Chisel Edge Retention Questions

[Wilbur Pan]

Thanks Wilbur! One other question, japan-tool has some "dovetail" chisels made by Tasai (among others) that have zero side, the chisel blade is a perfect triangle. Is this over the top from your perspective?

Um, maybe.

I haven't yet run into the dovetail where I would need that type of corner on a chisel myself, but then again, the Blue Spruce dovetail chisels have gotten rave reviews for exactly that feature. There are other options: skew chisels and fishtail chisels will also get you into a corner.

If you ever did run into that situation, you could easily grind or file down the side of any chisel yourself to give yourself the profile you need, which is what I would most likely do.

[Marcus Ward]

I bought a set of el cheapo harbor freight chisels ($7 for the whole set!), ground the 1/4" down into a triangle profile, heat treated it, and it's wonderful for cutting out tiny little narrow pin slots between tails. The rest of the set I heat treated properly as well (it's a water quench) and they hold an edge as well as any of my vintage witherby chisels, remaining sharp even after chopping out a lot of dovetails in oak.

Someone once opined that modern chisels are not heat treated to a high degree of hardness because modern "woodworkers" use them to do stupid things like open cans of paint, and a very hard chisel will break in that application. To avoid returns due to user stupidity, irwin and their ilk have been making them a little softer so they last longer under abuse, but making them worthless to real neanderthals like ourselves. Properly heat treating them is pretty easy, so a cheap set can become a wonderful set for someone on a budget. For those of you with high credit limits and large amounts of disposable income, you should buy those blingtastic blue spruce jobs and post pictures so I can drool over them.