Sharpening Chisels

[AngleEyes]

It's not a rare occurrence to find a hidden nail or screw and when that happens I chuck it away and buy a new one.

Do you buy all your nails and screws in singles? Where do they sell 'em like that? I think I need one. I've got one loose, not sure if it needs a new one.

 

[Justin Passing]

I have three sets of chisels on the go normally, with the number 1 set used for fitting door locks hinges etc. It's not a rare occurrence to find a hidden nail or screw and when that happens I chuck it away and buy a new one.

Makes sense, but my workshop ones https://www.workshopheaven.com/hand...-chisels/fujikawa-japanese-bench-chisels.html are a bit posh for that.
Cheapies deffo have their place, and you can hit them with a hammer...
Can't bear to bin tools so I have a drawer for tools which "need attention when I have time". I've forgotten what's in it so I'll get someone else to bin the drawerful so I don't have to look...

 

[fillyboy]

Makes sense, but my workshop ones https://www.workshopheaven.com/hand...-chisels/fujikawa-japanese-bench-chisels.html are a bit posh for that.
Cheapies deffo have their place, and you can hit them with a hammer...
Can't bear to bin tools so I have a drawer for tools which "need attention when I have time". I've forgotten what's in it so I'll get someone else to bin the drawerful so I don't have to look...

I buy Irwin chisels from Howdens these days but been hearing about the Jap chisels, not cheap but highly rated from what I hear, superior steel apparently. Seen them on Rutlands site.
Funnily enough I saw a Japanese mastic gun in the builder merchant which looked the dogs, but when I saw it was £24 I thought, no. Now mastic guns, I've been known to throw them after a single use because they're so crap, I try to stick to the Cox brand and they normally last a few months.
Anyway, a week later in the Builders merchant I picked up the Jap mastic gun, 3 years later the blighter is still working perfectly and probably saved me the cost of it 3 times over had I carried on with the cheap ones.

 

[Justin Passing]

I buy Irwin chisels from Howdens these days but been hearing about the Jap chisels, not cheap but highly rated from what I hear, superior steel apparently. Seen them on Rutlands site.
Funnily enough I saw a Japanese mastic gun in the builder merchant which looked the dogs, but when I saw it was £24 I thought, no. Now mastic guns, I've been known to throw them after a single use because they're so crap, I try to stick to the Cox brand and they normally last a few months.
Anyway, a week later in the Builders merchant I picked up the Jap mastic gun, 3 years later the blighter is still working perfectly and probably saved me the cost of it 3 times over had I carried on with the cheap ones.

When Ah were a lad they just had a reputation for cheap copies of things.
Then they started making things better than almost everyone else.
Motorbikes, cars, cameras, industrial equipment...

Bet you've got a couple of their saws, too.

I'd like one of their loos. Could be the only excitement I'm gonna get.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

It has now bee replaced with a belt sharpener, if I'm not super cautious it is easy to blue bits of the chisel. we only seem to have a 120grit belt. would a 60g belt help keep the temperature down when removing a lot of metal (and then just use the 120g for the last bit)

I'm the other way round - I bought myself a Sorby ProEdge about 5 years back to replace a Tormek T-series, which I found too slow for sharpening any quantities of chisels or plane irons, especially when badly nicked chisels or irons needed to be dealt with

Personally, I grind out nicks on 60 grit belt (always single bevel), then switch to a 120 belt and finally to a 240 belt ALL ON THE PRIMARY BEVEL before I grind the secondary (micro) bevel on the 240 grit. This is about 1mm when I start, but gets honed bigger over time. I only ever go back to 60 grit if a tool edge has hit an inclusion and been chipped - the rest of the time I start on either 120 or even 240 grits to do just a touch up. To help keep the blades square to the belt I use the PESQ square grinding jig (about £20) which saves a lot of time:

My question still remains, when forming the whole 25 degree bevel - would 60g generate more heat than 120g ?

No. (Sorry, those of you who think this, but you are plain wrong about finer grit = cooler, it'd the other way round) The lower the grit number (i.e. the more coarse the grit) the larger the grit particles and the faster the belt will cut. The higher the grit number, the smaller the grit particles and the slower the belt will cut. So a 120 grit belt will cut at maybe half (or less) the speed of a 60 grit belt (or will take twice as long to remove the same amount of metal) - and the longer the TIME your tool is in contact with the belt the more friction heat it will generate and the more likely it is to blue. I'd therefore recommend doing the majority of your sharpening on a 60 grit, with only a minimum of contact time required with the higher grits to polish out the edge. BTW I have yet to blue chisels on the ProEdge, but the I have found that the blue zirconium 60 grit belt seems to run a little cooler/cuts faster than the alox 60 grit belts.

@Munroast I'll look you out a 60 grit alox belt and send you one if you PM me an address and you can try it for yourself

I dip my chisels into water frequently but of course you have to reposition the thing every time.

Not if you are using a ProEdge with the PESQ on a ProEdge, you don't. The chisel will be presented to the belt at right angles and the correct (consistent) grinding angle every time.

Get some waterproof sanding belts!!
Doesn't need a vast amount of water to make a difference.

That simply won't work on a ProEdge - the belt runs way to fast and will potentially spray water everywhere as well as any getting inside the motor or electrics will screw it. The ProEdge is a dry grinding system with an accurate guide - used with the correct abrasive no messing about with water, other than the occasional dip of the tool into a jam jar full of water which is all that is necessary

Please Note: The above is NOT theory, it is based on reasonable use of the ProEdge over about 5 years (it gets pulled out once a week, and maybe every 4 to 6 weeks I'll have a big session where I regrind 15 to 20 chisels and/or plane irons) - for the ten or so years before that I had a Tormek T-series and before that a Makita horizontal wetstone grinder - so I think that I have a reasonable working knowledge of the differences between the different grinding systems. In addition to the ProEdge I nowadays also have an industrial 8in double ended grinder which is often used for freehand grinding of wrecking bars, pry bars, cat's paws, etc as and when required - and that really can burn tools super fast if you don't take care

What I work with: For work the chisels I use most of the time are Stanley Fat Max through tang bevel edge firmer chisels - these are perhaps a tad soft, but hone easily enough on a diamond plate when I'm out on site (very necessary for site work, I'd say). The big plus about them is that they will take a pounding by a steel hammer without the handles chipping or breaking. In addition I also have a set of Bahco 422 bevel edge firmer chisels - these have harder but more brittle steel than the Fat Maxes but their all plastic handles must be struck (when necessary) with either a wooden mallet or a plastic (Thor) hammer, lest they chip. For site use cheapies sometimes have their place (to hold doors open or as scrapers, mostly), but not for chopping mortises, hinge recesses, ironmongery pockets, etc IMHO

For bench use I do have a set of Ashley Iles mk.2 cabinetmaker's bevel edge chisels which are lovely tools but far too bloody good to take on site!

In addition have a (mottley) selection of mortise chisels, sash mortise chisels, registered mortise chisels, paring chisels, scribing gouges, etc - mostly old, but not all, which get used "as and when".

But everything gets fettled on the ProEdge

 

[Deleted member 174758]

I buy Irwin chisels from Howdens these days but been hearing about the Jap chisels, not cheap but highly rated from what I hear, superior steel apparently. Seen them on Rutlands site.

Yes, but Japanese woodwork is traditionally done in softwood or very mild hardwood, so their chisels are designed for that. Because they have a hollow back doing a regrinsd can take a lot more time than western chisels. Tried some many years ago (from Roger's if anyone remembers that shop) and decided they weren't much use to me in site work - same as most of the saws aren't of use to me, either, although I always carry a flush cut saw. Take a look at Workshop Heaven if you want to see some Japanese tool porn...

Funnily enough I saw a Japanese mastic gun in the builder merchant which looked the dogs, but when I saw it was £24 I thought, no.

Probably a Tajima - if it's silver and metallic red it's a Tajima Convoy. My current one is more than 3 years old and is now getting a bit ropey, but then I haven't loaned this one out very often. It's predecessor lasted more than 2 years and was the project "bicycle" (i.e. everyone had a ride). Like you I was very sceptical to start with. Yer pays yer money...

 

[catlad]

I bought a Tajima mastic gun but it was about 5mm short of fitting the larger mastic cartridges , it was also very slow so I gave it away as bad job.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

Were you using 300ml grip adhesive in cardboard tubes (like Pink Grip?). I've found them too long for a lot of skeleton guns, too. If your gun was slow, what ratio was it? Could be it was one meant for more viscous materials

 

[catlad]

Hi JK
The one I bought was the convoy-super-26 CNV-100SP26 it had a nice action but unfortunately it didn't fit the Geocell 201 which are 255mm long.
And it needed constantly squeezing.

 

[^woody^]

Back in the day, I recall that all the chippies had was a double sided oilstone and a file. And only very occasionally would a chisel be re-ground on a bench grinder. It may well be the steel was better and edges held longer, but either way that was how chisels were sharpened - edges and the work was good if the chippie was good.

Then came the internet and first the companies and then the "influencers" with there systems and grand ideas.

And yet the only real advance on an double sided oilstone is two diamond plates.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

I don't know which rose tinted glasses you are wearing today, @^woody^ but "back in the day" we were only too glad if we got called back to the workshop on a Friday afternoon, where there was a nice big Wouldham wetstone grinder (and by big I mean a 24in+ wheel) which you could use to grind out nicked edges (in a fraction of the time it would take to grind them out by hand) before you finish honed by hand. "Back in the day" we also used to get paid one hour a week, normally on Friday afternoon, as "sharpening time". That is long since gone. I still don't loan chisels to anyone because of the extra effort it takes to grind nicks out (and the fact that nobody ever takes car of edge tools)

AFAIK all chippies have ever done on site (unless absolutely unavoidable) is to hone the edges - grinding out a nick by hand on site takes so long that the gaffer would be ear 'oling you if you were caught doing it. The big difference is that in the sixties and seventies bench grinders got a lot cheaper (because people like Black & Decker and Stanley-Bridges got into the market with "consumer grade" models) which made it a lot easier to keep a sharp set of chisels with all the nicks ground out. That grinding was done at home

As to "good and bad" steel, I feel that's another urban myth when you are talking about medium quality chisels. For site carpentry work my personal preference is for a slightly softer steel in the chisel (in fact hardened to a slightly lower Rockwell number), and for a chisel design with a through tang, which allows me to drive it with a hammer (so no mallet - one less thing to carry about with me). This is to do with practicality. The slightly softer steel in the chisels I favour may not hold an edge as long as some older chisels, but it doesn't chip as readily and it hones out faster than super hard chisels - all of which makes it a better chisel for the environment in which I currently work. On those occassions that I need to do some hardwood work, out will come the Bahco chisels and (if needs be) a wooden mallet as those are sharpened and honed for hardwood, not softwood.

 

[^woody^]

Back in the day" we also used to get paid one hour a week, normally on Friday afternoon, as "sharpening time"

There you go then, the good old days