Stanley Sweetheart Chisels First Fmpressions

[Daniel Rode]

They are advertised as "High-carbon chrome steel" and elsewhere described as "chrome-vanadium steel hardened to Rc57-62".

[Brian Holcombe]

Its very surprising to me that you would need to do any such work on a chisel that has machining marks of those like you have. I'm perplexed as to how the thing could NOT be flat yet have grinding marks like those. Do you have any idea about just how much out of flat those chisels actually are? Keeping in mind that flattening the back will be quite time consuming, I wonder whether or not there is any benefit in really improving over the factory results. I'd really be curious why the chisels aren't super flat right from Stanley. I of course, don't mean machining marks - those I think you could really care less about.

Batch machinery wears and goes out of flat. However batch production does not lend itself to maintaining very tight specs because it causes downtime.

Having had the pleasure of re-machining batch work with more accurate grinding machines in my past I can say for certain that a good looking grind does not mean an accurate grind.

FWIW a consistent crosshatch pattern would be a better indicator flatness than those lines.

[John Kananis]

[Originally posted by John: " the A2 steel on these chisels to be extremely tough

Do they advertise these chisels to be A-2 steel? I would doubt that they are. More likely just a generic high carbon tool steel.[/QUOTE]

Thank you for catching that, I completely misstated.

[Daniel Rode]

I measured each chisel tonight. I think they are in inches but not very accurately.

1/8" +1/64 light
1/4" +1/64 light
3/8" +1/32
1/2" -1/256
5/8" + 1/128
3/4 +1/64 light
1" = +-0
1 1/4" + 1/32 heavy

Dan,

I am curious about the box showing the sizes in inch and metric. Have you checked them to see if they are truly inch or are they metric sizes?

jtk

[Jim Koepke]

Thanks Dan, the deviation is interesting.

jtk