Surprised, dissapointed, puzzeled

[Phillip West]

Ive dealt in steel for a long time..Ive learned to take hearsay and advertisement with a skeptical eye..Thats just the way it is..So many things to consider when you see an edge fail..Sharpening,bevel,angle,microbevel and certainly not least the heat treat..Then likely most of all what your attempting to cut..Though Im sure the Pmv-11 is good steel..Honestly Im somewhat surprised at why we have not seem CPM3v used in more woodworking tools..Its amazing at its edge holding and most of all its fine edge stability..Other than possibly price..Its pretty expensive..My wife actually ordered "One" 18" x 1 1/2" x 5/32" bar last night and it was almost $40 just for the raw piece of steel

[Winton Applegate]

Surprised, dissapointed, puzzeled

Life in general has that effect on me.
You'll get used to it with time.
The only source of sanity if not grace are Douglas Adams books.
Buy an espresso machine, lay in a stock of his books and take it easy. That's my advice.

[Thomas Schneider]

How timely this is for me! I'm in the process of building a split top saw bench out of Douglas fir, and was chopping out the waste on the dovetails for the top with what I thought were sharp chisels. I was having such a hard time I thought I was doing something wrong! I took a chisel off the rack that was freshly sharpened and went at it again. Same result. Turned out the lights and called it a night vowing to re-evaluate my sharpening technique this weekend. So maybe it's the wood after all!

[george wilson]

JUST observe the hard grains in the fir. They are HARD!!!!!!! Give me all hard any time. Those hard rings put a lot of strain on pretty small areas of the chisel blades,causing them to fail in those spots.

[Reinis Kanders]

Yeah, I just remembered that my Ray Isles D2 steel 1/4" chisel was also chipping when mortising in Doug Fir, it had about 35 degree secondary bevel.

How timely this is for me! I'm in the process of building a split top saw bench out of Douglas fir, and was chopping out the waste on the dovetails for the top with what I thought were sharp chisels. I was having such a hard time I thought I was doing something wrong! I took a chisel off the rack that was freshly sharpened and went at it again. Same result. Turned out the lights and called it a night vowing to re-evaluate my sharpening technique this weekend. So maybe it's the wood after all!

[David Dalzell]

Well I guess that my chisels are probably ok. Darned "soft" wood. Thinking about it I can see that narrow bands of hard (dark) wood will put a lot of stress on a narrow portion of the chisel edge, causing edge degradation. A different chopping technique might solve this problem. This is the first time I have built anything with Douglas Fir (a saw till with two drawers). I generally build furniture with hardwood. Softwood is normally limited to drawer bottoms, mostly Port Orford Cedar. PO cedar and other aromatic cedars don't seem to have this problem.

Thanks everyone for the input and collective wisdom.

David

[Andrew Hughes]

Mmm,Port Orford cedar is a lovely wood to work.I hardly ever get any down here in so cal.Have you tryd air dried Doug fir I thought about it and kinda remember it not being so tough.One draw back might be the pitch will flow when it gets warm.Almost as if the tree thinks it's still alive.Aj

[Kees Heiden]

..Honestly Im somewhat surprised at why we have not seem CPM3v used in more woodworking tools..Its amazing at its edge holding and most of all its fine edge stability..Other than possibly price..Its pretty expensive..My wife actually ordered "One" 18" x 1 1/2" x 5/32" bar last night and it was almost $40 just for the raw piece of steel

I think another reason is "sharpebility". We like a steel to be easilly sharpened. For CPM3v you need diamonds at least and not everyone likes to sharpen with diamonds.

[george wilson]

Just get ceramic stones. They will sharpen any steel out there. Use a diamond stone to quickly eliminate nicks though.

[george wilson]

My house was built in 1949 by a man who owned a lumber mill. The beams in my basement are 2 3/4" x 9" of old,hard yellow pine. You have to pre drill a hole in them too,to drive a nail. No plywood in this house,and real plaster walls. The only house I have lived in where I can't tell if the upstairs shower is running.

[Stephen Clement]

Thinking about it I can see that narrow bands of hard (dark) wood will put a lot of stress on a narrow portion of the chisel edge, causing edge degradation.

David

This is spot on. It has nothing to do with the wood being hard or soft, it is that there are both at the same time. The chisel hardly notices the soft wood, cuts quickly and then slams to a stop when it hits the hardwood. Its almost like running into a nail in a piece of cedar. I bet both chisels stay nicely sharp in both maple and cedar, but doug fir tears them to shreds.

[Shawn Pixley]

I'll second Marc's observation. I've unfortunately bent many a nail in hard DF that were the studs in old houses in the Pacific NW.

[Phillip West]

I think another reason is "sharpebility". We like a steel to be easilly sharpened. For CPM3v you need diamonds at least and not everyone likes to sharpen with diamonds.

That's true, 3v is not easy to sharpen on regular materials..Its very abrasion resistant.