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  1. #1
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    Default Seaton Chest-ish Chisels

    Still on the chisel making things, but busy work is making for slower chisel making.

    I've seen talk from time to time (often from one person) about the superiority of the very thin chisels that were in the seaton chest. That also came with the pronouncement that they didn't have or need side bevels.

    So I got the seaton chest book a while ago just to look at the wares (it's got pictures, but also drawings with measurements), and the chisels are in fact very thin (some are less than 5 hundredths of an inch thick at the bevel), but several also have little tiny side bevels.

    I start with flat stock and hammer the business end and do something referred to as thermal cycling at the same time, at least the forge version of it (heating to lower heat and descending each of the three heats), then belt grind the blanks into two planes (that are not coplanar), tapering. They have to be left a bit fat as I'm using very plain steel that warps (but the plain steel is dreamy with tiny grain and sharpens and grinds wonderfully.
    20210921_120640.jpg

    Blanks cut out with the tang roughly guessed where it will be. It's important to leave things a little fat as they'll also be heated and hammered and drawn longer:

    20210922_130955.jpg
    Like this (I also put a mark in the backs of them - my mark style is a later mark, but who cares. they're not museum reproductions and I don't want to make a mark that can be hammered into them in another style at this point.
    (I'm also not going dead on with the chisel proportions, either - the older ones had a very long neck/tang below the bolster)
    20210923_130752.jpg

    After this, the tang area is ground and a square of steel is shrunk on to the tang and then heated to a very high temp at the joint and forge welded.

    20210925_085609.jpg

    You can see some of the initial bolster grinding and then filing and some filing on the tangs. One of the chisels has the square of steel (it's just 1" square of 3/16th mild steel stock so that it doesn't harden and I can file it later if anything gets bumped by the belt grinder.

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  3. #2
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    At this point, a little bit more taper grinding and evening up the taper is done on the chisels that are getting ready for heat treat (in a small can forge - easiest way to have good temperature control and not too much surplus heat burning your hands and face).

    Since these are relatively plain chisels, they're just finish ground and thicknessed after the heat treat and a handle is attached (apple in this case) and then ground to near bolster size. Some are ground so the bottom size is much fatter than the bolster, which I may do on a second set. Good heat treatment (these get another thermal cycle before quench and temper to make sure the grain has stayed super fine) is a key part of this. It's fun to make tools, but it's not fun to make them and use them if they seem subpar to really anything else in the shop (you'll go back to using other tools if you don't make good ones).

    20210927_130757.jpg

    These are thin, about .08", but I don't think I'll ever take them to .05" (they can be ground as is with a ceramic belt with some care and not overheated - which is what I do. can of water, and a few seconds of grinding at a time and back and forth - i hold the metal parts while grinding so I can feel temperatures). They are light chisels at this thickness, but not flimsy seeming.

    These are left pretty hard - the steel is 26c3 (a high carbon steel similar to japanese white steel), and out of the quench and after temper, they're still pretty hard.

    I've only got two finished so far. It takes about 2 hours of time each for me to make chisels.

    A couple of more pictures of the handle wood and the pair next to my favorite (to this point) style of chisel - sort of a late 1800s English bench chisel style with a bolster and round handle.
    20210927_130732.jpg

    20210927_164926.jpg

    I try to make things quickly, but not "rushy". So the cushion on the top of the handle is interesting to look at but it could be made "perfect" with a little bit more time. I would rather the improvement in look come from repetition than working really slowly, though, and if I were to make three or four sets of these, they would look more crisply faceted - it just happens when you make several of something.

    Interestingly, I don't use much for power tools, but when making tools, I use a lot. In the old days, they did, too - as far as I can tell, everything was ground and glazed to finish size after it was heat treated, and you can't really do that by hand.

    They also had other hurdles (some of these were solid steel in the late 1700s and some were laminated, and some were laminated and then the laminated part forge welded to another part (so the chisels are actually at least three pieces, sometimes four - mine are just two -the initial blank and the bolster).

    When making the handles, the process is "Reverse hybrid". You could do it completely by hand, but i'm too lazy and I would bet in a factory, these were roughed on a coarse wheel like some of the knife factory grinders do with wooden handles - they just grind them to shape on a big grinding wheel or belt just as they would the metal. So, these get belt sanded down to fit the tang and to be in alignment once shaped (just freehand and by eye) and then left just a bit proud to file off the sanding marks and true things up to final size (just two files, a coarse milled tooth file and then a plain old single cut mill file). No finish sanding. Linseed oil and wax (the color is pleasing to me - it's very similar to cherry, but the wood is more durable than cherry by a lot).

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    almost forgot (and not that important) - the reason that I took a picture of the more common (now) bevel edge type is that it's a little larger, but what I noticed after thinking the seatonish chisels aren't as light as I expected was how heavy it seemed (so they fooled me - I thought they were a little lighter, but after weighing them, they're just over 3 ounces each, and the later bevel edge style is 6 (it's a fairly long chisel, around inches or just a little more in total - a nice length for a handle gripper as you're less apt to care how long the chisel is in general as you drag the chisel into marks instead of placing it).

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    David,

    Fantastic looking chisels, you certainly are mastering the no fuss approach to tool making.

    Am I right that you basically just use a angle grinder and small belt sander for 90 percent of the blade shaping.

    I’m asking as I have been contemplating making a few Butt chisels, has I have some 01 Tool steel, left over from some other projects.

    Cheers Matt.

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    David

    Nice going with your "replicas."

    "The Tool Chest of Benjamin Seaton" is a treat. I would recommend it to anyone interested in vintage tools. Only the later edition has the dimensioned drawings of the tools so anybody looking at second hand purchases should bear this in mind.

    It is available direct through Taths and priced quite reasonably:

    The Tool Chest of Benjamin Seaton

    It includes dimensioned drawings of the chisels, saws and the chest itself as well as other tools.

    Regards
    Paul
    Bushmiller;

    "Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts, absolutely!"

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    Hi David .
    Nice job on those chisels!
    I like the Seaton tools and made a copy of the Bolting iron chisel from the chest a few years ago.
    The Bolster. What a great way of putting that on!
    I'd always thought of either having to upset the steel with forge and hammer on anvil to give enough material to then form the bolster .
    Or welding on and bending around a suitable dimension thin rod while hot , then forming the bolster with that .
    But sliding it down the tapered tang then shaping never occurred to me . Forge welded on .

    Interested to know if or where you have seen it done like that way before.
    Is that how they were originally made ?

    Edit out that question. you said the answer already

    Edit out that question. No I see . Not 01 steel . I should read more carefully and slow . Just shows how exited I was by this post
    You used 26c3 . Never heard of that but note taken .

    Rob

  8. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bushmiller View Post
    David

    Nice going with your "replicas."

    "The Tool Chest of Benjamin Seaton" is a treat. I would recommend it to anyone interested in vintage tools. Only the later edition has the dimensioned drawings of the tools so anybody looking at second hand purchases should bear this in mind.

    It is available direct through Taths and priced quite reasonably:

    The Tool Chest of Benjamin Seaton

    It includes dimensioned drawings of the chisels, saws and the chest itself as well as other tools.

    Regards
    Paul

    Thanks for the link Paul . Ive been wanting the second addition book since it came out .
    Price being Quite reasonable is right. Compared to second hand copy's and Amazon!!
    Amazon is New $412 second hand $175 !!

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    I got a copy of that seaton chest book from Taths. The US is a special case as there are a few sellers who are authorized to sell it here, so taths suggests we go to them and requests not ordering it through their website. However, it was out of stock other than very highly marked up amazon resellers (which is bordering on scamming to me, buying stock items and waiting until they're out of stock to try to find a victim). I ordered through the TATHS website, anyway, and they sent one to me with a nice letter in it (which was a pleasant surprise, as I was expecting they'd refund me once they realized the order came through paypal from the US).

    I don't like to make things without specs, one in hand, or really good pictures - just too much guessing if it's not necessary. The seaton chest book in this case is a real treat because it provides both pictures and measured drawings. It's a dandy book to have as a reference for any toolmaker - even if you never use anything from it, it's interesting reading.

    (I believe the price of the book from TATHS was something like $50 equivalent - it's really well done)

  10. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by auscab View Post
    Hi David .
    Nice job on those chisels!
    I like the Seaton tools and made a copy of the Bolting iron chisel from the chest a few years ago.
    The Bolster. What a great way of putting that on!
    I'd always thought of either having to upset the steel with forge and hammer on anvil to give enough material to then form the bolster .
    Or welding on and bending around a suitable dimension thin rod while hot , then forming the bolster with that .
    But sliding it down the tapered tang then shaping never occurred to me . Forge welded on .

    Interested to know if or where you have seen it done like that way before.
    Is that how they were originally made ?

    Edit out that question. you said the answer already

    Edit out that question. No I see . Not 01 steel . I should read more carefully and slow . Just shows how exited I was by this post
    You used 26c3 . Never heard of that but note taken .

    Rob
    Thanks, Rob! As far as the bolster goes, I may not have said exactly how I came to that process - basically limited equipment and wanting a good result. Colonial Williamsburg had a while where they were trying to figure out how the old bolsters were put on chisels like this (vs. something like a pigsticker, where the chisel is always welded to the bolster (this method could also be used for that, but butt welds in good wrought seemed to have been common and what I can find suggests a clean forge weld is about 80-90% of the strength of the base metal. I don't get perfect closure on all of mine, but if the weld doesn't set, the bolster comes off easily back off of the tang when straightening things - and then you learn from repetition how to avoid the welds that don't set well).

    So, long story short, I shrunk the first bolsters on because I couldn't weld them, and then once I got a brazing torch to heat that joint to forging temps without superheating the rest of the steel (which would require a couple of cycles of annealing to bring grain size back to something that wouldn't break in the future, and chance introducing cracks), I just added a step, only fluxing the bolster as it was heated and shrunk to the tang size so that the two parts being welded would get a good weld. If it's even 25% strength, it'll never be moved by malleting (and I haven't had a good weld fail yet).

    some of this stuff, you just have to guess on. What CW said was that they ultimately made a worm of wrought iron and attached it around the tang and then welded it. Well, that's out for me (I don't have a coal forge, and i'm not using wrought). I'm super interested in the final result holding an edge as well or better than anything commercially available, so I'm generally working at lower heat and I don't want to get into heavier forging than the shaping that I do at the outset and for the tang if the result will be less strong for it.

    I thought of potentially (if this method wouldn't have worked) getting round rod and making chisels from that and doing heavy forging to leave the round in place with the tang and bit hammered out fore and aft, but that would be a lot of heating, and again, the potential for decarb or grain issues makes it problematic. Upsetting the steel accurately without just bending and smashing stuff out of shape - i'm not very good at the blacksmithing part and it would leave a lot of grinding. So my guess method is just the lazy and easy way.

    Not sure what they did historically, though, but they sure didn't have much reservation about forge welds as some of these have forge welded bit/lamination and then the rest of the chisel is made in a separate part and butt welded or scarf welded to that assembly (according to the book). Seems risky to me, but they would've known what they were doing welding wrought back then and since I don't work wrought, I'll never experience the joy that they describe of forging good clean wrought iron (it's supposedly like butter). I have forged some old metal files to shape and they forge like crap - really hard even at high heat. It makes some comments familiar on knife forums where the forgers tend to gravitate towards steel that work well and predictably when not.

    As to the 26c3, they could've been O1 without issue, but going to the trouble of making chisels, I want them to have sort of a special feel above and beyond the standard. 26c3 only costs a buck or two more per chisel and it has properties sharpening and in use that make even O1 feel highly alloyed (it's super crisp even compared to O1 and can get a functional temper at a higher hardness by about 2 points. As in, it's an indulgence, but a good one.

    I've learned in the world of steels, it's really about using what's available locally and in the US, rolled and annealed 26c3 is reasonable. if it would have to be shipped overseas, it'd be a waste of money. BS1407 silver steel from England would make a great chisel, but we don't get it in the US, and they probably don't get 26c3 since it's coming from a US mill (even though the company is Swedish). So in England, you use silver steel to get a similar result, and here, 26c3.

    Separate from that, 26c3 is a bit harder to heat treat to high hardness - it needs a special quench oil and not just veggie oil as it's a very plain steel. If it's done in a veggie oil, it may not harden and it most likely would lose its high hardness capability even if it did (and then the legit question comes in of why use it if it's not a better result in that scenario, and I agree with that). There's a whole lot of that in hobby knife world - using exotic steels to make a sale, but not going to the trouble of doing them right.

    For someone just making a few things, O1 is king - it needs no thermal cycling, is often delivered spheroidized and gets full hardness in almost any oil, and it's a wonderful tool steel when its temper is left at about 61/62.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Simplicity View Post
    David,

    Fantastic looking chisels, you certainly are mastering the no fuss approach to tool making.

    Am I right that you basically just use a angle grinder and small belt sander for 90 percent of the blade shaping.

    I’m asking as I have been contemplating making a few Butt chisels, has I have some 01 Tool steel, left over from some other projects.

    Cheers Matt.
    Thanks! On most chisels, I try to get most of the shaping done on the anvil (the draw out of the tang, attaching the bolster, and tapering of the bit before grinding to clean up the hammer marks). These are a special case as they get more attention post heat treat to make them thin (if they're forged too thin and they warp, there's no material left to correct them).

    I use a belt grinder and coarse ceramic belts for most of the grinding both pre and post heat treat. ceramic belts don't grind with much heat, so you can grind hardened steel just monitoring heat and dipping regularly (if you used something like a plain red alumina belt stearated for use with wood, things burn instantly and it's slow going). I never had much regard for the high tech belts until grinding metal. they also need speed to work right, at least 2000 feet a minute.

    That said, one of the two sanders that I use is inexpensive and a good idea for metal work. it's just an import machine branded "bucktool BD4801" here and 4x36, but it properly tensions a belt, has 2200 feet a minute of belt speed and the platen is actually flat on it and rigid. It's direct drive instead of belt like the common 4x36 hobby sanders and subjectively is at least twice as strong because it's not wasting energy on the belt (and then I can use a stearated belts separately on it and shape the handles).

    My other grinder is a large 2x48 4800ft/min contact wheel belt grinder that costs a lot more, but it's not necessary, it just makes making more traditional chisels (especially grinding the bevels on after the chisel is already hardened without overheating them, and doing it quickly) easier. And it can do bonkers things if you have to do heavy grinding - you could feed a commercial chisel into it and grind it off to the handle in not much more than a minute if you felt like it.

    Since butt chisels are short, though, you could do most of the initial shaping however you want and not worry about warping (as in, you can file on all of the bevels and such that you want and they won't cause much warping in heat treat - warping seems to be exponential with length, and the faster hardening a steel is, the more warp - not a hard and fast rule, i'm sure, but it's what I see from the forge) You can make a pretty good chisel by doing nothing more than adding a ferrule to a handle and stuffing flat stock into the handle -that's all blue spruce chisels are. If you want to use an angle grinder and then file to final appearance and size before heat treat, that'd be a good plan.

    I see common use of an angle grinder on blacksmith TV shows, but it's hard to use one much post heat treat if you have as decent sander available.

    For anyone else considering trying to make some things out of metal, the "bucktool" sander that I mentioned is great (it's about $230 US, and i can't imagine someone doesn't sell something similar under another brand in australia), and there's an even cheaper version of the same thing (bd4603 - 4x36 belt, but a smaller disc and the motor is still in the 600 watt range and direct drive) for almost the same price as the over under or side by side belt driven hobby things. It's a sin for the hobby machines to be sold at $150 when the latter thing above is $170 and every single thing about it is better.

    Not endorsing any specific machine, just figure if it's sold here, there's something similar sold for cheap there and everywhere else, even if it's under another label.

    Even on a cheap sander like that, you more or less have a nice hard flat platen (and mine seems to have taken little wear in the last year or so that I've had it, but it's worn out at least 3 dozen belts), and you can use the idler as a low radius contact wheel, even though it's not quite as nice feeling as a rubber contact wheel).

    I think the company that sells the attachment that I use for the faster belt grinder is from australia - "multitool". The thing is kind of crude, but with a jet grinder sold cheap here to drive it (a little over 1300 watts), it's capable of doing what I need it to do - crude bulk work. The combination is expensive, though - a grinder that strong, the attachment and a starting assortment of belts is around $800. "real" belt grinders like burr kings here are four times that, though, and often two are needed to get a combination of platen and large and small contact wheels - not in the works for me at this point. I'm hoping to maybe make tools professionally in retirement, but that's a decade off at least. Right now, it's just fun play, and a contest to try to make tools better than boutique commercial tools.

    All that said, O1 is the stuff you want to start with - be careful reading knife forums. They always suggest some kind of lower carbon water hardening steel because they like high toughness and don't care as much about fine edge holding. You want the opposite - good edge strength and less toughness. O1 is that. All of the good woodworking steels are relatively low toughness - it allows the edge to be difficult to deflect, but to break off if it does at a tiny level rather than keeping the deflection as a big rounded over mess, which becomes impossible to use. O1 is our entry level steel, and in reality, it's good enough for everything short of a straight razor or saltwater steel.

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    (my discussions of HT are a little bit TLDR...a lot bit. But sooner or later, you'll want to hear from people who have experimented....there's a lot of information out there, good and bad, but some of the bad is from people who either didn't do a good job with trials, or who know a lot but haven't done much of this without modern bits - like a programmable heat treat furnace - and in the back of your head always has to be "ghee, when I've broken really old tools or sharpened them and examined the wear under a scope, there was no evidence of poor quality heat treat"

    in fact, nothing modern betters the edge wear fineness of stuff done by eye and sold here in the early 1800s.

    woodworking folks can also give bad info to knife people, and knife people to woodworking folks about what's good or what's not).

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    slow going due to time to make chisels pretty much limited to lunch. Ground back the four made so far to .07", which is as low as I think I'll go. Two made since above were left a bit fat, closer to .1" at the tip, but the strength is there in these to go thinner, so .07" I think is where i"ll stop to not make the temptation when using them to be overly light handed.


    20210930_154524.jpg

    Four, ground and then "glazed" with a trizact belt and then hand glazed on wood with silicon carbide to remove any sort of wavy look on the surfaces - handles already getting a little dirty, but if it's important, they can be cleaned with oil and scotchbrite.

    Styles differ a little as I'm trying to figure out what's comfortable - all have curved tops, but tapering the facets to thin corners at the far end (I like the look) isn't very comfortable, so the two done like that I rounded the corners over and filed in a top curve. It's all a guess until you find something you like, but pushing htem with the corners on the squareish pair - just a little uncomfortable to the point that you notice.

    20210930_154559.jpg

    20210930_154612.jpg

    20210930_154619.jpg

    A few other angles. Not sure if any will be rehandled. Some of the older chisels are fatter than the bolster and then a little fatter yet at the far end, and that might be nice. They do feel a bit thin, like carving tools, but not to the extent you couldn't get used to it.

    Until or unless I break one, I can't help but love the crispness of the steel.

    Two more narrow ones and then the set of 6 will be done. I'm going to unicorn these and see how they do trimming metal, just to get an idea of what they'll tolerate.

    Marks on the butts of the chisel are just laziness - filemarks. If I don't use them, at some point, I'll run a finer file over the butts and get rid of those.

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    Just to confirm, you can unicorn the edge an extra buff or two and trim brass. But you wouldn't be able to do it on brass with a rough surface or try to get too quick - but you can chamber and cut, etc. (if you see the little stripe of "damage" at the edge of the chisel, there probably is a little bit on a smaller scale, but the bright line at the edge is actually brass. It comes off and crayons the edge.

    I've come to realize that really this isn't about the quality of the chisel as certain steels that aren't that great of quality will be better than a high strength low toughness steel like this. It's really a matter of understanding geometry, and then you may be able to find two chisels where one tolerates it and one doesn't. In my mind, that doesn't matter unless that difference shows up in regular work. if you have a chisel that you like that needs another 2 degrees in wood, you're far better off just giving it the 2 degrees that it wants so you can work with it and not constantly sharpen out damage. Sharpening out damage is one of the huge wastes in the woodworking world, and the more experienced one gets, the less of it you come across.

    20210930_190253.jpg

    20210930_190211.jpg

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    set finished - just more to the group, not any different.

    Never really settled on a certain handle or way to make them, but will do them octagonal next time.

    .07" thick at the bevel (maybe said that already) and a couple of hundredths under .25" at the tang. Very light, but good stiffness and spring and can be malleted with snap if you want to.


    20211003_104543_copy_1516x980.jpg
    20211003_104555.jpg

    20211003_104607.jpg


    20211003_104727.jpg

    Interestingly different - very easy into the wood and the lightness kind of convinces you to not hit them that hard, but little impeding vision and easy to use. Easy to turn around and push since they weigh very little (somewhere around 3 1/2 ounces for the biggest ones).

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