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  1. #661
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    The aldi chisels are likely made of inexpensive drill rod of some sort (there's a whole line of chrome vanadium steels from 0.5% carbon to at least 1.2% or so). If I had to guess, I"d guess that aldi's chisels are some of that drill rod with about 0.8% carbon or maybe a little bit less, with a little bit of chromium and vanadium (and maybe molybdenum). Vanadium increases potential hardness, , and the other two in small amounts generally make the transition target for hardening slower (meaning if you miss a little in a splash type quench on an assembly line, it shouldn't affect much).

    I have the same pattern of chisel (HF used to sell it). I know my chisels aren't more than about 58 hardness. Someone here in the states tested a bunch of chisel and their aldi set struck about 61.5 or so. The difference between those two for edge holding in monstrous. 58 makes chisels that are really only fit for softwood until you introduce the unicorn trick. 62 hardness makes a really nice chisel for just about anything.

    re: the process - on chisels, I try to use the corner of the wheel on the back so as not to remove anything from the back. I don't want a double bevel, but on a plane iron, a little of that is no big deal. I don't want to overcomplicate things, but if you wanted to target a chisel that doesn't dive in the cut, you could go a little lighter on the bevel side and just a tiny amount of rounding on the back, but a chisel that feeds straight does so only at one cut thickness, so it's not worth it to me.

    When I did the test in the article in wood central, it looks like I got into just a little bit of buffing compound on the back of the iles chisel, but the others show no abrasion on the backs (which is what I'm hoping for). The trip across the back on the corner of the wheel probably isn't necessary. Belt and suspenders.

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  3. #662
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    Wood by Wright's latest round of chisel testing has been out for a month... I plowed the data, and unsurprisingly, chisel edge geometry came out as the #1 factor for the second year in a row, mirroring what the giant round of testing in this thread also indicates.

    My own unicorn trials shows promise on my chisels. (Thanks, DW). My next iteration will be to add a very light pass on the backs. My reasoning is that sharpening grit produces a layer of mushed steel that's weaker. Light buffing (hopefully) removes some of this without making the geometry wonky. Initial testing shows promise - a Chinese Buck Bro's (the current individually packed home store variety) cut 16.5x more wood in my paring plywood test after very lightly buffing the back vs simply sharpening and unicorning the bevel. This took it from dead last to first by a factor of 3x against three other round neck and 5 octagon bolster chisels. Next iteration will be to repeat the trial with a Marples octagon bolster firmer that finished mid-pack in the same go-round.

    Basically, they were all sharpened at 25 degrees, then unicorned. None had their backs prepped. None were given a microbevel prior to the unicorn. Then I went back, flattened the China buck's back, redid the bevel at 25 degrees again, unicorned, then lightly buffed the back.

    One thing I did notice is that these octagon bolster chisels all fail by chipping out rather than dulling. They may need a bit more angle to stabilize the edge before unicorning... I was hoping that the buffer would deal with that, as I like the convenience of no microbevel. I'm mostly not chopping, so I don't lever edges off.

    As per usual, I did all my testing on plywood. I dislike the stuff, but it is consistent, and it accelerates wear on edges vs nice wood.

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    Give this a try in regular wood before committing to buffing the backs.

    It's probably the case that the glue in plywood is harder than the wood and requires a couple of extra degrees - so you can either add it by more buffing on the bevel side than normal or a tiny back side bevel (the latter is my preference, too, if the front is starting to get blunt-ish).

    What I found in various tests is that even with flat angles, something that won't hold up at 32 may hold up at 34. The two degree difference can be 5-15 times the edge life. The other alternative is to leave the edge shallow and allow damage to occur and then use a damaged edge indefinitely (this can work fine, too, but it leads to an enormous amount of sharpening at each sharpening session, or just ignoring that teh damage is there and gradually chasing the thin damaged part down the length of the chisel.

    Yes on the English chisels - they use "low toughness" but high strength steels to avoid creating a burr (the burr that holds on is detrimental - it creates a blunt fanned out metallic bit to push through wood, and when I tried several times to make 52100 chisels, I realized in side by side comparisons, they were more effort to get through wood because they were *too tough*.

    A good razor blade does the same thing - that is, the chipped edge is less thickness than a burr on a softer (tougher) steel, so the temper is generally set so that the edge will microchip away rather than start to roll.

    I haven't gone further with 52100 yet, which is to literally use it untempered - it will work on a plane iron completely untempered, but you don't really get better edge life, and the way it wears isn't quite as uniform as O1. For some reason, it is faster to show signs of reducing clearance (or simply put, plain stuff like 1095 and O1 is just easier to plane with).

    There's really no high toughness steel in woodworking tools until you get to high speed stuff (3V was the except when Steve Eliot and Bill Tindall experimented with it, but the toughness doesn't prevent damage - it just changes the damage type, and I found it less good for chiseling. It's less important with planing, but V11 will be tempered at a higher hardness and made a nicer iron.


    ..........


    Whatever the case, I don't want to discourage posting results, though - I think that some people who cut a lot of dovetails would actually prefer an edge that's been lightly buffed on the back. It doesn't dive in the cut and it doesn't push/wedge through the marking line as easily. There's something there, but it may be too esoteric for general discussion (but usable by some, and I'm sure some did strop the backs of chisels noticing that they would go straight in on the cut instead of pushing back toward the line.

  5. #664
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    So a quick, light pass of the chisel back across the buffer seems to be beneficial to edge life on everything. I have a feeling this has to do with wire edges, as it's not doing anything so far as I can tell to the geometry. There's a possibility it rounds a bit within the first one or two ten-thousandths of the edge... but I don't see any shine like on the bevel.

    But then, there's this second thing that's got me perplexed... I unicorned the Chinesium Buck Bro's... It's still got the lead in weight of plywood pared vs everything else by a long shot. The next highest is a unicorned Chinesium Mintcraft at 50% less, then the unicorned Narex Richter at 75% less... All the unicorned old Sheffield stuff falls on the heels of the Narex Richter. But... The Narex and Sheffield stuff is harder. It failed by chipping out where the Mintcraft and Buck wore without chipping or folding.

    Granted, plywood is hateful stuff full of end grain, knots, glue and grit... It accelerates wear and edge damage vs well behaved wood. But... It is consistently nasty to everything, so
    the China Buck got it just as bad as everybody else.

    Any insight on getting the harder steels to unicorn right... or is this just one of the strange idiosyncrasies of the Unicorn method?

    I do have a square neck Marples bevel edge chisel that some fine soul drew the temper on the last 2"... That might at least give some sort of a picture of the unicorn's effect vs hardness. I'd estimate it's late era production, so maybe 1940's-1950's vintage, and it's already messed up... Not like I'm sacrificing anything to science...

    The other option would be to sacrifice one of the several miscellaneous Sheffield firmer stubs laying in my box of cast off's... You know how those go - sometimes you gotta take the chaff to get the wheat in the lot. It wouldn't be too hard to progressively draw the temper on one and see how it behaves with the unicorn.

  6. #665
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    I'd say the first thing I noticed is how fast the softer chisels buff, and then compound that with alloy.

    So, when you unicorn something like V11, you have to pretty much give it a full cycle, and then pretend you didn't and give it another full one to get the same geometry. But it has to be excluded from the discussion vs. cast rolled steel as it doesn't seem to have the same dominant grain direction like bar or drill rod.

    In my opinion, it's a swing and a miss for chisels unless someone needs the corrosion resistance (but it's well behaved heat treating and it's exclusive to LV, so I guess it helps them on that front). The reason I say exclude it is because I couldn't get it to be completely damage free in the unicorn article, while the two other subject chisels that weren't super soft (iles and japanese) were very easy to find no damage. The sorby chisel was very soft and it fared far better with the unicorn, but was also not damage free.

    So, I guess it's partially a matter of getting a look at the edge under a scope because the buffing on the back (depending on the wheel) may change the very apex several degrees without changing much else (like half a thousandths worth?)

    I have noticed that if I take something like a soft pure carbon steel chisel and give it the uni, it's easy. If I even give the same thing to a 26c3 chisel, it takes more (and there's no abrasion resistance in 26c3, just additional hardness).


    Then it's a balancing act between how little of it you can add before the edge doesn't chip. I think in all of it, I found that a "tolerable" chisel and an excellent chisel will be 2-3 degrees apart - max - where they'll stop taking damage, and nothing holds up below 30 in maple or even at 30 (to the scope's scrutiny).

    Just my non-scientific opinion after trying several different chisels, if you put a flat apex of 34 degrees on a chisel (as a tiny microbevel) and it doesn't hold up well, it's not going to be that nice once accommodated (this is on cherry and maple - if someone is lucky enough to work mahogany or really clear pine without hard rings, I'm sure it's less than that). And malleting..

    ...at any rate, it takes noticeably more time to get the same amount of buffer wear on a harder chisel.

  7. #666
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    I enjoy reading your posts, by the way, John. Very practical and realistic and much of what you say matches my experience, too (I saw your post on the blue forum in the US about getting practical flatness with directed pressure on al-ox roll, and don't be too cheap with the paper).

    100% agree, and making chisels magnifies the need for efficiency in stuff like that (they warp in heat treat). Too much pressure on dulling paper can actually draw temper (and blister fingers).

  8. #667
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    Hi, John - I saw your post on SMC about unicorn and what would happen if Iles or a better chisel was compared to V11.

    The longer uni article was:
    sorby
    Iles MK2
    PM V11
    Japanese (let's say middle to upper middle quality, not the junk on WBW's test that's sold through amazon at the price of a mid-level chisel, though there's not that much mystery in the metallurgy if thermal rules aren't violated - just for whatever reason, the stuff sold in the US is often lacking a little bit).

    I bought the japanese chisel straight from japan and have no clue what it is (it's a set).

    As to what happens with the uni - the less hard a chisel is from the start (or in some cases, if a chisel is a little overhard), the more the uni picks it up. I'll explain why the V11 has to be set aside, though it's certainly improved by the uni if you're going to be whacking it. It's not a cast ingot that's reduced by rolling. My understanding is that the PM ingots are rolled, but they all have varying structures and varying grain dominance. For example, CPM 3V is regarded as extremely tough. For whatever reason, when it's rolled, it develops a dominant toughness along its length - something like 3 times as tough in length as across length. CPM attempted to come up with a steel that was slightly harder and didn't have as much directional difference in toughness and when they did, they lost some of the longitudinal toughness.

    As to XHP (which is probably identical or very nearly to V11), I don't get the sense that it has the same directionality. So the way it fails (and the way it looks when it fails) isn't the same as the rest of the steels (everything else that's not PM would be ingot type. The ingots are cast, the temperature is high and big carbides form. As the material is rolled, the ingots are dissolved at high temperatures and then as the steel cools, the carbides are reduced by pressure and breaking (I think both occur..squashed, whatever). In rolled material, they become elongated as does the grain. This reduction is why low quality steel is improved by forging. For something made of rod (not sure how much rolled material is just reduced rod, but some that's sold on the knife market is exactly that because it's only available in rod and the small retailers heat and roll it into flat stock themselves), like most high production quantity chisels (non boutique), the rod is heated and die forged - nothing really changes the directionality.

    I think this is idea for chisels because they're weak across the width (relatively) but the edge is not used that way.

    So, that's the somewhat long answer regarding why V11 doesn't seem to get the same gain or maybe at least why it doesn't behave the same.


    ...

    As to what I found with the iles and japanese chisels? I found the Iles to be just as good as V11 in effort, and better at edge holding and resisting damage. The japanese chisels were also better.

    The worse the chisel is to start, the more it gains. You can turn a japanese chisel into something that will basically take a day of pounding (for something like a buck or HF chisel - at least the decent ones at HF) you can not quite do that, but those chisels won't hold up malleting hardwood at all if they're sharpened to anything other than a higher angle (30+). The reason they fail is the tip folds due to lack of strength. A higher hardness chisel like Iles or japanese has to have less of that tip removed and less of it will give up if it's not an the chisel is used.

    Short answer, with most chisels, the good chisels will remain better than the bad ones, but pre and post unicorn, the gap will become much narrower. To feel any remaining difference, you can find the point where each holds up and notice that the harder chisels will get through malleting with fewer strikes. But I can't make the case that there's much I've come across that wouldn't be handled by a harbor freight chisel with the unicorn.

    The V11 chisel and the sorby chisel (the sorby chisels are disappointing for the price) both failed to achieve no damage at all with reasonable angles/unicorn, but the V11 chisel is harder, so it took fewer strikes to get through work once tuned up.

    There's another follow-on to the test on the wood central article, and that is something I didn't test at the time, but have since. Chisel failure is seemingly not linear, but more like event based at some point. So in the small volume that I chiseled for the wood central article, the outcome/differences are fairly small. If you work something like 5-10 cubic inches of maple instead of 1 1/2 or whatever it was that I worked, the chisel that take small damage take much more damage sooner, and sometimes two chisels that look very close together get separated by a lot, but the failure isn't something that occurs on a line - more like within a cubic inch of work little damage becomes big, but whether it's cubic inch 2 or 7 is not that easy to predict.

    A really good chisel will dominate the longer test.

    Much of this is behind my comments that V11 is an odd choice for chisels, not because it can't make a usable chisel, but because it doesn't offer any advantages for a user over a die forged chisel and I can make a chisel in my garage for $15 that will easily outlast one, and will grind two times as fast or more (at much lower heat). The iles, and maybe the (what's the name of the new narex ones? I've never tried them) regular process narex chisels could be closer to vintage chisels.

    The characteristics of PMs could cause a whole lot of weird things to happen in standardized tests, though. And chart characteristics aren't a great predictor - just as I found with 52100 (how could a chisel that's just as hard but tougher not be as good for chiseling in wood?). The only real way to measure things is outcomes, and then try to explain, rather than explaining first and then trying to make the outcome match.

    In the end with the japanese chisel, not much unicorn is needed and it's super sweet. The iles chisel becomes very nice without too much unicorning, too. So in practice, I've gone to adding a little but less to good tools, and more to cheaper ones.

  9. #668
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    here is a picture of the unicorned V11 chisel after the test (the dips are about a thousandth or so deep). Note, since the V11 steel grinds about half as fast, it got twice as much unicorn time on the wheel (so it's not a matter of it just not getting a big enough unicorn horn).

    v11 unicorn 107.jpgline.jpg

    And the look of the japanese chisel after the same amount chiseled.

    Japanese unicorn.jpgline.jpg

    There were areas on the V11 chisel that looked like longer notches, but the picture above is more typical. It's nice to see failure that's very uniform if it's occurring, but it wasn't completely uniform.

    After doing this, I thought that maybe I should figure out how to accommodate the V11 chisel and sorby chisel further (I like Rob Lee and what I really expected to see from subjective prior experience was that all of the chisels would be failure free - that didn't occur, and that the gap in effort and failure pictures would narrow and then become none, but that the high dollar chisels would still move through material more easily due to hardness and the ability of higher hardness chisels to take a better edge off of the same abrasive - high hardness and high strength still does have some advantage).

    I didn't get that. But I also figured that if I tried to accommodate the V11 chisel, that wouldn't be fair, it's chasing a conclusion, just as it would've been with the sorby.

    I went with longer tests when making my own chisels because I was on a bender of seeing how good open atmosphere heat treatment can be with simple steels. The answer is that it can be better than commercial schedule, but it seems to vary by steel and it may be only for very high carbon steels that it's better because it doesn't lead to as much carbon in solution when the steel is quenched - that's a separate thing. My tested O1 samples were about the same as commercial process (there's not much excess carbon in O1).

    I have sent other samples to Larrin Thomas to be tested, which he doesn't charge for, but haven't heard back for a couple of months. He may decline to test them because he has better things to do - either way, it doesn't matter much to me. I liked V11 at first after doing a plane iron test and figured it might be great for everything, but its fine edge holding in anything other than ideal conditions isn't as good as ingot steels (you get wear resistance from the carbides, but give up toughness at the edge) - translation, working rough wood, it performs less well than expected, but it still sharpens twice as slow and grinds twice as slow, and I sold the V11 chisel right after writing the unicorn article because next to the iles chisel and japanese chisel, when used one after the other, I developed a quick distaste for it that one may not notice if they didn't have other chisels to use at the same time. Flatly put, it's not as good for a serious worker who is going to start to notice grinding and honing time due to a larger volume of work, and the idea that a chisel should have zero lands is an odd one (it makes for weak corners) and potentially uncomfortable.

    I'm down to using XHP now for kitchen knives (I do like it for that). Too bad.

    So, what's the virtue of PMs? They allow you to make micron sized full alloy ingots which means that cooling time is short and you can pack in alloys that would create horrible microstructures in ingot steel. The worse an ingot steel is, the more the improvement seems to be for PM (D2 is a good example - you want no tools made of D2, but there's nothing really wrong with PM D2 - it doesn't really solve any problems as it exists between A2 and V11, but like V11, it's "not horrible" like ingot D2 is). But you can also use it to go way above V11 to stuff like REX and steels with a lot of vanadium and enormous amounts of carbon at the same time (really high wear resistance, really high carbon content, really high hardness, but fine edge holding suffers due to carbide volume - these types tend to make good turning tools, like M42).
    Attached Images Attached Images

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    Winston did the pictures for the PW article, the above are my own.

    So, I can't comment on the buck chisels themselves - it's possible that the chinese chisels are actually better than the american buck chisels, but the american types are only a little soft with heavy handles (the steel grain is exceedingly fine - probably due to being a little lower in carbon).

    If someone wanted to make a silver steel rod chisel, die forged, but carefully heat treated in china, a dominant chisel could be made easily for $5 each. I don't think we'll see it.

    The trade for something like V11 or PM D2 for a beginner who uses a honing guide and planes wood that comes out of a planer (it's clean, and the cut is continuous) is more fair -same with M2 (except M2 can make a nice uniform microstructure without having to be powder steel - that's another thing that varies a ton. M4, on the other hand, benefits a lot). There's never really an ability to make a blanket statement about processes without adding which alloy.

    if I had infinite time, I'd love to see just what different more complex alloys do in an idealized test (like what would an M42 68 hardness plane iron do in an idealized test compared to how well would it actually hold up in daily work -the answers are different).

    I believe veritas found the V11 (probably XHP) so favorable because their tests were idealized, and because it is a chromium carbide steel (so it can be properly sharpened with normal abrasives). In three different planes, I found that the advantage of it over a higher hardness plainer steel was negated, but a lot of people buying replacement irons are probably comparing their new iron to something much softer and assuming the alloy makes the difference (but it's more likely to be the hardness).


    I did find out over time that "a steel" for planes and chisels doesn't make that much sense. I think people like branding, and when A2 came out, some people wanted it in everything because it was marketed as being better and parroted by people as being better. Make a claim in ad copy and you'll see people parrot it and claim it's their experience. Then, when V11 came out, i'm sure there are some brand wonks who want to simplify their foregone conclusions by favoring one brand.

    I don't favor the same thing for plane irons and chisels, it's a different operation. I'd love to be able to say the extra carbon in 26c3 that makes it work so well for chiseling would help for planing, but it doesn't add anything for wear and even O1 will plane longer. But it makes a somewhat better chisel than O1 - and even that's something that doesn't matter much once you have tricks in hand like unicorn - that can eliminate failure of lesser tools.

    I only went this far down the rabbit hole to understand differences in outcomes vs. looking at technical merits and trying to use them to obtain outcomes. And I tried to improve my own tools (like the chisels) as far as outcomes are concerned less because there's some useful need for it and more because when you try to make chisels, for example, then you kind of feel like you'd like to make them as well as possible, even if it's not a need. We kind of do the same thing with furniture.

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    Default one last add to this...

    I measured the number of standardized strikes (done by wrist rotation only with a urethane mallet), which I thought would illustrate something - that using a dull or failing chisel is a lot more effort. It is.

    I did notice in the planing tests, different alloys have different amount of friction with wood. V11 has the least from what I've been able to tell. CPM M4 had more resistance to the point that it feels a little dull even when it's not (at least when comparing one next to the other in the same operation).

    The efficiency part of this is relatively important (or should be) to someone who uses chisels for a lot. Maybe not as much if someone doesn't.

    Data Table.png

    Just as with the edge damage picture, I was attempting to show an extra aspect - that you can set up tools one way and literally cancel out quality differences in tools, even if you don't know you're doing it. The yellow cells illustrate how you can end up getting equivalent experience with Sorby and V11 or japanese, aside from edge damage.

    The V11 chisel also fares well at 25 degrees in terms of cut resistance, but it's going to be short lived and the damage is deep - so the higher figure "unicorned" would actually be far more productive than setting up at 25 degrees and ignoring damage. Since the chiseled volume was relatively small, this didn't get examined further (as in, how much would things flip in the other direction if you continued to push a chisel incurring significant damage).

    As with plane irons, the V11 steel did feel slicker through wood - I think it's a matter of chromium content - more makes the steel more slippery, but there's no actual tests of that (Scientifically) that I could find because I don't think anyone actually cares. A slight decrease in cutter friction is meaningless when the whole electric grid is available. While it's novel, the fact that damage can't be avoided easily negates it - you'd be sharpening while someone using the japanese chisel would continue to work.

    It'd be dandy if this chart was extrapolated to how the strike number differs if the work load was quintupled, but it would take a LONG time. There is some other hidden information in this - and that is the assumption that the unicorn makes a chisel edge blunt and you'll just be spending lots of effort getting it through wood. The answer to that is the numbers don't support it. I trialed the V11 chisel twice (thus two uni numbers) to make sure the damage that occurred would be consistent in two separate trials (as in, I didn't want to do one trial, possibly have it be me at fault) and throw LV under the bus.

    Here's the damage that occurs at 25 degrees (I'll admit I didn't want to damage my japanese chisel, so I left it out)

    v11 25.jpg

    This stuff all applies to chisels. There's definitely a case where knives can work better allowing damage to occur but keeping the angle low as there's less cross section to slice through material. The V11 numbers may suggest to some folks this would be good - a crisp apex at 25. I guess that's a reasonable conclusion until it comes to honing (to hone 2-4 thousandths of an edge away every time - nobody actually does that - it takes a long time, even if you're grinding. The depth of the damage in this picture is 2-3 thousandths).

    The MkII chisel at 25 degrees looked similar (the pattern of damage was a little different, but similar depth).

    mk 25.jpgline.jpg

    Interestingly, the picture looks better but the physical effort difference between 117 strikes and 99 is very apparent when testing. So, the pictures don't match what's actually occurring and the two have to be viewed together. This is the kind of thing where you absolutely do not want a chisel that fails by folding because it will make you work twice as hard and continue to tear itself apart as you're bending the foil of steel around and tearing up the edge.

    Since the sorby chisel did less well than these pictures at 30 degrees, there was no real reason to see just how bad things could get. here is the sorby at 30 (notice the huge foil - this edge is a pain to use malleting. It bounces out of the cut and causes the wood to be shot off in broken up pieces). I've had four sets of the sorby chisels when finding them on a sale deal (or maybe three - the london pattern the regular and the gilt edge - they were all the same in edge holding and hardness). I've gotten rid of all of them. I don't know what their objective is, but (recalling names failing me) there is an explanation posted elsewhere on here as part of hardness testing that the ASTM standard for listing chisels requires more or less a worksite hardness and not a "chipping" hardness. Or, to sell with an ASTM spec to industry, the chisels have to be a little soft.

    Sorby 30.jpgline.jpg

    Obviously none of this made it into the PW article. I don't work at magazine or quick blog level - it leaves too many questions and I want answers and specifics that someone else can test if there's an objection.

    My test is easy to repeat (it's just hard maple and the angles are specified), and most of the people who want to argue that they don't like the results fail (OK all of them fail to) to attempt to see if they're wrong or I'm wrong.

    The difference in feel in the numerical tables is very strong (as in, if a chisel takes 120 strikes vs. 104, it's *very* easy to feel the difference in not only the number of strikes, but in a huge number of other things - how much the chisel is bouncing out of a cut, how much waste is being broken and shot off at you instead of folding off neatly - these things all slow down actual work and increase the chance of marking up or screwing up work, maybe doubling the difference in time spent chiseling vs. just what the numbers show, and add another factor for frustration or annoyance.

    The japanese chisel in this test was the winner in feel and sweetness, and the post-chisel edge was completely free from any visible defect at all. You can literally set one up and wear your arms and hands out (and literally heat up the chisel) long before any sharpening is ever needed.

  12. #671
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    Quote Originally Posted by D.W. View Post

    So, what's the virtue of PMs? They allow you to make micron sized full alloy ingots which means that cooling time is short and you can pack in alloys that would create horrible microstructures in ingot steel. The worse an ingot steel is, the more the improvement seems to be for PM (D2 is a good example - you want no tools made of D2, but there's nothing really wrong with PM D2 - it doesn't really solve any problems as it exists between A2 and V11, but like V11, it's "not horrible" like ingot D2 is). But you can also use it to go way above V11 to stuff like REX and steels with a lot of vanadium and enormous amounts of carbon at the same time (really high wear resistance, really high carbon content, really high hardness, but fine edge holding suffers due to carbide volume - these types tend to make good turning tools, like M42).
    Yes, the PM and other exotic steels come into their own in woodturning. I use many of them in my woodturning workshop... (M2, M42, CPM 10V (A11), 15V). I have about a dozen gouges that I use in rotation (sharpen them all up in batch mode and then turn with them until they are all blunt).

    I thought before I got the more exotic steels I would relegate the humble M2s to the bottom drawer, but they are all still in use. I have found that the claims for much superior performance for some of the exotics to be exaggerated when it comes down to use in the workshop.

    The 15V will cut for longer in harsh woods but doesn't leave as clean a cut as 10V. In my experience M42 doesn't cut as long as 10V, but takes the keenest edge and is a good all round performer. M2 is the cheapest and does a very good for the price if heat treated properly.

    Different story in the kitchen where I'm cutting soft stuff. There I prefer Japanese knives for their long lasting sharpness. Mostly blue steel. I also enjoy the aesthetics of a hand forged knife, which has little to do with their utility. The sharpening stones for these knives is another whole thing in itself.

    Point being, the steel in my kitchen knives wouldn't hold up to the rigours of woodturning and the steel in my turning tools wouldn't give me the fine keen edge I like on my kitchen knives.
    Stay sharp and stay safe!

    Neil



  13. #672
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    Thanks for the detailed replies. With a few more unicorn tests, I'm still sort of perplexed with my results. I think I'n testing a bit different, I'm not chopping, I mostly use chisels for paring, so that's how I tested.

    On the comment about "First Quality" chisels mostly shaking out in the same range once unicorned - yes. Nearly every "First quality" chisel once fully prepped seems to pare 20-30 grams of endgrain cabinet plywood shavings. That's my shop dustpan 2/3+ full. The typical "failure" on these is chipping that makes them "hard" to push, even though sections may still be quite sharp. Interestingly, the Richter seems to hold the beautiful gilt edge longest, but it ended up in the same range when I quit. Narex Richter, Ashley Iles, Two Cherries, UK Stanley, 5 different old Marples, an old Ward, and 3 I Sorbys.

    Interestingly, a drawn temper Octagon bolster Marples bevel edge ran within the same range as the others with factory hardness. It didn't do "better" though, just because it was soft, which makes me suspect carbide volume and grain structure.

    Then, there's the Chinesium Buck from BORG... I've repeated the test twice and got 66 grams the first time. The second, I stopped around 40 grams when I dinged the chisel edge on a lawnmower spindle by mistake. It still pared spruce better than my Narex Richter after 20 grams. Zero other chisels have made it this far. Honestly, I was getting bored. It wasn't gilt edged, but still easy to control and paring nice shavings. It had no chips besides the one from the spindle. I power sharpen on a worksharp 3000, and the sandpaper discs eat this Buck steel like wood.

    What perplexes me... Why can't I get the "good ones" to hold up like the Chinese Buck? I feel like I'm missing something here.

    A recent production Irwin marples blue chip ended up on the low end - 15 to 18... So, it's not "cheap chisels do just as well as good ones."

    I settled on 25 degrees prior to Unicorn for paring, power sharpened to P1000 then buff with white compound. I buff the bevel to "Unicorn" it and sort of lightly float the back over the buffer. This back treatment makes a HUGE difference in all chisels edge life.

    Interestingly, the unicorned edges actually pared a bit longer/easier at 25 than at 30-degrees. I think that's because of "Thickness behind the bevel" - Cliff Stamp made a big deal about this.. Thinner edges are perceived to cut "better" because they produce less resistance when equally "dull." No doubt for chopping, 30 probably holds up a lot longer.

    My suspicion, and you hit on this several times... I expect the Chinesium Buck has very good grain structure and zero carbides.

  14. #673
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    I haven't tested paring too much because it's more like carving, and other than the facets on planes or parts of guitars across grain, I don't do too much of it. For furniture, paring is often into a knifed line (like a tenon shoulder) which is chisel corners, and almost like malleting.

    So, I don't have much of an answer for outright paring.

    Yes on the angle - I grind at 20 and then up from there because the lowest amount of work using a tool is still going to be where the edge holds up combined with the thinnest cross section. Below 20 degrees malleting, I didn't do much testing because the last few thousandths can easily get pushed up into the bevel which is - what cliff said - targeting where the failure occurs. And I want it to be at the edge of the chisel so that it's easy to sharpen out. I tried down to 15 degrees at someone's request (which isn't very practical on a round wheel with a thick chisel, either), and maple easily pushed the damage in the bevel.

    But just honing like normal and then buffing (which is what everyone wants to do at first) leads to a thicker edge that holds up really well, but it's still a thicker edge and the working characteristics aren't that nice - especially in softer woods where you'd get a cleaner cut with a thinner edge.

    No clue what your chinese chisel would be, but if it's in the .8 carbon or above, but 1 or less, it probably wouldn't show visible carbides. 1095 that I use doesn't show any and neither does O1. 26c3 shows a lot of them. 52100 shows them, but they're likely partially chromium carbides and partially iron (26c3 and 52100 look similar, but 26c3, 1095 and O1 wear at the edge far more uniformly - and tools work better with a more uniform edge- knives don't care as much - or rather in slicing tests, they actually work longer with a slightly irregular edge).

    As to the edge damage - same experience - you can see small failures and long sections of undamaged edges. For my pictures, I have to try to pick a section that's "typical", and some show more uniformity in failure than others. There were longer section of failure on V11 (like shallow, but wide) that I didn't see on ingot steel that was reasonably hard. The japanese chisel and MkII AI chisel both looked like the pictures in the article, but I may have accidentally back buffed the MkII Chisel on the side of the wheel working the burr off - I no longer have those chisels, so I can't repeat it. I didn't include it here because the japanese chisel stands on its own to show the difference between it and V11 in chopping - something I didn't expect to see.

    I should've mentioned previously that UK drill rod (good quality chrome vanadium steel where the chrome and vanadium are at low levels that only improve characteristics and that don't make for free carbides) is about 2-3 pounds (sterling) per kilogram. A kilogram is enough to make a pretty large set of bench chisels in good proportions. I don't think anything makes a better wood chisel and even if the steel isn't super quality, the grain will be far finer than high carbide steels and toughness probably better. O1 is an oddball - the grain structure is exceedingly fine - if I break a sample and look under a loupe, it looks like clay - no sparkly grains. But the toughness isn't that high (and Larrin Thomas reports the same - something occurs in the microstructure that inhibits toughness). It doesn't matter too much for us making tools, though. O1 and V11 are similar in toughness, but O1 has a far finer grain.

    XHP (V11):
    https://i.imgur.com/vGxX2OJ.jpg

    52100:
    https://i.imgur.com/0ktwmHa.jpg

    26c3
    https://i.imgur.com/z4QRWVU.jpg (I was wrong, 52100 has a denser and more prominent carbide structure, but I guess it should)

    (i'm coming up empty on pictures of O1 taken just to show carbides, but here's a plane iron worn to failure to pick up a shaving - it's half the magnification of the pictures above, but if there were carbides, they'd look like little shadow lines - in viewing carbides at 300X magnification (which makes the above pictures less than 1/100th of an inch tall) , I see a tiny dot here and there.

    with 1084, I see nothing at all.

    01-284.jpg

    The carbides in these pictures are instructive because they help me see why when I snap a sample, it doesn't look quite as smooth for 26c3 as O1 - but then when testing, Larrin found my 26c3 to be two points harder (same tempering temperature, same heat treatment cycle in the open atmosphere) and about twice as tough (twice as much energy needed to break a sample tab).

    In malleting, the extra hardness shows as 26c3 if used in straight malleting will last like a japanese chisels (my samples tested at 63.8 average, or roughly 64 - at 390F temper. They could easily be left at 325 or 350 for 65/66 hardness, but there's no good reason for it - chisels are a little sweeter 375-400F - most things are). I think my O1 samples averaged 61.6 or something like that - three of the four were within 0.1 on the C scale (the fourth was about 0.7 points away, so even an error sample - one of them got a bit hot to the eye, but I figured I would throw it in and see what the consequence was - apparently not much - it tested around 61 flat with no loss of toughness).

    At any rate - anything that I can heat treat in the open atmosphere equates to something that can be made cheaply without long cycles or soaks. O1 is a little easier to heat treat and a lot easier to harden (if that makes sense - it'll harden in a wide range of oils and is easier to get near identical even by eye - the 26c3 samples probably varied about half a point on average.

    if someone really wanted to make a chisel in china that could hang with just about anything and batter the V11 and blue spruce chisels - and cheaply - they could easily do it.

    I hope you carry on with what you're working on - I can publish what I described here, but two things will happen:
    * the information disappears in the breeze as the strong wind of marketing continues
    * fanboys, newbies and people who exist in a world where summary experience is "science" take offense to something more in depth. Especially if they've staked an opinion on something that doesn't hold up

    One of the reasons aside from this that I've gone deep in tests instead of just cursory testing is because going deep gives a lot more resolution and leaves less to question. Aside from brent beach's plane iron tests, there's not much else on the internet that's worth anything in terms of chisel or plane iron testing, and accurate explanation of the results is nonexistent.

  15. #674
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    Quote Originally Posted by NeilS View Post
    Yes, the PM and other exotic steels come into their own in woodturning. I use many of them in my woodturning workshop... (M2, M42, CPM 10V (A11), 15V). I have about a dozen gouges that I use in rotation (sharpen them all up in batch mode and then turn with them until they are all blunt).

    I thought before I got the more exotic steels I would relegate the humble M2s to the bottom drawer, but they are all still in use. I have found that the claims for much superior performance for some of the exotics to be exaggerated when it comes down to use in the workshop.

    The 15V will cut for longer in harsh woods but doesn't leave as clean a cut as 10V. In my experience M42 doesn't cut as long as 10V, but takes the keenest edge and is a good all round performer. M2 is the cheapest and does a very good for the price if heat treated properly.

    Different story in the kitchen where I'm cutting soft stuff. There I prefer Japanese knives for their long lasting sharpness. Mostly blue steel. I also enjoy the aesthetics of a hand forged knife, which has little to do with their utility. The sharpening stones for these knives is another whole thing in itself.

    Point being, the steel in my kitchen knives wouldn't hold up to the rigours of woodturning and the steel in my turning tools wouldn't give me the fine keen edge I like on my kitchen knives.
    Definitely different (I found the same through experimentation). What's not given enough credit in different steels is when an application is sort of "pure" (as in, turning wood that's abrasive or hard or dirty) is comparing a couple of good tools.

    M2 can be good without being PM and it can be driven up to 65 hardness pretty easily. It holds up really well at that, but is a little hard sharpening and most of the M2 turning tools I've come across are softer.

    Not sure if this image address will work, but Larrin thomas has a superb chart from a catra machine - it just tests abrasion resistance by cutting sandy cards.

    You can see 15V way at the top. The carbide volume in 15V is so high that the fine edge has to be kind of blunt to hold up (the carbides in a thin edge crack up and break out). 10V can look a lot better in micrographs - the carbides remain small and it should (if sharpened with diamonds) be kind of like V11, except the carbides are more balanced toward vanadium than chromium, so it's not temperature sensitive - but the sharpness and feel of the edge should be similar.

    10V cut 800mm of cards (the cards are actually a stack - it sounds like very little cut - less than a meter, but it's a whole lot of wear due to the way the machine is made), M2 at 65 cut about 485mm. So 10V has the potential to last a little less than twice as long and 15V is approaching twice as long. Some of the claims that you see made for various steels can be way out there. The academy saw stanley blades made out of M2 at one point were claimed to last 22 times as long as other blades (!!!). There could possibly be some scenario where you could use an older softer blade and do something that causes the edge to get damaged, but not for a harder blade - but it sure would be hard to make that happen. M2 can last (planing wood) a little less than double that of O1.

    I asked larrin about this chart and why O1 wasn't about the same as 52100 as I'd seen them to be about equal planing, and he agreed that something was likely wrong with the O1 sample. O1 isn't a knife favorite, so I don't think he cares. Actually, not much in the lower ranges gets attention in the knife world - larrin's favorite knife steel is AEB-L, but the market as far as profit goes for factory knives is in trying to choose steels higher on the list (spec buying). AEB-L can generally be set up to match the higher wear steels in knives because it can survive at a thinner bevel, but that goes TL-DR (that ability is why blue, blue super, white steel, etc, all make such great knives even though they don't fare very well on this test - they have good edge stability and strength, but abrasives wear them quickly..
    ....

    ....

    which results in.......them being pleasant and easy to sharpen, too. AEB-L is also like this to sharpen (it sharpens almost like a carbon steel even though it's somewhat stainless).

    If LN ever experiments with it in tools (I doubt they will), I'll take credit!! I've emailed them a couple of times suggesting it's worth looking at (sharpens nicer than A2, cheaper than A2, wears longer than A2), but it's not quite as easy to heat treat (doesn't stay as flat) so from a manufacturing perspective, I doubt they'll do anything with it.

    As far as the turning tools go, though - I can see people dumping underhardened M2 tools pretty easily (they'll deflect and get dented by turning on top of wearing). Anyone spending the money on 10V or 15V stock is likely going to chase higher hardness and make the difference between the steels seem like more than it is. If a manufacturer doesn't want to make really good M2 tools, though, because of the "branding" of the alloy (as being a low cost tool), there's not much anyone can do about it, though.

    (actually, larrin has printed micrographs showing the grain of various steels - the volume of carbides in V11 falls between 10V and 15V. the naming probably confuses people - V11 isn't one of the V series, obviously, it's CTS-XHP or nearly identical to it, a chromium carbide steel. Larrin doesn't talk that much about steels great for turning because his market is knife fans, so stuff that I like also doesn't get much press - 26c3, O1, 1095. Even though the carbide volume is less for 10V, if it's high hardness, it'll be far slower to sharpen than V11 due to the vanadium carbides.

    Larrin has a distaste for XHP because chromium carbides lower toughness more per unit of wear resistance than vanadium, but woodworkers wouldn't find grinding and honing high hardness 10V to be very pleasant, let alone dealing with a new iron that's not perfectly flat - and the high V steels tend to be finished poorly because they're so slow to grind (The surface finish is usually coarse).

    For anyone else reading - here is a picture of D2 microstructure without PM technology:
    https://i1.wp.com/knifesteelnerds.co...pg?w=750&ssl=1

    here's a D2 micrograph with PM-D2:
    https://i2.wp.com/knifesteelnerds.co...pg?w=750&ssl=1

    the top steel would be unsuitable for woodworking as any large carbide near the edge would quickly break up leaving a void. Some of the carbide pairs are well over a thousandth of an inch so when they leave, the void would be a couple of thousandths - you'd immediately have lines that you could see.

    M2 on the other hand - conventional ingot steel looks fine:
    https://i1.wp.com/knifesteelnerds.co...pg?w=750&ssl=1

    The one thing that remains in question after looking at these is whether or not someone making tools goes for the gold with heat treatment process, as the high V steels have pretty demanding schedules. I don't use them (and don't have a furnace), but have seen a lot of accounts of paul bos in the US doing a better job with the V steels than most other heat treaters (he's retired now) and the schedules are very long in duration, so it would be tempting to start skipping things.

    To temperature cycle something like 26c3 (open atmosphere, which it's fine with) takes all of about 10 minutes following one regular anneal or light forging/shaping.

  16. #675
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    Thank you for that post, David.

    All very interesting.

    Quote Originally Posted by D.W. View Post

    Not sure if this image address will work, but Larrin Thomas has a superb chart from a catra machine - it just tests abrasion resistance by cutting sandy cards.
    Perhaps this is Larrin's article you were referring to..

    Testing the Edge Retention of 48 Knife Steels - Knife Steel Nerds

    ...and, while I was on his website I had a look at his article on AEB-L steel use for knives.

    All About AEB-L - Knife Steel Nerds

    ...definitely an article for the knife steel nerds!

    The Uddeholm origins of that steel caught my attention because one of my Japanese knives has Uddeholm steel for its cutting edge... quite a departure for a Japanese smith away from white, blue and s-blue paper steels.

    John - apologies for taking your branch of this thread off your topic.

    BTW, does anyone seen Rob Streeper, the starter of this thread, active on any other forums. He hasn't been here on this forum since Nov 2020.
    Stay sharp and stay safe!

    Neil



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