chisel, which is obviously a different steel (O1 vs. some kind of lower carbon drill rod) but has more hand and eye time and at least some of the iles tools are actually drawn out by hand at a power hammer.

Streeper told us that one of the issues with the quickly made chisels like the hamlet is that they cannot get a listing unless they meet a spec that isn't designed for cabinetmaking tools.

Narex richters, if made to their spec, would not then qualify. they appear to me to be drop forged, too.

Lastly, steel that is 0.6-0.8% carbon but plain, like what is probably in sorby chisels (soft) and a lot of the imported stuff from china - is easy to make about 58/59 hardness, and the heat treatment is easy because of things that can occur with a 0.9-1% steel. The things that can occur result in chipping and breaking more easily, which will result in bad internet pictures and returned tools. O1 is one of the steels that experience this, and the result is that it takes about 1/3rd the force to impact the side of a fully hardened O1 chisel and break it vs. what it would to fully break something made of the steel in pfeil carving tools. That doesn't make pfeil's steel better for an experienced woodworker, it makes it better suited for abusers. And that's what is in most bench chisels now. People don't return things that are bent because they look stupid. they return things that break as being at fault.

This has a great deal to do with what's offered in the knife industry, too.

Short story long, the chisel should be usable. if it matches a really good crisp older English chisel, I'd be shocked, but it could be just as good as the american stuff made 1900+. That stuff was generally a bit soft, too (stanley 750s, witherby, swan, etc). All of the American stuff was sort of pumped up by internet article writers, but most of it isn't that great.

FWIW, 58/59 is a chisel that will do well in softwoods, and maybe lighter mahogany. 61 or so is where chisels will start to do well in hardwoods. Sweet spot 0.6% chrome vanadium lands around 58/59. Sweet spot O1 lands around 61/62. If they are both done well, there will be a wide gap. if O1 is 58/59, it will not be very good, leading to bad conclusions about what is the alloy vs. what is hardness.

0.6 or 0.65% chrome vanadium steels don't have the potential to perform well at something like 62 hardness, though. they can attain the hardness, but will just show other faults.

David-
what's the M2 high speed steel, the hamlet chisels are nominated to be made from, like as bench chisel?
As a general rule, HSS tools seem to plenty sharp when I sharpen them- no idea how long that lasts - never count the strokes.

If M2 is hardened to 62+, it makes an excellent bench chisel. the side toughness is about the same as O1, though, which means if an abuser had a finely made chisel, they could break it.

M2 doesn't make a better bench chisel than ideally done O1, though. the only maker of O1 chisels that gets them where they should be is Ashley Iles and their chisels have some quirks - especially the long narrow ones. More or less waiting to break in my opinion.

I've never hardness tested any of my turning tools, and thus cannot speculate on how hard they actually are. Always considered sorby's turning tools to be a full step too soft.

At any rate, since m2 doesn't make a better chisel than O1 and not better than the best of the vintage English stuff, it's not going to be used in an automatic process where the grinding time would be drastically increased and the stock cost increased.

But if you made M2 chisels and had them commercially heat treated by a good shop at 63 hardness, they would be excellent chisels. It's a high speed steel, but it is not an overly complex one and doesn't suffer too much in non-HSS work.

if they're 58 hardness, they'll just be no good - no better than a hardware store chisel that's also 58.

https://ofhandmaking.files.wordpress...9742131472.jpg

This thing - made by mujingfang, HSS almost identical to M2 (probably different only out of thrift) - excellent. 64.5 hardness. At that hardness, it doesn't "feel" like HSS does in turning tools - it's crisp and it sharpens well and does very well in actual work.

The chisel itself is a , though- it's just a little piece of flat stock that eats up its handle and then that's the end of it until you fix it. 5 of these were $60 directly from china, which is expensive when you can get gaggles of $10-$20 sets from there. would it be possible for someone to make a chisel shaped object with a longer tang out of good quality M2 and make it 64 hardness? I'm sure it would.

Will it happen? Probably not for less than $100 a chisel.

I've never heat treated M2 steel and don't know what it does as it cools. There is an extreme fascination with steel that moves very little due to the way things are tooled and due to the customer base. we can't even get manufacturers to make M2 turning tools higher in the hardness range in most cases, otherwise it would have a better reputation for turning.

It's an interesting question, though, and the answer is easy. I think if you tried the chisel above, and sharpened it on a normal stone, you wouldn't be able to identify that it's high speed steel. I don't know, if I'm being honest, if I would initially gather that it is other than to know that it's relatively highly alloyed (due to grinding speed) and perhaps then to do the sin test.

That test is - grind something until it turns dull red, let it cool and see what happened. if it's HSS, it rehardens. if it's not, it doesn't. these chisels do.

they are close to M2 because there is nothing else less expensive. M2 is an ingot steel - as in, one that was designed to give a good result when high speed steel was ingot cast instead of spray-formed or powder metallurgy. Its design for less expensive ingot process is so good that there's no need to PM it. V11 would be the opposite - it wouldn't exist outside of PM. it's designed for it. and D2 is a good example of a "tweener". Regular D2 is broken relatively easily, but powder D2 is a lot more similar to V11 but twice as tough (twice as hard to break). It's also as expensive, so you're not likely to see that in any woodworking tools, either. Iles uses D2 in big chisels where the tall cross section sometimes is successful in hiding the low toughness.

Sometimes it isn't.

Ok - I think it reasonable to assume that Hamlet as well as using the same steel as turning chisels would use the same heat treatment process. Given that turners its seems consider them good tools , that should reflect in the bench tools.

Originally Posted by MartinCH

Ok - I think it reasonable to assume that Hamlet as well as using the same steel as turning chisels would use the same heat treatment process. Given that turners its seems consider them good tools , that should reflect in the bench tools.

No, opposite. They would refer to the chisels as high speed steel if they were. I think they are going to be more like sorby's hand tools, which are some kind of plain drill rod with reduced carbon vs. what we're used to.

I'm not aware of any good high speed steel chisels in the west.

the process for chisels like hamlet is making is to buy drill rod, heat it via induction (usually) quickly, squash it, and then grind it to a finish. The steel being ground is soft and doesn't harden too easily, which allows the grinding process to work through grinding easily without much resistance. Steels in chisels like 0.6% chrome vanadium have better hardenability than a vintage steel, so they can go through a less expensive process and warp a little less. they give up a little by not doing things the way they would've been done 150 years ago, but the market long ago phased out skilled heat treatment - the skill is ceded to process.

How It's Made - CHISELS - YouTube

This video is buck brothers in the US, but it gives you a good idea of what the process looks like. If you look at the top of the hamlet chisel, there's a little lip on the top grind up to the rounded socket shaped tang. Just about everything less than $50/chisel shows something like this. There's no difference in quality between sorby's "gilt" chisels and the buck brothers chisels here, but they do have a difference in shape, as do the hamlet chisels.

This process would probably be a disaster with M2 or any HSS because the steel would air harden and destroy the machining that follows. I don't know what they do when they make turning tools - m2 is sort of of my radar as a maker of chisels - it can make a chisel as good as the best O1 or W1, but not as good as something like a clean file steel, especially when all things are considered (sharpenability - a file steel chisel will sharpen on normal stones even when it's hard and do everything better but lathe work). it takes some processing steps to make normalize, thermally cycle and reharden and temper a file, though - the temper that they come with is usable, but there is more potential for woodworking chisels.

Short story long - HSS tools will generally be M2 or something similar, especially if alloy isn't mentioned. step up "cryo" tools could be a cobalt steel, one never knows unless they say (M42 is a high hardness high hot-hardness cobalt steel that makes good drill bits and good turning tools). Woodworking chisels will usually be some kind of relatively plain drill rod with some additive alloying for easier hardening - more chromium and manganese, but less than O1 - and a trace of vanadium to allow a little more sloppiness in the process on the heat treat side.

I forgot for a second that you mentioned henry taylor took on the hamlet brand and was going to speculate on where the bench chisels may be made and how.

i don't think it's a slam dunk that the bench chisels are made by henry taylor, or that HT chisels are made the same way or what. They could be contract made on a machine by someone else or made by henry taylor on different tooling that hamlet used - HT's bench chisels and hamlet look like similar process but maybe a different grinding machine.

Both types show characteristics of what is common now - a fat sided chisel (for ease in manufacturing) that was done on an automated rotary grinding machine, but the HT chisels look like they are run though a buffing process - probably also a machine.

They're essentially decent quality hardware store chisels with a proportion in terms of length and handle length more like an old bench chisel.

If lloyds took a bet, I'd say hamlet's chisel will be 59 hardness and if I rehardened it, I wouldn't find much potential for additional hardness.

the lack of a steel spec may be due to lack of interest or desire for flexibility to buy rod at different common mid-carbon levels without having to change the spec. E.g., if you use a steel that's classified as a chrome vanadium type and then use a different alloy series that's listed as chrome manganese and the chisel seems the same, then we probably shouldn't care.

Footprint (earlier, and not all of their styles) is the only maker of chisels with this process where the chisels have actually be hard and crisp, but they are gone, and not all of their chisels are like that either. Their registered chisels are soft to the point of being obnoxious, punishing someone like me who follows patterns assuming they do the same thing with all of their tools. Could very well be they didn't even make their registered chisels.

Now i suddenly find this fascinating - "timberbits" claims the chisels are M2. Hamlet's website doesn't.

it seems really unlikely, though, but easy to figure out - grind them until they're red or near red, allow to air cool and then sharpen (after they're not hot! black hot still removes fingerprints!).

The next question then is how hard. if they're M2 and 59 hardness, they'll be disappointing. if they are M2 and 64, they could be outstanding. But I think they won't be M2.

Ok, I can test limited turning tools. I'm wrong about the sorby scraper and skew at least. the others, the gouges, I can't test.

Record Power small flat skew - 64 hardness
Robt Sorby Scraper (M2, i'm sure) - 65 hardness
Robt Sorby Oval Skew (risky to test, not flat and could slide and break off the diamond tip) - 65 hardness

the only issue here is I've never had any problem with any of these tools. I don't use the scraper, but everyone said long ago "you have to have one", and the two skews, one I use as a 1/2" parting tool and the other has been replaced by a big one from record power (a huge one) - but have always honed them like anything else- ground and then stoned and burr removed quickly. they've all seemed "normal".

These results were so surprising, I guess that I had to check the hardness tester with the 62.1 calibration block (it's a portable tester, you can really only resolve about 1/2 point). tests 62 right on the dot.

Interesting!!

Always better to know than to say sorby turning tools are soft. I think one of my gouges may be, but there's no way to hardness test it and I don't care if it is, anyway. At this point, I think it's more likely that things I do make the egde seem like it develops a burr and it's not soft, though. it's easier to implement a process and kind of get the same result for everything than it is to get varying results.

It's likely i find this topic more interesting than anything else, but it's only due to making chisels, and of course it would be a thrill to find that someone makes inexpensive M2 chisels.

Hamlet Bevel Edge Wood Chisels

Didn't make the early connection between hamlet and M2 due to being in the states and the timberbits listing doesn't really show up here with any priority.

that, and a local gray market dealer here who as far as I know literally sold only gray market stuff and had a little physical shop had hamlet tools. The guy who got me into woodworking is English, but he wasn't a hobby woodworker until he moved to South Africa. At some point, he left South Africa because of a job opportunity and ended up in the States. Well, that's the same reason he went to S.A. His dad was a joiner and he's an Engineer. Getting a job as an engineer at the time (in the 70s) was hindered by his dad not being a professional, with no such thing in S.A.. "oh, you're looking for a job? here, supervise the assembly of this dragline and you get a new C230 benz as a company car gratis".

Anyway, we both looked at each other ... is hamlet? That would've been around the same time as that post above (2007 or 2008 maybe) - already under henry taylor's wing by then. Henry taylor isn't exactly on every corner in the states, either. Pfeil is and so is irwin marples. the other sheffield brands just weren't distributed by anyone of size here - rather sparsely spread around instead.

That post above is relatively little data - but bergs aren't anything special in terms of edge holding. they are a step better than what I think are lower carbon types like sorby and other hardware store chisels, but below anything pre-1900 and sheffield and good. Just guessing on how we're all wired - if there'd been a 64/65 hardness M2 chisel set, we'd all know about it because someone would've set a forum on fire talking about the chisels.

M2 can be forged, and I have a "home" induction forge that can reach really high temperatures, but i'm not going to be the one forging the steel because I've got no reason to believe I can harden and temper it well enough to be worth while. It would be *slow* grinding to shape, too.

i could be goaded in the past to buy stuff to look at it and test it and then just sell it for a loss, but have gotten out of the habit. 6 years or so ago, I bought all three sets of the sorby chisels to see if they were any different. I wouldn't make the mistake doing that now knowing they wouldn't source three different types of steel to make all of those chisels. The cheapest were just as good as the highest cost - I now have none of those sets, and no longer have bergs or any other eskilstuna chisels, either.

Does lead to a question of how the turning tools are made. You can see the ones made out of a single rod diameter are just milled out of the rod. Have never seen a discussion elsewhere other than to know M2 can be forged as long as it's kept around 2000F or a little higher and would guess some of the bigger gouges are flat stock bent at forging temperatures.

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,

Originally Posted by The Spin Doctor

I'm in need of a 3/8 bevel edge chisel. Doesn't help that I sold off a full set of Bergs thinking I don't need them...

Trying to keep with similar style of chisel (carving pattern handle) and the Hamlet popped up on Timberbits Sydney website, but they seem suspiciously cheap (nothing good is cheap in Aus). They're mentioned on Henry Taylor UK website so I wonder if they're their chinese cheap brand... Or is there a break in the fabric of the univers and something good is being offered in Aus for a nice price?

If the make of chisel does not matter, I would look at a 3/8" Japanese oire nomi. Even the cheap ones can be really good in my experience (or, at least a lot better than anything Western in that price range). The steel is similar to O1, and should be hard (hopefully not too hard).

If you are looking for a chisel with minimal lands to chop dovetails, then just follow the method I laid out here:

https://www.inthewoodshop.com/ShopMa...ilChisels.html

I did this to my set of Kiyohisa chisels (!), and they are just wonderful all rounders now (heavy chopping and dovetails).

Regards from Perth

Derek