Thread: Set of bevel edged chisels...

Originally Posted by D.W.

I understand this forum doesn't host images directly.

It does.

I'll have to revise that statement - I didn't understand that this forum does host images directly!! (always prefer to embed images as people will sometimes look at images but they'll move on from links without doing it)

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well, so much for that. all I see is the links to the pictures uploaded to the forum

Your photos are showing for me. I much prefer to see the photos loaded onto the forum like this, I very rarely will click on a link to view pics.

Those chisels are looking good.

Handles turned and fitted.

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Nice!
Are these chisels intended to be struck, or are they intended to be parers? If the latter, do you think a bolster (which you've done exceedingly well, btw), is absolutely necessary? I do like the neatness of bolsters but it's a refinement I'd struggle to do half as well as you've managed. Could you give us a quick run-down on how you fitted them?

Cheers,

Hi DW. They look great. How do you create the "circular stopper" at the end of the tang? Are you intending them to be paring chisels?

Originally Posted by IanW

Nice!
Are these chisels intended to be struck, or are they intended to be parers? If the latter, do you think a bolster (which you've done exceedingly well, btw), is absolutely necessary? I do like the neatness of bolsters but it's a refinement I'd struggle to do half as well as you've managed. Could you give us a quick run-down on how you fitted them?

Cheers,

they can be struck and struck hard. For parers, I think the bolster isn't necessary, but when I see modern chisels (there are some brands here in the states) with just a tang stuck into a ferrule with no bolster, it's cheap looking to me, even if the chisel is very well finished. It just says loudly "these chisels aren't forged, they're just cut from bar stock and shoved in a handle". My dad would use the words "common seeming".

So, I do these two ways, but these are the less snazzy of the two.

Method two is a forge weld and it's almost identical to method one, just driven to high heat with flux and then forge welded in place.

So, method one is as follows:
* the chisel is nearly finished without any bolster, and the tang is tapered to get wider toward the bevel end so that if the bolster does slip a little bit, it's fighting stretching to slip much further
* the bolsters are first about 1x1 (oversized) steel squares of 3/16th mild steel with a hole drilled in them
* they're heated in the forge and the tang is driven through them to start forming the hole. It takes several iterations of this and the bolster has to be knocked off of the chisel a few times
* on the second to the last heat, the bolster is hammered to the tang closing any remaining gaps (shaping the metal to the shape of the tang - they're all hand made tangs, so there's no general shape, they have to be hammered to each, which is fine, because that's easiest, anyway.
* the second to the last heat is driven almost all the way home onto the tang (where I've cross hatched marks at the bolsters final residence with a double cut chisel to also help the bolster have some grip)
* then a deliberate last high heat is done with the bolster driven the rest of the way home (The tang is cold, or at least relatively, only getting whatever heat comes off of the bolster each step). The idea being that the hot bolster will shrink onto the tang as it cools.

It's 1x1 inch wide or so (oversize) so that it doesn't bend into a cone when hammered through a hole on my anvil.

If I am going to forge weld (I've only done a few forge welds) the whole apparatus is fluxed through the process to prevent scale, all the way through, and on the last heat, drive the bolster onto the tang and then use a cutting torch to heat the tang and bolster to near yellow, and then two moderate taps and a forge weld is completed. I don't have a coal forge (which would be better, because the top part of the fire lacks oxygen and there's no question about introducing a bunch of oxygen to really hot steel, burning it). The cutting torch is literally introducing oxygen with mapp (in my setup) so so much for low oxygen.

that leaves a chisel with a 1x1 bolster on it, square, and that's ground down to near final size on a belt grinder with some of the facets rounded off, and then filed by hand to size and to get the facets clean neat lines (this is like anything else, hard to figure out at first, and then once you have it down, you can pretty much just file right to it with no extra file strokes. This is the blissful part of work, where the work is physical, observation and adjustment, but not stopping and starting and correcting).

The file used to file the bolsters is just a bastard file that's safe edged *and* safe cornered on the edge. if the edge was just safe edged (learned this the hard way), you have to pay a lot of attention to not allow it to cut into the tang, as it still will.

It takes about 15 minutes total for each to do all of the above - it sounds like a lot of steps, but it's just physical work and not touching something because you let your mind wander.

The obvious objective here even if just shrinking the bolsters on is to have no visible seams, and to have them do something useful. The file marks (just like sanding a dovetailed plane with steel on steel) completely hide any seams where the shrunken on bolster has squeezed the tang.

The look of these is so important to me along with good enough performance that I won't go back to using other chisels - I just don't want someone to glance at my tools and have their first reaction be "modern with shortcuts" or "you can tell these were made by an amateur."

Of course I'm an amateur, most of us are, but I want my tools to look like they were professionally made. File steel is high carbon (probably 1.1-1.2%) and has some small amounts added for hardenability and good behavior in tempering. These retain higher hardness than 1095 or steel of that sort (1095 can be made very hard, but it does seem to come back down in tempering a lot more than these files do). These have a biting sharpness and they let go of a wire edge really quickly and earlier in the sharpening process than most modern chisels. Higher carbon usually costs a little bit of toughness, but gives better edge strength (toughness being how much metal moves before it breaks and strength being the rigidity not to move in the first place).

I've made a few parers, too -just trying things out - I'll post a separate picture.

There's no practical reason to make these, I guess, but I like to make tools, and these give me a chance to hammer shape the initial chisels and do a lot of filing to final shape (this kind of filing is really pleasant - it's like planing wood).

Originally Posted by Mountain Ash

Hi DW. They look great. How do you create the "circular stopper" at the end of the tang? Are you intending them to be paring chisels?

Thanks! -the ferrule is just brass. I get about 6 different sizes from industrial supply here in the states and hacksaw it to match the end of the handle blank when turning the handle (as in, the tenon on the handle fits snug in it and then I just hammer the tube on and then cut the tube off. It's left neat at the end because I use a parting tool on the lathe to sever the excess off (just a high speed steel wood parting tool, nothing special - those cut brass fine). That leaves a clean turned end. The brass tube is only about $12 a foot, so the ferrules end up being inexpensive to make, though the initial cost to get a bunch of different sizes in house wasn't that cheap (maybe $150 - I got more than a foot of the most common sizes - 6 feet in some cases - hope to do this a while).

These are english pattern chisels and can be struck (like for making half blinds) without issue, or used for paring - they're 10 1/2 to 11 inches long more or less (so like the size of the bigger blue chip type chisels). The length makes it necessary to hold them by the handle and drag them to marks rather than holding the chisel blade and placing the chisel edge in lines like a pencil, but the former is good policy and more comfortable.

I've made a few parers, though (much longer) just trying to iron things out. They are made the same way, but this is water hardening steel and quenched quickly, it warps and they need to be hammered straight again after tempering (risky).

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Originally Posted by D.W.

...... I think the bolster isn't necessary, but when I see modern chisels (there are some brands here in the states) with just a tang stuck into a ferrule with no bolster, it's cheap looking to me, even if the chisel is very well finished.....

Absolutely agree - I've made a few chisels without bolsters, and they offend me every time I use them! They are just small skews for cleaning out half-blind D/Ts so they never get hit, but it just doesn't look right.

I made a couple of very small BE chisels for delicate stuff, and made a sort of pseudo bolster by turning a tapered ferrule and broaching the end just enough to fit over the tang & butt against a slight shoulder. Apart from the bolstering effect, the idea was to match the socket chisels they sit beside in their drawer. I considered silver-soldering the end of the ferrule to close any gaps but the blades are HSS & my torch isn't the best for fine work, so I decided it would probably end up looking worse, & left them as-is...Mini BEs.jpg

Thanks for the details re te bolsters on your chisels - someday I'll try a shrink-fit bolster. Got plenty of old files to play with so I can afford quite a few mistakes....

Cheers,

(the parers have bolsters, too -I think it just looks nicer).

I am getting obsessed making things like this - I want (like mentioned above) them to be wonderful to use but sneaky and not amateur looking .

They're filed to finish and then left black from the forge, as I don't have a "glazing" setup like old high quality chisels would've gotten (a skilled person using a wheel loaded with emery or silica to polish them).

I've looked at the bolsters on my chisels and some have been glazed and most of the rest are probably hand ground on a special wheel ( consumption of files at a high rate would've been too expensive for this, but it's no big deal for us, and a file will do the finish work on probably 50 bolsters, anyway).

So I filed them but I don't try to make them perfect and keeping going until they're like mirror facets as they would look prissy and not like anything that I have.

The option aside from hand filing them would be to use an abrasive and finish grind them after quench and temper and then glaze them - I just don't like that kind of work (boring) and it adds no function over crisp finish filing.

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You can see the bolsters better here, how they're filed, but not perfect or prissy. The objective is to get the lines to be straight and have the corners look like little pie pieces that meet at a point right at the bolster.

This is the kind of thing where working by hand is nice. It's probably 15 seconds to file one of those little pie pieces on, but it happens at a speed that you can adjust things while you're working and have the "pie piece" appear and then come to a point right on the last stroke when the rest is done.

It seems hard figuring out out and then you get the feel and it's not hard.

DW

IanW and Mountain Ash beat me to the punch requesting information on the bolster technique so you have already answered my question there. The chisels have come up spectacularly well and certainly do not look amateurish in any way. The unpolished finish, to my mind, is reminiscent of some of the JP chisels which also have that "forged" look and is quite appealing.

Thank you for all the detail.

You mentioned that the narrower paring chisels tend to warp when being quenched. I wonder if this is the quenching technique. I know that with slim steel, such as with knife making, the steel needs to be plunged vertically up and down seeking fresh, cool water (or oil if using oil). Using a swirling method distorts and bends the steel.

Regards
Paul

Paul, you're right about the quenching, straight in and in and up and down if anything, but what causes the warping is the fact that I put delicate bevels on by hand and then quench. The cupping happens toward the bevel side like it would if you made a single bevel knife.

The way to avoid it would be to grind in the bevels after hardening or leave fat lands on the sides, but I'd have trouble making them as neat just doing it freehand by eye.

File steel is prone to warping, too. I think it's probably carbon and iron with a trace of silica, vanadium and molybdenum or chromium, but not enough of those to have any making free carbides. I don't like how the more forgiving steels sharpen, though (like a2).

Originally Posted by IanW

Absolutely agree - I've made a few chisels without bolsters, and they offend me every time I use them! They are just small skews for cleaning out half-blind D/Ts so they never get hit, but it just doesn't look right.

I made a couple of very small BE chisels for delicate stuff, and made a sort of pseudo bolster by turning a tapered ferrule and broaching the end just enough to fit over the tang & butt against a slight shoulder. Apart from the bolstering effect, the idea was to match the socket chisels they sit beside in their drawer. I considered silver-soldering the end of the ferrule to close any gaps but the blades are HSS & my torch isn't the best for fine work, so I decided it would probably end up looking worse, & left them as-is...Mini BEs.jpg

Thanks for the details re te bolsters on your chisels - someday I'll try a shrink-fit bolster. Got plenty of old files to play with so I can afford quite a few mistakes....

Cheers,

I think those two look great. Don't want to imply that I think amateurs should be obligated to have bolsters, just that I think professionally made chisels should, and many don't. A hand filed bolster adds lots of life.