Thread: My last Amateur Chisels

Very nice. You can get a lot of good things on the new market now, but quality paring chisels isn't one of them.

I suppose your decision to pull back makes some sense. There's an incredible hunger out there for quality tools, and an equally intense frustration from many of us that it is simply impossible to figure out what you're buying until after you buy it and test it out yourself. Then, you think you have something great, and the factory pulls the rug right out from under you on the auspices of "Continuous Improvement."

I'm sure your work has resulted in a lot of interest from prospective buyers. The trouble is, as an amateur, jobifying that passion becomes it's own prison. It takes incredible creativity, research, and workmanship to get something truly great to market, but then the customers just want 5,000 more exactly like the last one. It's like going to see your absolute favorite musician. Every single person lauds them for their creativity and insight, and how their songs stirred something special within their soul, but the truth is, we don't want their new creativity or art. We just want to hear them sing the same dozen songs that got them famous forty years ago.

I'm sure orders would flood in, and you'd end up completely swamped even worse than Harold and Saxon. Worse, they want 5,000 of the same, and there's no creativity or challenge there.

And never mind some internet "Expert" reviewer will use them for cutting nails and stone masonry work, then he will bend them in half per the DIN spec and shatter them with a sledgehammer, and summarily declare them trash... (Have you seen internet knife reviews? I would confiscate my son's knife if I ever caught him in that sort of foolishness...)

But.. The demand will be there, because it always is for things of true quality.

At that point, you may as well be Lie Nielsen, Veritas, or Hock. Hire a couple of skilled fellows who thrive on the routine work of cranking out dozens of specimens exactly like the last ones. Maybe have a guy blanking and forging, a guy heat treating, and a guy finishing. Then, you run the business and do one-off custom specials. The devil is, that's not a hobby anymore, it's a business, and you'll have to sell a thousand sets a year to keep everybody paid.

It's not a bad thing, mind you. The great chisels and plane irons of old, the Butchers, Sorbys, Wards, Bucks and such were all mass produced. Innumerable workmen guided by skill and experience followed recipes and procedures and made great things. If nothing else, that's a great proof that it is not an impassible gulf requiring supplication and goat's blood.

The irony of all of this is... There are already factories which could make custom short runs like this. Sure, quality steel and extra operations cost money, but they already have the forges, dies, heat treat pots, grinders, and skilled workers. The proof of this is that I ended up with a set of chisels off Amazon that perform every bit as well as my Narex Richters (in my hands,) but I paid like $50 for a set of 6. Granted, they're not finished as well or lapped flat, and their handles aren't as good, but they have the same blade grind profile, and they perform equivalently when I use them. The ad copy says they're made of something equivalent to W1, and they are carefully heat treated using salt pots and so forth. The ones I tried were objectively "Good" in a sea of trash. Of course, the same thing was proclaimed about Aldi chisels by several prominent fellows, and look at how that ended up...

Unfortunately, as with Aldi chisels, there's no guarantee next week's production will be good when some ambitious fellow swaps 1060 for W1, cuts their heat treatment to a quick once and done, and turns them into supermarket paint can openers in the name of "Margin Enhancement."

But... Two sets in a row, purchased two months apart says it can be done.

ahh, well, I lied - I'm making another set for myself, and maybe more than one set - 52100 at high hardness to compare to the W1 chisels because I think the W1 chisels are good, but I don't know if they're separating themselves from commercial chisels. I think there are aspects about them that are much nicer (they sharpen like nothing, and reach 63 hardness after a strong double temper without issue) - but not sure that steels like 1095 and W1 don't suffer from carbon in solution - amounts over about 0.8% or so start to make tools that break easy bending or even just prying a little.

But I'm abusing them when I'm testing them and need to look at them further. I think Steve V has no issue with them in planemaking.

At any rate, 52100 has some ability to have as much carbon as W1 but sequester some and allow manipulation - it's just punitive if something is underhard because the characteristics when it's underhard are just crappy - makes a great knife, passes the bend test you mention, the edge refuses to leave at the first sign of damage and you get to try to push a foil through wood - no go.

but at high hardness, it acts more like a normal steel.

As for the making - the harold and saxon, and the big debacle with blackburn not filling orders and people claiming they've been scammed - I think a long order list is for someone who is both working custom or semi custom and who relies on that per order and waiting list to pay the light bills.

I will not ever be taking custom orders - just selling stuff off the rack. There are just too many contingencies to think about with a custom order list, even without getting into the fact that people will feel (and have) the right to constantly ask about status or complain about the status of their orders. if you do things like that and also offer stuff to the top 1% of the market (being available for discussion, documenting details, etc and providing them) you can charge the moon, but that's not my bag.

I've seen too many seemingly capable people go sideways due to an event or circumstances and do things that aren't ethical probably because the think they're cornered. it's not for me - I'm not an organized person in the first place, just at the end of wanting to offer people chisels for $15 each (basically the cost to make them by hand.).

My mother was a crafter for about 40 years. Only dementia knocked her out of it. when she retired, she faffed around with online sales and things, but I'd bet her efforts in current money would've been $10 an hour. Back in the 90s, she was bagging about $20 an hour just painting decorative items, selling them off the rack (a customer base built up) and just deciding how much she wanted to make. she's a machine, and the little business was like one. She would never say she'd take custom orders, but if someone had something they wanted to be painted (like a landscape scene of their property or a dead dog ...well, a picture of it while it was alive!), I think she always felt fulfilled to be able to do something that wasn't so easy to get. Ai could do it now, though!!

She was a teacher. I won't ever have that mentality, to run everything like a business (nor will I have the time that she had as a teacher - probably 1000 hours a year that she'd put in - painting most of the summer and getting home from work at 4 and never having to work on the weekends), but have to admit that I just have no interest in organizing everything or maintaining relationships with praise payoffs. If the chisels can't wow on their own, then i'm not going to be one to lobby on their behalf.

(it's not that important, but i'd say my mother would do something "custom" that took a few hours about once every 2 months. Compared to the main line work, it was minimal. when she retired, then for some reason, she got a kick out of selling relatively low cost stuff and prints on etsy, but it was a huge run around compared to being able to dump $2-5k worth of stuff in a 6 hour day at a popular craft circuit venue. You set your stuff up, people hand you money, you hand them the stuff - it's a tiny fraction of the screwing around of mailing something and screwing around with emails).

Mine will be expensive enough that they won't be kept with things that could be used for paint can openers!!

one concession with a 63 hardness chisel is it's not going to have thin lands and tolerate being used to pry open gates with stuck hardware.

David

Wishing you the very best with that venture!


My hard won advice is to:

Hold onto your day job, or part thereof, for as long as possible.

Get at least two years of sales under your belt before taking the full plunge... as initial pent-up sales demand may not be a true indicator of medium to long term prospects.

Better to be conservative in your estimates and projections, and then be surprised if things turn out on the upside. There will be less stress with that for you and your family.

Selling output already on the shelf is a smart way to go. I stopped taking commissions a decade and a half a ago. Now my customers choose from whatever I have on the shelf ready to go and we are then both happy with the outcome when there is a purchase.

Originally Posted by NeilS

David

Wishing you the very best with that venture!


My hard won advice is to:

Hold onto your day job, or part thereof, for as long as possible.

Get at least two years of sales under your belt before taking the full plunge... as initial pent-up sales demand may not be a true indicator of medium to long term prospects.

Better to be conservative in your estimates and projections, and then be surprised if things turn out on the upside. There will be less stress with that for you and your family.

Selling output already on the shelf is a smart way to go. I stopped taking commissions a decade and a half a ago. Now my customers choose from whatever I have on the shelf ready to go and we are then both happy with the outcome when there is a purchase.

No worries, I'm an actuary by day. Unless my line of business pushes me out, I'll be at it until I can finance a "hobby business ". It just wouldn't be very enjoyable if I was depending on the money.

Originally Posted by D.W.

No worries, I'm an actuary by day. Unless my line of business pushes me out, I'll be at it until I can finance a "hobby business ". It just wouldn't be very enjoyable if I was depending on the money.

In which case, you should be able to work out the risks for yourself better than most of us...

So, wishing you no black swan events, of which we are more aware down here in Australia.

Originally Posted by NeilS

In which case, you should be able to work out the risks for yourself better than most of us...

So, wishing you no black swan events, of which we are more aware down here in Australia.

hah.... interestingly, or not. I do mostly work on (large) retirement plans, so my work is a good bit different than it would be with an insurer or in some kind of reinsurance type focus. Black swan events, whoever gets to brand them, happen once in a while, but they aren't on my radar because it's too costly to live life (or run a retirement plan) trying to plan for them, and they're out of our control. And most of them are predictable (a matter of when, and how they'll be fixed vs. if. 2008 was predictable. The problem with the banks in the US - the small and mid size - in the last year and a half, all of it was predictable and bad/stupid risk taking that any actuary or longer term focused person would've said "I wouldn't have that on my books and sleep at night. A temporary shift in interest rates creates a permanent downfall with that").

Takes the romantic part out of any idea of making tools as a serious occupation for any reason other than by force, though!