Thread: Chisels Breaking

Interesting issue sulfur. One of the people I met at the LN event a couple of years ago in Dallas is a retired QC engineer for Stanley / Proto. He told me that sulfur content, even if it is within the spec for a given alloy, is seriously detrimental. My readings have given me the information that hydrogen sulfide is particularly deleterious to high strength steels as it readily diffuses in to the metals and causes stress cracking. (jamme.acmsse.h2.pl/papers_vol37_2/3722.pdf)

Given that our digestive processes can produce H₂S it is possible that one or more of the previous owners of the two particular Berg chisels being discussed here induced the cracking by over-consumption of beans, pickled eggs or sauerkraut or perhaps all three and if combined with beer the effects could be even more destructive. Another possibility is that over the years exposure to biogenic H₂S caused such an accumulation of stress that the chisels simply couldn't take it any more.

Originally Posted by rob streeper

Interesting issue sulfur.

Given that our digestive processes can produce H₂S it is possible that one or more of the previous owners of the two particular Berg chisels being discussed here induced the cracking by over-consumption of beans, pickled eggs or sauerkraut or perhaps all three and if combined with beer the effects could be even more destructive. Another possibility is that over the years exposure to biogenic H₂S caused such an accumulation of stress that the chisels simply couldn't take it any more.

I think there was an episode on Mythbusters entitled Death by Flatulence. Some ancient Roman bloke was reputed to have died following a bout of excessive flatulence. That was busted too. Perhaps he was actually killed by self-generated loud noise.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by rob streeper

... it was simply that the steel made 100 years ago isn't as good as the stuff we have now.

If that is the case why is it that Japanese chisel makers go to the trouble of sourcing old steel as their prefered supply.

If that is the case why is it that Japanese chisel makers go to the trouble of sourcing old steel as their prefered supply.

My understanding is that the material sought is old wrought iron. The iron parts of chisels I've measured don't even register on the HRC scale. I need to set up one of my instruments for HRB, perhaps the Ames 4-4. Thoughts?

Another interesting history to look at is that of armor plating. Very dynamic field from the late 1800's to the present.

Sorry, don't have any JPEG's so how's a mental image?

Shattered chisels everywhere and a bouquet of pickled eggs and beer...

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

Perhaps he was actually killed by self-generated loud noise.

Blown O-ring.

Originally Posted by D.W.

The popularity of the original swedish ore was, IIRC, the high natural content of Nickel (there were other places in the world that benefited from this), but who knows where the ore comes from in current production chisels.

Okay, enough farting around.

The references I have make no mention of nickel content as contributing to the desirability of Swedish iron.

The story, from the technical standpoint, appears to be that the Swedish ore deposits held two distinct advantages. First the ore was very high grade, i.e. the iron content per ton was about twice that of other European deposits. Second, the Swedish iron had/has relatively low phosphorous and sulfur content. The chemistry of Swedish iron was thus much more suitable to the crucible methods that made Sheffield steel famous. Sheffield and the surrounding areas also produced iron but it couldn't compete with Swedish products because it was less concentrated and the higher impurity levels made for inferior steel.

The Swedish producers also enjoyed several commercial advantages. First Swedish iron production had long been controlled by the crown and the end result was a set of quality standards designed to protect the reputation and therefore market for Swedish iron products. Second of course is the quality and richness of the ore, less input per unit of output always wins. Third was the establishment of a tight market for Swedish iron with the manufacturers of Sheffield that tended to limit the access of would be competitors to the superior Swedish products. Fourth was the long tradition of Swedish iron production. The Swedes had a long time to organize and perfect the practices of their national iron industry and make it competitive on an international basis.

The Swedish superiority came under challenge with the development of the Bessemer process which allowed makers to economically refine and use lower grade iron ores. The later developments of the acid and basic lining open hearth furnaces further reduced the importance of having Swedish feedstock.

Another interesting tidbit I've learned is that the mid-Atlantic states were significant iron and steel producers in the early days of the United States up to the mid 19th century or so. These early makers often used surface ore deposits, referred to as 'bog iron', that occur in swampy coastal regions of New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts among others.

Maryland iron in particular was notable for its high manganese content which contributed to the superior qualities of steels made from it. Because of the nature of their formation however these deposits were quickly mined out and the industry disappeared leaving behind it traces in the form of a number of curious place names (THE ORIGIN OF THE IRON INDUSTRY IN MARYLAND).

Originally Posted by rob streeper

My understanding is that the material sought is old wrought iron. The iron parts of chisels I've measured don't even register on the HRC scale. I need to set up one of my instruments for HRB, perhaps the Ames 4-4. Thoughts?

Another interesting history to look at is that of armor plating. Very dynamic field from the late 1800's to the present.

If I had to take an educated guess based on every blacksmith I have ever met... I would expect they started using old wrought iron because they found it somewhere.... Read the stories of these guys finding an anchor chain, an old anchor, or a chunk of a boat on the beach.. Chunks of an old bridge or rail.... That's classic Blacksmith the world around... All of them do exactly the same thing..

Then cook up some fancy sounding mythology to justify it to the market place.... The factory made Japanese chisels are using some sort of miscellaneous low carbon steel for backing the hard steel like 1018 or A36.. That doesn't have the cool factor of 200 year old wrought iron - but it's no different functionally...

Originally Posted by Bohdan

If that is the case why is it that Japanese chisel makers go to the trouble of sourcing old steel as their prefered supply.

the blade of a Japanese chisel has two components
a thin hard steel cutting edge. This layer is often referred to as being "white" or "blue" steel, where the colour refers to the paper Hitachi Steel Corp uses to wrap the two different grades of hard steel for delivery.
a thick layer of soft iron used to support the cutting edge. It is this layer that Japanese smiths prefer to use pre-1890s wrought iron for.

the two layers of metal are forge welded together.

Originally Posted by Bohdan

If that is the case why is it that Japanese chisel makers go to the trouble of sourcing old steel as their prefered supply.

Are you talking about the andrews steel? It's a novelty and not better than current white 1 make, but it has name recognition as being a quality good from a time when the Japanese didn't make their own.

The same as true tamahagane. It's not really any better, but at a time when most steel was junk and it wasn't, it gained legendary status. White 2 is an exceptional "every day" steel for chisels, and if a maker has their process down to the tolerances needed, white 1 is probably as good as anything ever made for blades.

Some of the andrews steels have undesirable characteristics, too. Swallow steel and some of the other high alloy steels are hard to sharpen, and won't hang on to their carbides on the initial edge (they probably do well when you just need to do a lot of work, but the finish passes are the territory of the plainer steels).

yes on the other comment about kamaji (wrought), watetsu, whatever spec you're looking at. It's more desirable as the backer, but it's not as rare as it's made out to be in ad copy. It's just left over from old structures.

If you're on your toes, you can go out and buy a decent soft wrought kanna on japanese yahoo that will only need some dai fitting for about $50. I have bought planes, including planes with andrews steel, and I prefer the simpler planes. I could never get any benefit out of the expensive steels, especially at acute angles. But having the softest possible wrought iron on a kanna is dreamy - you just need to be able to spot it by eye. If there aren't tiny voids in the backing metal on the bevel, don't purchase.

Chisels are different because the wrought can actually be too soft for chisels.

(there is one instance where something like togo reigo can be useful as an indicator of quality, and that is as a signal. You're unlikely to find it in a quickly made plane blade because of the price, but above $300 or so for new japanese planes, there's little or no performance gain, and retailers of planes have been moving their prices up, so that bar can be harder to meet when you're new. For example, Tomohito Iida just decided in the last year or so that planes that were about $450 should now be $780US or something of that sort. He just took his old page down, replaced it and is charging much higher prices for tools that were made to be fairly inexpensive (like Ogata and Nakano).

Beware as a buyer that there is a lot of nonsense in japanese tools, both from western sellers and from japanese sellers. "Trick Gaijin"!

Originally Posted by rob streeper

Interesting issue sulfur. One of the people I met at the LN event a couple of years ago in Dallas is a retired QC engineer for Stanley / Proto. He told me that sulfur content, even if it is within the spec for a given alloy, is seriously detrimental. My readings have given me the information that hydrogen sulfide is particularly deleterious to high strength steels as it readily diffuses in to the metals and causes stress cracking. (jamme.acmsse.h2.pl/papers_vol37_2/3722.pdf)

Given that our digestive processes can produce H₂S it is possible that one or more of the previous owners of the two particular Berg chisels being discussed here induced the cracking by over-consumption of beans, pickled eggs or sauerkraut or perhaps all three and if combined with beer the effects could be even more destructive. Another possibility is that over the years exposure to biogenic H₂S caused such an accumulation of stress that the chisels simply couldn't take it any more.

Yes on the sulfur, and i yield on the swedish ore. I could be remembering somewhere in continental europe where the nickel-filled ore (meteorite iron was certainly popular with egyptian royalty - high in nickel) was popular due to unexpected corrosion resistance.

I have heard about the swedish ore being low sulfur, though, and the English buying it because they knew theirs was no good, but they didn't know why. From what I gather, sulfur is probably the worst thing you can have in steel, and one of the reasons that the hitachi steel is so consistent is probably their tiny allowance for any sulfur in it.

Don't get me wrong, sulfur in steel isn't all bad. Some alloys are made with intentionally higher levels of sulfur because it makes the final product easier to work, i.e. free machining steels (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_machining_steel). Sulfur isn't always detrimental to edged tools either. 416 stainless has relatively high sulfur content to enhance machinability but nonetheless it makes good knives.

Out of curiosity, I just looked up the AISI spec for common steels in the US (W1, O1, etc), and the sulfur spec allows anywhere from .025% to .05%.

Hitachi white 1 allows .004%.

I'm sure there is a reason that they have such a tight spec on sulfur.

The write up on sulfur reminds me of lead in brass. It makes the metal easier to machine, but everything else seems to be detrimental (e.g., I can pein 360 brass on a plane, but have to be careful because it hits a magic threshold of work hardening where it goes from agreeable peining to just cracking and breaking right off - from one light hammer strike to the next).

Our posts just crossed on the wires between here and texas!

i'd defer on the sulfur when there are lots of other alloying elements involved. What I've found so far is that the plainest of steels fail the plainest and most uniform (which is really desirable if you're hand planing) and tolerate the widest range of sharpening media without funny behavior.

In my experiments sharpening, I tried to finish hone SGPS on wood with embedded diamonds. Again, it ripped voids in the surface of the steel and the edge was crap, like it had been torn off. In that case, the only thing that I found that really treats that steel the way it wants to be treated is doing the final step with a high speed buff. Then, it's great. Everything else, no. And despite the toughness and hardness that it has, I could've ground the entire knife blade away on a medium crystolon stone in an oil bath in about 20 minutes. And then in the next step, gone to a common natural stone and it's back to super tough and unpredictable.

I almost wrote the knife off as junk. It's powder metal and it came from the factory with voids all over the edge.

I used a relatively coarse cheap 5 micron alumina wax bar on a felt buffing wheel to hone that and it took a very high polish and very fine edge at that. I expected a wire edge from an abrasive that large, but no.

Just another example of the importance of finding what a steel likes when the steel is an oddball. Those knives have sold in droves, and I'll bet guys with a set of bench stones have struggled to get the edge where they want it. while I was looking around, I saw someone state that they thought S30V is a good steel for someone who likes to have an edge that finishes to a "gritty" finish. I don't own anything in S30V, because it doesn't really gain any durability over other steels until the total angle is 50 degrees (which is relatively pointless, as that creates wedging resistance, even with great sharpness), but I'm guessing guys are just trying to sharpen all of these oddballs on a process they already have in place rather than figuring out what they like.

what I don't like is that they (the large carbide steels) all seem to dump their carbides quickly and leave a toothed edge, regardless of what you sharpen them with. the buff rounded the SGPS a little on the edge, I'm sure, and seems to have prevented that. I pity da fool who ever pays a custom knife maker to make a razor out of that, though. Once in a while, I get emails from professional razor sharpeners when they run across odd stuff. One was a bulky s30V razor that someone paid $1000 for (that's not a typo). It was made by a knife maker (knife makers tend to not understand the importance of a delicate grind on a razor, or the important of plain steel with no large carbides in it). The guy writing had had the razor for about a month and couldn't get it sharp (some of those guys have a long turnaround time, which I guess is handy when they have a razor they can't figure out). I told him to dig out the smallest diamonds that he has, put them on a strop, strop the edge, avoid stropping on leather to follow, test shave and send it out. It'll be passable for a shave or two, but it can't be stropped to improve keenness, and the owner will be in a prison of shaving a couple of times, and then touching up on diamonds. All of that to get an edge that won't be as good as a $25 antique razor. He did what I said, got a passable shave out of it and sent it out and now won't take S30V.

But, for a while, all you could read was that S30V knives were the cat's back whistle.