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  1. #646
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    Quote Originally Posted by truckjohn View Post
    And so with all that being said - it would be pretty ironic to find out that by and large - assuming quality steel properly manufactured (properly rolled, drawn, or forged) and heat treated for the correct microstructure - the effect of the steel itself was fairly small because it's pretty similar...
    That's what I'd conclude. the updated alloys are for the convenience of the makers. They can be nice if they're done well, but A2 and D2 are, to me, always going to trail the pack unless the work is just outright abusive.

    The plain steels that are sold today that are done poorly, or done with a compromise (e.g., austempering by narex to eliminate post hardening work) - some of that is steel, but a lot is compromise.

    I'll bet that the sorby chisels that are 58 or so would be entirely different animals at 61. Something closer to the AI chisels.

    The beauty of the old plainer steels is that even if the microstructure of them isn't perfect, they're still really fine.

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  3. #647
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    On Swedish steel, it's no mystery why the Swedes got so good at steels for cutting wood. I'm currently travelling there and the timber industry is still a big deal here.

    Yesterday I visited a J-knife shop a few doors down from where I'm currently staying in Stockholm. I had a chat with the Japanese guy who runs the shop and we talked about steels and stones. Among other things, I also showed him a photo of one of my favourite J-knife that is made by a well known J-smith. Interestingly, the cutting steel in that knife is made from very old Uddeholm Swedish steel. To go past their own steels is an indication of the respect that some Japanese master blacksmiths have for old Swedish tool steel.

    Sent from my ZTE T84 using Tapatalk
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    Neil



  4. #648
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    Yes on two fronts. Timber industry is big, and they have clean ore.

    I guess three fronts - they've also got a booming engineered products industry in sweden.

    It's interesting that the two popular steels in japanese tool lore (which of what we see discussed is very "young" compared to english and american tools) are swedish and English (Andrews). I don't know where the English transition is with specialty high carbon steels, they aren't for sale here in the states. US producers of engineered products are diemaking focus now (S30, M2, etc) and only Hitachi white comes to mind as a "blade steel".

    Assab K120 would straddle white 2 and white 1 yasuki/hitachi, and the tools in the past that I've bought with swedish have been identical to hitachi tools, except the tempering seems to be a little bit softer (which leads to the old wives tale that swedish carbon steel sharpens really easily vs. hitachi - that's only the case for any of plainer steels if they aren't tempered to the same degree. I'd guess both swedish plane irons I've had are probably tempered very low 60s. The white 1 irons don't feel like they've had any tempering and were overhard).

    Long story short, I don't know:
    * how much new swedish steel is actually making it to japan (or if it's stock being used from old makers who died and had a pile left)
    * if there's really any practical difference, or it's just lingering use due to reputation

    I get the sense that a lot of the exotic stuff sold out of japan sells better to gaijin than it does to japanese users (who would probably see something like a new andrews-steel plane as high expense versions of a $400 tool for foreigners to be taken on). When Japanese manufactured steel was overloaded with impurities, English and Swede served a purpose. It's just notional now given the quality and variety of Hitachi steels.

  5. #649
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    Follow-up to this. I see that So says Uddeholm (Assab maker) is still supplying K120 to japanese tool makers, but they've stopped making it with 1.2% carbon. It's now just 1% carbon.

    I wonder if the habit of making it lower hardness has something to do with knowing that it's now a very pedestrian steel.

    And, I wonder what buyers would think if they knew that the new K120 tools they're getting are technically not quite as good as most White #2 (or have quite as much potential for edge longevity).

    A good quality european or very old american 1095 or W1 would match K120.

    (my real question to a japanese maker of a plain carbon steel iron would be "how hard is it, and how brittle is it?" rather than what kind of steel is it. )

  6. #650
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    Bumpity bump.

    I think this is one of my favorite threads ever. Any more word if anything more came out of it?

  7. #651
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    I've been thinking about it. I have stuff lined up, i.e. scattered all over the place, to continue this effort but have been overwhelmed with other work. I recently bought a LN sharpening jig for testing against the others as I've done in the past.

    My primary concern is advancing this: What I've been working on while away from WWF. Next step is some more experiments and another patent application for another use on top of ongoing fundraising efforts, something that apparently never ends.

    To put beans in the pot I've been doing this: Always ensure blade guards are in place! Even if it's not your tool! BLOOD AND GORE
    Innovations are those useful things that, by dint of chance, manage to survive the stupidity and destructive tendencies inherent in human nature.

  8. #652
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    duplicate
    Innovations are those useful things that, by dint of chance, manage to survive the stupidity and destructive tendencies inherent in human nature.

  9. #653
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    Well done on the patent work. I was thinking about your study the other day because the topic of A2 steel came up on another forum, and the strangeness of the discussion struck me because there's not that much head to head testing. Stageness meaning that a dozen year ago, it as just accepted that A2 was wonderful and lasted many times longer than anything else.

    Except that it doesn't in chisels, and it has some bad habits in planes. I was rolling my drawers open on a roller cabinet I'm using to store guitar tools, and figuring out what I want to sell, and there sits a set of western forge craftsman chisels that I'm not sure I've used for anything yet!

  10. #654
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    Rob - I've posted your hardness summary (the image with the largest number of chisels summarized) on woodcentral with discussion about it, credit given to you as the origin and describing some of the process. I'm dropping a post in this thread only to make sure you're OK with that. There isn't that much traffic over there and many of the members don't venture out of the forum, so I don't think they'd be able to view a link to this thread (and they might die out of anger if they read all 44 pages).

    The level of interest in it for me is that I'd guessed which chisels were hard and soft in this test, but never saw numbers attached, so I didn't know if the japanese chisels were really 65 ish, or if they just say that. Nor did I know whether the sorby chisels (I had a couple of sets, still have at least one set) are disappointingly soft because they're 55 1/2 or 58.

    I think this data is very useful for people who are out looking around to buy, because in my opinion, most people will not be satisfied with a chisel that is specified as 58 (it will experience durability issues in hardwood, even at normal angles), and most would be stymied above the low 60s. Looking back over the summary, it's almost shocking just how all of the chisels that we regard well (the bergs, etc) - not as magic, but nice chisels to use - are pretty much 60/61.

    My own modern favorites (ashley iles) are specified at 61, and I believe they're right on it. From a user's standpoint, not only does the 58 hardness chisel struggle to maintain a good edge, but on many sharpening mediums (especially natural stones) they struggle to take as good of an edge as a harder chisel, and then they hold their wire edge far too long.

    Bliss for someone in the middle of working wood is an edge that stays on reasonably long, doesn't fail by chipping or folding in any significant extent, and that doesn't have an obnoxious hold on its own wire edge when you're sharpening, necessitating the use of more than normal stropping.

  11. #655
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    Feel free Dave.
    Innovations are those useful things that, by dint of chance, manage to survive the stupidity and destructive tendencies inherent in human nature.

  12. #656
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    This is bordering on a necro thread by now, but I've come up with a novel way to sharpen underperforming chisels and make them work as well as a "good" chisel sharpened with flat bevels, and with less cut resistance than flat bevels on any chisels.

    My favorite chisels mentioned above are still the iles (of the modern types - they're in a hardness sweet spot and if they're not holding an edge, it's up to the user to figure out what they like as finding it will be well worth the trouble vs. buying more).

    After posting this, I lucked into another interested user trying to duplicate my results (where I have found that I can get those soft sorby chisels to hold up in hard maple under a 28 oz verawood mallet and any reasonable treatment in terms of striking hardness), and he's getting close to what I'm doing. Here's his results:

    Chisel chopping tests

    (i suppose these may change over time - he is chopping maple with the acetate handled buck brothers chisels that home depot sells, and those chisels are definitely soft - they may be softer than the sorby chisels).

    His comment to me after trying this in an email is wondering about the sensibility of spending the amount that it costs to get premium chisels like a V11 chisel.

    I'm waiting for a V11 chisel at this point and will test it vs. AI vs. sorby in a controlled chopping test in Maple, tracking edge damage as well as effort expended to do a volume of work.

    As to how much it costs to do this sharpening method - something to grind a long shallow primary of about 20 degrees (what is used doesn't matter), an inexpensive chinese diamond hone and the cheapest buffer one can find, a stitched wheel with some aspects ($10) and $11 worth of buffing stick from McMaster carr (the buffer makes a coarse stick cut very very finely). Or or more or less, the final finish as well as the stropping is combined into one step for less than the cost of most fine stones.

    Separately, I also found just how critical angle is for each chisel (i already knew this), but for instance - in maple at exactly 30 degrees and some stiff malleting, the AI works OK but is worse for wear:


    (these notches are only about a thousandth deep, one can keep working, but effort stacks up).

    Here's the back of the same AI chisel after doing the same task at 32
    (fewer mallet strikes needed despite the higher angle due to no damage)

    Here is what the sorby chisel did at 28

    (bad)

    Here's what it did at 32:


    This isn't great, but it's not intolerable. Notice that the sorby deflects and the harder AI chisel just lets go of anything that wants to bend.

    Here's how the AI chisel held up with the edge rounded by a buffer (20-40% fewer strikes than tests with a flat bevel, absolutely no damage, and the chiseled material falls away like a leaf instead of being wedged off and shot across into my belly and face)


    And here's how the sorby chisel held up with the edge modified this way:


    no damage, less work. Quality of the chisel needs to be good , but not spectacular.

    Not only does this method do this for inexpensive chisels, but it makes the stellar quality chisels almost effortless to use. It's just no longer arguable that it's necessary to buy premium chisels to get good edge holding or low effort to use.

    I've actually used this sorby chisel to mortise a jack plane made out of a billet of silica filled rosewood and needed to resharpen only once in the process (20 solid minutes of mortising and a very warm chisel at the end of it).

    The sharpening process takes 30 seconds, too.

  13. #657
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    For just a bit less TLDR than the long bits above, this method is based on a premise:
    1) that most chisel damage occurs first at the very edge of the chisel (and not further up)
    2) damage that occurs further up the chisel is not usually from straight in hammering, but rather someone doing something they shouldn't
    3) once damage starts, it will propagate until it reaches a strong part of the chisel that will stop it (this is usually at a point where something very dull is going into the wood)
    4) we think the feel of chiseling is resistance to cutting, but cutting is only one element. Wedging and other forces occur. They are significant, or we wouldn't feel much of a difference from changes in angle

    What this method does is partially remove and partially modify the very tip of the chisel where the damage occurs. That was really the first goal -stop the damage from occurring, then see what compromises occur.

    After I was able to stop the damage pretty quickly with only a very tiny round over on the edge of chisels that would chip or deflect easily, it was apparent that the amount of supporting edge behind the very tip was much steeper than it really needs to be.

    So instead of just gaining durability and hoping for similar resistance or conceding a little bit more, we end up with an edge that fails far less easily and the wedging forces are reduced so the tool is easier to use. This is straight in chopping OR paring. Paring is made much more slick.

    The fact that the edge isn't failing makes the perceived sharpness even greater through the cycle of using the chisel (it's less resistance and better cutting characteristics from the start, but then it just kind of stays almost perfectly fresh if it's set up right).

    The separate fact yet that it takes 30 seconds to resharpen other than a grind every 3 or 4 sharpenings or so (another minute each time that occurs) is super. Everything turns out better than expected.

    Since the protective part that's been modified is only the tip and what's behind it, there still is a danger of being much rougher and breaking the chisel further back in the bevel than the modfied edge. Habits that cause this are habits to break in general regardless of sharpening method. They make you work harder.

    For mortising, you can do a more robust version of this, but there's not a great deal of gain on a mortise chisel by making the primary really shallow - the mortise just has to be deeper for the chisel to rotate. Buffing the tip of a mortise chisel will make the time between sharpening intervals far longer, though, as that very tip is also the part that will give up first when you're rotating the chisel.

  14. #658
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    DW, I sort of arrived at the same place as you did wrt the edge "falling off" of chisels. AKA chipping or rolling rather than actually "dulling".

    And I suppose it sounds dumb to say out loud but that's the first hurdle, right? Get the edges prepped so they don't chip or roll and then go from there.

    I think this is probably one place where hand sharpening excels jigs. The natural motion of the hands and arms means you get a teeny little rounding of the edge - and that makes it cut a LOT longer. I found this quite pronounced with chisel backs.... A chisel back lapped carefully flat out to the very edge has a much shorter life than one which is just barely perceptibly rounded from a few passes on a strop. It's not enough where it goes squirrely in a cut or won't register properly, but you can just barely watch the light follow a slightly rounded path at the tip on a reflection.

    I did some experiments increasing the edge angle with fully jigged sharpening and it took a lot more angle to eliminate the rolling/chipping.... Like way over 40-degrees in a lot of cases. Cutting effort also greatly increased. I didn't like it.

    I have a feeling this has a LOT to do with the effect of blade thickness behind the edge on perceived cutting force. This is where Microbevels seem to excel unless the Microbevel isn't micro. .

    So for example - a 20-degree sharpened chisel with a machine polished edge may be at nearly 50-degrees for the first 0.0005" - but the steel is thinner 0.010" back where the chip hits so it feels sharper than a jig sharpened 35-degree bevel.

    That's probably why Paul Sellers' hard stropping makes edges last longer.... It slightly rounds the very very tip and the edges are less likely to roll or chip out....

    As an aside - I think that thickness also makes a difference in the perceived feel of a chisel working on an older hex-bolster bench chisel vs a new plastic handle butt chisel. The old chisel is perhaps half the thickness at the working end.... Thus it "feels" sharper even though mechanically the edge is prepped the same...

  15. #659
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    Quote Originally Posted by truckjohn View Post
    DW, I sort of arrived at the same place as you did wrt the edge "falling off" of chisels. AKA chipping or rolling rather than actually "dulling".

    And I suppose it sounds dumb to say out loud but that's the first hurdle, right? Get the edges prepped so they don't chip or roll and then go from there.

    I think this is probably one place where hand sharpening excels jigs. The natural motion of the hands and arms means you get a teeny little rounding of the edge - and that makes it cut a LOT longer. I found this quite pronounced with chisel backs.... A chisel back lapped carefully flat out to the very edge has a much shorter life than one which is just barely perceptibly rounded from a few passes on a strop. It's not enough where it goes squirrely in a cut or won't register properly, but you can just barely watch the light follow a slightly rounded path at the tip on a reflection.

    I did some experiments increasing the edge angle with fully jigged sharpening and it took a lot more angle to eliminate the rolling/chipping.... Like way over 40-degrees in a lot of cases. Cutting effort also greatly increased. I didn't like it.

    I have a feeling this has a LOT to do with the effect of blade thickness behind the edge on perceived cutting force. This is where Microbevels seem to excel unless the Microbevel isn't micro. .

    So for example - a 20-degree sharpened chisel with a machine polished edge may be at nearly 50-degrees for the first 0.0005" - but the steel is thinner 0.010" back where the chip hits so it feels sharper than a jig sharpened 35-degree bevel.

    That's probably why Paul Sellers' hard stropping makes edges last longer.... It slightly rounds the very very tip and the edges are less likely to roll or chip out....

    As an aside - I think that thickness also makes a difference in the perceived feel of a chisel working on an older hex-bolster bench chisel vs a new plastic handle butt chisel. The old chisel is perhaps half the thickness at the working end.... Thus it "feels" sharper even though mechanically the edge is prepped the same...
    I tested this buffed edge against a flat edge made in a jig. It takes so long to refine the scratch pattern over any appreciable area to really good quality - even if that's just a microbevel facet a few hundredths of an inch tall. The loss of touch being able to roll the edge just a little to get the finest abrasive to really work all the way over the drop off is punitive. I like oilstones because they will cut slowly when settled in and you can work just the tip of a chisel without creating a facet so large that it becomes more work later, but I'd hate them in a jig as they slow down a lot in harder steels once most of the scratches are gone.

    I've heard more than one person mention that they round over the back of a chisel just a little bit even though the gurus of hand tool beginnerdom strongly forbid this, if it's done perfectly, chisels don't dive in cuts and sharpening is better. If it gets too steep, though, the chisels can bounce in hardwoods a little bit, which is annoying. I'm going at it all on the bevel front side, but it's really not much different - anyone who works for a long time will start to avoid tools that chip or roll, but their avoidance will likely come from technique and not from purchasing better tools as I just did a semi standard test and there literally isn't a woodworking chisel that will chisel hardwoods with two flat planes intersecting at 30 degrees. Most will do pretty well at 32.

    As you say, seller's stropping is doing some of this. I'd be willing to guess that he sees somewhat reduced plane iron edge life than a cleaner sharpening method, but if sharpening is quick, it doesn't matter. I'm adapting this same method to planes, and what I can find so far is if the buffer has to run too long on an edge, clearance becomes a problem (it works better on irons that are a little easier sharpening/abrading, less well on really hard or highly alloyed irons).

    As far as how I was sharpening before, it was pretty much identical, but the last step was a small roundover with a fine stone instead of the buffer. The buffer is just super fast and the finish that it leaves is smoother than any stone that I've ever seen - and it never seems to get contaminated. I think if anything gets in the buffer wheel, it's either pushed in, or flies out. There's no hard backing for particles to damage edges. I thought before that the buffer would never do this as well as a fine slow stone because you can't control the geometry as much, but it turns out to be workable.

  16. #660
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    I went over the info out there on the Unicorn method, and it makes perfect sense to me. It's going to be my next sharpening experiment. In my mind, it explains why jig sharpening often under-performs freehand sharpening on actual wood...

    What kicked this off was Rob Crosman posting a video comparing a Woodcraft chisel to a Narex chisel, prepping them, doing some chopping, and commenting that both edges took comparable damage after a similar number of whacks... And I went.. "That's exactly what I'm seeing.. And he seems to treat it as if it's normal."

    I think the unspoken truth is that the reason some methods like buffing and stropping "aren't recommended" is that many people have this nasty tendency of overdoing things, then declaring it somebody else's fault. And so if you hand somebody like me a buffer and said "Sharpen your chisel" - I'll probably turn it into a shiny hemisphere, and then say "But David Said!!!" Sort of like how I had to go grind all the back-bevels off my chisels and plane irons after none of them would cut properly, because Brent Beach Said!!!!

    I did a similar thing when I first got my strop, and chased my edges way too high, stropped the backs till they went squirrelly... And, of course, I blamed the strop.

    Now, I know... But then, I didn't...

    And what I'm seeing in Unicorn is several things:
    1. Lowish primary bevel reduces cutting resistance from drag and wedging.
    2. The extremely small (around 0.0005") buffed high angle bevel beefs up the edge considerably
    3. The nearly imperceptible rounding of the back at the tip from the single buffer pass to knock off the wire edge also beefs up the edge considerably...

    But it's done VERY conservatively, to avoid messing up the geometry, which leads to chisels diving and going squirrelly. I bet the chisel still registers flat on a surface if you need to pare...

    This is probably some of the "Waterstone magic".... The slurry slightly rounds the very very tip if done properly, and you get a long lasting cutting edge.... And why older, slightly dished oil stones weren't really a problem.

    And that was probably Ye Olde Trick on paring chisels... Grind low (like 10-15 degrees), then buff to sharpen, and viola, they push cut like a champ without the edges falling off like all mine do when carefully sharpened to an exact angle.

    Your results on your Sorby, and your friend's on his BORG Buck make me wonder about my Aldi chisels, which are theoretically made of something along the lines of W1.

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