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  1. #616
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    It's interesting David,

    I recently stumbled into a mixed grab bag of chisels - and I found what I thought was the prize... An almost unused Ward bevel edge, octagon bolster 3/4" chisel with the "Cast steel" stamp on it.... But it looked different... Ground with a grinder - not polished.. And the steel has a blotchy whitish alloy steel patina rather than the familiar grey/black gunmetal patina... Well - I went ahead and sharpened it up. Definately not the old Ward Cast Steel I have seen before... It's more gummy on the stones and the edge doesn't hold up like the older Ward I have... And it doesn't have that sweet smoothness when it cuts... Very different...

    I am disappointed because that one would have been a real prize... The other Ward's I ended up with have a fantastic feel when they cut. Very smooth feeling and easy to control... And the edges seem to hold up well..

    They should have left well enough alone...

    groan...

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  3. #617
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    Bummer on that. I've heard nothing good about the aristocrat line of chisels, either, other than that they're pretty. But that they're not hard and not dry and crisp steel.

    I have a mid-age set of tang chisels from ward. Between when they finished them perfectly and when they went to chromium-rubber steel alloy. They're actually quite good. I've seen some of the old ad copy where they talk about how good those steels are. I wonder what was really going on internally, because a craftsman would be able to tell in ten minutes that they're crap.

    While I haven't had a ward that late, I did have a shiny witherby millwright chisel or something of that sort (long socket parer some would call it). Finished reasonably well. Tested 53 hardness. Unusable. I ended up giving it away for free, but these days I wouldn't use a socket chisel like that, anyway. Nobody else will use it if someone doesn't reharden it.

  4. #618
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    One thing I noticed so far... Not enough chisels for a statistical certainty... But still a pattern so far...

    when I am fixing up the (typically ruined) bevel of these old chisels on the grinder. If the chisel lights up the room with showers of crackling sparks like a holiday fireworks exhibit - it generally always turns out to make a good user... If it doesn't - it generally doesn't.... And if it's in between - it might but you have to use it to find out... Aka - rough sorting them by Carbon content....

    And one surprise through this is that some of the post-war Marples with the funny extra-skinny looking necks are good high carbon steel.... It's like they simply re-ground some old stock square neck/octagon bolster chisels to a round neck to keep up with the looks of their competitors at the time... I would have otherwise written these off based on previous experience with later round neck Marples..

    Another surprise in the same genre is one Kangaroo stamped Robt Sorby extra-heavy firmer with a factory round neck lit up the room with these same sparks... Indications are that it will make a good user once I sort it out...

    But along with that - I am running about into quite a few within the same brand and old style features that make almost no sparks... One particular old looking "Mr Punch" I Sorby makes almost no sparks at all... Indications are that it is quite soft on the surface... Perhaps either made of bad steel or decarbed badly during heat treatment.... Same thing with a couple old Marples in the stack... Groan......

  5. #619
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    Yes on the sparks. Modern HSS also makes few sparks sometimes, even when hard (relatively few - there are still plenty of sparks, but not the huge shower that an old carbon steel tool will make).

    I think the later chisels were just drop forged and finished on a lathe. I don't know how the early chisels were forged, but I can't imagine that they were done outside of dies and then hand ground that much. Maybe the were. The original forged bolster on really old chisels seems to have just carried along into the solid steel chisels, filing replaced by grinding, and as the chisels got newer, the grinding got faster and less precise - presumably due to time allowance.

    From what I can tell, the step from octagonal bolster to round bolster came first, and then the step to crap steel followed that. Presumably due to an "industry improvement" in the behavior of steel and the amount of time (cost) in finishing after heat treatment.

    I can't imagine that anyone in the 1960s saw it as an improvement.

    George told me his chisels were from somewhere around that time, and he speculated "over 60" for hardness (he had plenty of experience with checking things on a versitron, so I'd assume that was accurate- and I've seen other numbers like 61-62-63 for earlier marples chisels, so he's probably right). I have some before "the change" and then the set mentioned earlier here after. The chisels have noticeably more chromium in them, and they spark a little less on the grinder even when rehardened. The ones I've rehardened work perfectly fine, but they're still not as good as the old ones - the way they fail isn't quite the same, and they require more care to "flimsify" the wire edge if you're not going to strop them on something with compound.

    Along with the sparks seem to come easy clean grinding at a given hardness, too. So, less sparks for soft and less sparks for alloyed. The soft chisels grind without issue, though. All of them grind without much issue on CBN, even if the HSS is a little bit slower, it's not like they're hard to grind, whereas a brown dressed wheel gets glazed pretty fast by the hard-low-spark stuff.

    It is maybe a sign of complete laziness, but I like a steel that grinds nicely, too. Since I don't sharpen the whole bevel, except for damaged chisels, it's the grinding where I notice the slowness more.

  6. #620
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    Something I wonder about a bit.. Martensite formation in these steels... When you get into the ranges we are interested in - you can end up with large fractions of retained austenite... How did these old boys get around that?

    Page 17 of this white paper shows a graph of Martensite formation vs temperature - and the "finish" temperature is well below freezing for the carbon contents we are interested in.... https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/ge...FULLTEXT01.pdf

    image.jpg

    But yet the chisels cut fantastic... They sure don't act like they have a ton of retained austenite... So HOW did they sort it out? I am pretty sure the didn't use Liquid Nitrogen/Cryo treatments in Sheffield in the 1800's.... What did they do?

  7. #621
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    Isn't there a time element in those quenches? I think good stock, proper temperature before quench, a fast quench and proper tempering temperature minimizes composition and grain size problems.

    But I'm not an expert about anything steel, just an experimenter.

    I see that the paper says there are problems with steels tempered above 200 degrees C (but I didn't examine the individual circumstances). The following page shows thiis:

    "Tempering in TME region allows retained austenite to transform to ferrite andcementite that precipitates in martensite lath surfaces, within the martensite and at thegrain boundaries"

    (I see on wikipedia that it says that retained austentite for a 7 tenth of a second quench in 0.95% steel is 13%)

    Other than reading all of this, I have no real clue how much of this or that is left in properly treated steel, but it does appear that 1% carbon steel has resulted in pretty good consistent tools for a long time (or perhaps 0.8-1.something not too much greater than 1.0%), but when you shoot above 1.2% into the white #1 range, a lot of it isn't that great. Old steels that test that high tend to make defective tools.

  8. #622
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    One other side comment on this (I don't read much stuff about steel, just observe the chisels made in the past or the current blades or tooling that I'm making and then cling to something that works - and repeat it over and over in the case of making my own tools).

    I've noticed a tendency on the boards to get stuck on the details with two things:
    * novel changes in approaches (narex comes to mind)
    * literature or data from diemaking steels or steel stock

    Patrick Chase is sort of a steroid version of my own fascination with specs when I first started. But it leads to odd contradictions. Patrick will praise the process that narex uses, and talk about the results being acceptable, and then poo-poo vintage steels saying "no magic" or implying that they're nothing special, and then rely on carpenter data, etc. Patrick's not unique in this, he's just the person doing it a lot lately. There have been others on wood central, etc, searching for engineering solutions - reviewing data for other applications or literature from metallurgical publications.

    In Patrick's case, the strange contradiction is the implication that Narex produces a chisel for low cost that is not just tolerable, but actually reasonably good. Then, the implication that the vintage chisels are sort of a ho hum product that is described as being magical (which is how some folks will interpret "better than what's currently made, for various reasons, and not needing improvement".). The problem with that is that newbies coming by can get sucked in, and the basic truth is missed in all of this - that is that there is really no significant improvement in modern chisels over good vintage chisels, and on top of that, a narex chisel is markedly inferior in every way to a good vintage chisel except for cost and ease of manufacture.

    My bloviation about the qualities of the older tools is really just a matter of trying to get people to try the old ones, get some experience, and realize why experienced users tend to prefer them. I've never hardness tested an old chisel other than the defective witherby that I described above, so I didn't know that some of the older chisels land in the 62 range, some of them a bit above. I guess I'm not surprised, though. Those chisels were generally sharpened with slates and novaculite stones, and somewhere around 61-63, the chisels and the stones get in a fight about which is harder, and the fineness of the resulting edge is markedly better than it is on a chisel that's 58 hardness. Patrick has the same response to the idea of using a washita stone, that it's a novelty and generally inferior.

    Again, not the only person (I thought the same thing when I started, that some engineering improvement, or freebies, would be the ticket to something better). It does take a little bit of skill to learn to use a washita (and for perhaps the finest work, follow it up with a finer oilstone and a suitable chisel), and some selection to find better older chisels to use with it, but the two together not only make a more pleasant experience to me (based on the aspects you've discussed - the uniformity of an edge in use, and its ability to continue to seem fine or produce fine results even when you can literally see wear on it), but they result in more time working and less time sharpening/leveling stones/pondering/making obnoxious many-step maintenance routines, etc.

    Because I'm stuck at a computer all day, I guess I have the dopey habit of going around like a broken record reiterating the same thing over and over, and the next patrick chase or whoever else - people reading a lot and not making much of note - will always appear and start the same thing over, filling their boat with other beginners who believe there's a simple engineering trick or some high-tech solution that works for making dies that will just cross right over to woodworking tools. Confirmation bias sets in when those folks spend a couple thousand dollars on a funny sharpening routine that is really prescriptive and a bunch of tools that are very tough after they've lost the actual desirable edge profile quickly (whereas using a washita more or less involves leveling the stones once and then just using them indefinitely after that, rubbing the edges on the stone in any direction - whatever pleases you, and the resulting edge just sort of works nice for a long time).

    I don't really think anyone is actually going to produce the best of the old chisels. If you turn a pretty handle and stuff flat stock in it, you can sell a chisel for $100-$200. Why bother doing something much more difficult (trying to replicate the quality and finish of a ward chisel, and then explain to a user that while they might find something made of S30V that will last longer being hit with a sledge hammer in a vat of acid and bath salts, the actual cycle of work will be much improved with the "old" version).

    Couple that with the always present (probably in every generation) idea that we are enlightened, and past generations were just ignorant and tough survivors - and then, of course, "how could the old stuff possibly be any good - it was just a bunch of dumb people running around guessing".

    This should be tempered a little bit of anyone actually reads something like the nicholson texts and finds out just how eloquent some folks were. I can't imagine a single person writing something as good today. I'm sure someone could if they locked themselves away from surveys and social media, but we're just not wired with that kind of rigor now, to know as much to such a great depth about so many things. And if someone was, surely they'd find something easier to do.

  9. #623
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    Would you like another coffee Dave?
    Innovations are those useful things that, by dint of chance, manage to survive the stupidity and destructive tendencies inherent in human nature.

  10. #624
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    I think I'll just go back in my trash can and resume my role on Sesame Street.

  11. #625
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    It's easy to get caught up in specs... The assumption is that there was an involved industry testing this stuff out rigorously and that they arrived at where they are now due to a relentless effort at performance improvement to win over market share... Just like they did in power saws, machine tools, drills, router bits, shaped cutter heads, and turning tools... Nobody in their right mind would want to go back to the HCS table saw blade that I learned on - I LOVE my carbide tipped blades.. Nobody wants to go back to HCS lathe tools or blades for your jig saw.. And I will never return to the old sandpaper made out of brown paper bag, river sand, and glue...

    But wood chisels haven't really been a "major tool" in high volume industrial woodworking for well over 70 years now..... All that effort by engineers and tradesmen towards getting higher performance out of wood chisels ended probably a little before 1950.. Their efforts went into improvement in machine tooling.... HSS and Carbide tools and tips to feed their big automatic machines... Proper sharp abrasive, high quality binders, adhesives, and coatings...

    Since the Wood chisel was a small volume hand-craft tool for the most part - the effort went into making it cheaper and more efficiently.... Not making it better for the professional tradesman..... And they succeeded in that regard.... Modern alloys, hot forging, heat treatment, and automatic grinding operations allow high speed manufacturing of mostly "adequate" chisels with very low reject rates, consistent cycle times, and low material usage variances......

    But that's what they optimized for....

    It's pretty telling that a 100+ year old firmer goes 4.5x as long on wood as a modern unit that is highly regarded by many users...... Because the new one is optimized for Lowest cost to meet the relevant DIN/ANSI/ISO spec....

    So yeah - no magic at all... You just have to make a decision to optimize on the right thing... And I gotta give some credit to the few people and companies who are now making a push to do that.... At least they are taking a swing at it....

  12. #626
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    Quote Originally Posted by truckjohn View Post
    Something I wonder about a bit.. Martensite formation in these steels... When you get into the ranges we are interested in - you can end up with large fractions of retained austenite... How did these old boys get around that?

    Page 17 of this white paper shows a graph of Martensite formation vs temperature - and the "finish" temperature is well below freezing for the carbon contents we are interested in.... https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/ge...FULLTEXT01.pdf

    image.jpg

    But yet the chisels cut fantastic... They sure don't act like they have a ton of retained austenite... So HOW did they sort it out? I am pretty sure the didn't use Liquid Nitrogen/Cryo treatments in Sheffield in the 1800's.... What did they do?
    a combination of experience and luck. Possibly in equal measure, but more likely weighted towards luck.

    Years ago (late 1970s?) Scientific American had an article on Damascus steel -- from memory the article was equal measure metallurgy and manufacture.
    The authors concluded that the Damascus smiths' success could be traced to the ore they used to make the iron which was subsequently wrought into a Damascus blade. It's so long ago that I don't remember much of the detail, but in essence all ancient ore bodies contain some impurities and in the case of the Damascus steel industry, the impurities contributed to a steel particularly suited to the manufacture of folded forged blades.
    The Damascus technology appears to have disappeared around the time that the supply of Wootz iron from India was disrupted by either a change in trade alliances or routes, or through competition with iron sourced from the English midlands.
    regards from Alberta, Canada

    ian

  13. #627
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    Quote Originally Posted by truckjohn View Post

    and i will never return to the old sandpaper made out of brown paper bag, river sand, and glue...
    Me too!

    I'm old enough to remember that stuff....
    Stay sharp and stay safe!

    Neil



  14. #628
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    I did some reading of the white papers detailing the "rediscovery" of Wootz.... There was a knife smith and a Scientist who finally sorted it out and got it to work identical to the old stuff.. The funny part is that the smith commented that basically the thing you do to get Wootz is to do all the things that the Steel patents over the last 150 years and steel making manuals tell you not to do to achieve a homogeneous melt with a fine grain crystal structure and no/minimal carbide banding. Including how to avoid having a relatively high P content...

    And why did it go away? Read Bessemer's autobiography... He comments specifically about Indian wootz being unusable in high volume steel making..... and so it got the reputation as poor quality dreck which nobody in their right mind would use in high volume steel... That's the simple, straight forward reason why it went away - because you couldn't use Wootz in high volume steel production at the same time as Domestic Indian politics were going very poorly for the empire.......

    Wootz is fantastic for slicing swords, slicing blade patterns, and ornamental stuff but it's not really useful for other stuff.. For example - wootz swords and knives are used in a normalized, not hardened state - and they slice like mad due to the naturally self-serrating edge created by carbide segregation and banding...... The grain structure is ultra-coarse, it's very much not homogeneous, and it's very hot short.... You don't want the stuff for boiler plate, structural steel, artillery cannons, boats, or railway rails. It would likely also make terrible wood chisels because they are hardened and sharpened to push cut wood - not slice fabric and flesh....

    Quote Originally Posted by ian View Post
    a combination of experience and luck. Possibly in equal measure, but more likely weighted towards luck.

    Years ago (late 1970s?) Scientific American had an article on Damascus steel -- from memory the article was equal measure metallurgy and manufacture.
    The authors concluded that the Damascus smiths' success could be traced to the ore they used to make the iron which was subsequently wrought into a Damascus blade. It's so long ago that I don't remember much of the detail, but in essence all ancient ore bodies contain some impurities and in the case of the Damascus steel industry, the impurities contributed to a steel particularly suited to the manufacture of folded forged blades.
    The Damascus technology appears to have disappeared around the time that the supply of Wootz iron from India was disrupted by either a change in trade alliances or routes, or through competition with iron sourced from the English midlands.

  15. #629
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    Quote Originally Posted by ian View Post
    a combination of experience and luck. Possibly in equal measure, but more likely weighted towards luck.
    Luck, experience and persistence.

    The first rudimentary mechanical instrumental methods used in metallurgy didn't appear until the mid-19th century. The first metallurgical methods were devices to test the strengths of metals. They weren't standardized, very reproducible or theoretically sound. It took another 50 years to see the first analytically robust methods such as the various hardness testers come into use. Along with these techniques we got the standards industry and its products.

    19th century chemistry was, at best, in a kind of adolescent phase. Mendeleev published his first periodic table of the elements in 1869 listing 62/3 of the elements (118 currently). Emission and absorption spectroscopy were developing slowly and were only just beginning to show their potential. Analytical microscopy had yet to be developed.

    What kept the field going in the early days was necessity and persistence in the pursuit of real world goals. Military needs/desires/aspirations and financial/competitive pressures forced the science along.
    Innovations are those useful things that, by dint of chance, manage to survive the stupidity and destructive tendencies inherent in human nature.

  16. #630
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    Quote Originally Posted by NeilS View Post
    Me too!

    I'm old enough to remember that stuff....
    I've used garnet and emery but not glass paper.
    Innovations are those useful things that, by dint of chance, manage to survive the stupidity and destructive tendencies inherent in human nature.

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