Chisels maybe the wrong subcategory?

[Bryan Cramer]

I do want to mention the fact that the higher end chisels retain resale value provided they weren't abused or used up. I wasn't sure what I wanted and being a beginner at that time I went with the 5 piece Lie-Nielsen bench chisel set. They are a good all around chisel and have worked well with everything from dovetails to mortise squaring. I forget what angles I have them set, but I have some lower for paring. My Shapton glass stones have no problem sharpening them.

[ken hatch]

Hmmm,

That be the case what would the suggested lineup of stones be.

I may be interested in your Tormek. I do have to consider the mostpractical approach with regard to $$$$ at the moment as i just spent just under 20k on a jointer/planer and dust collector.

My guess is i could easily spend $6-700 on stones?

Patrick,

A set of three Eze-Lap diamond stones for the set up will run about $180 USD a set of Atoma's may be a little more, depending. Oil Stones for the finish will be the cheapest and the easiest to learn. A soft Ark and a Hard Black Ark from Dan's will be around $200 USD for the pair. Add in a Horse Butt strop from TFWW at $23 USD plus some "green stuff" from Veritas and for less than $500 USD you have as good a sharpening system as you can buy for use on HC steel tools. If you lean towards A-2 iron then things get a little messier.

Jnat stones can be more expensive but can/may add another level of sharpness, with Jnats it is just how high do you want to go. Brian should be able to fill you in on what a good lower cost set of Jnats will run.

ken

[David Peterson]

Patrick,
You've hit a rich vein with this group. Any chisel discussion around here is much more than a "sub-category". Heck, it could have its own forum!

- I've always sworn by my LN chisels. Their handles are a bit small for my taste but I like making my own anyway. That said, these are over 10 years old and I've never paid attention to types of steel. Maybe someone else can chime in - were they made of 0-1 back then? I had meant to add a 5/8" to this group recently but now realize that the steel may be different. If for no other reason, I have another handle pre-made and 7 makes a nice set.

-Learn to hand sharpen. By the time you've set up the Tormek you could have already touched up an edge on a stone and been back to work. Shaptons were my "ah-ha" moment but any stone, water or oil, can be just as efficient. The other great advantage of hand sharpening is that you don't need separate jigs or setups for bevel edge, mortise, skew or whatever edge your sharpening. I may not get exactly a 25 or 30 degree bevel but it's within a degree or two consistently.
LN chisel set.jpg

[Stanley Covington]

Point is I do understand how to properly sharpen a chisel and am capable. Granted I don't do it but I have and could. To date for my purposes a left over 12x12 piece of granite or marble flooring, a piece of 120,220,320 grit sandpaper has always sharpened my chisels as sharp as I need them for my purposes.

If 320 grit sandpaper is sharp and flat enough for you, then an expensive set of chisels would be a waste of money. Forget Lie-Nielson or any of the Japanese brands. The Japanese brands, for that matter, can be a lot of trouble to set up and maintain. Go instead with Narex. Good quality at a very reasonable price.

Avoid anything with a blade made in China.

Stan

[Brian Holcombe]

If you get into Japanese Natural stones, you can spend for performance or for performance and aesthetic. Aesthetic can become incredibly expensive, but you can get some really good performance out of a $200-$500~ finisher.

[Mike Holbrook]

Patrick,
Glad to hear you thinking about sharpening, in my humble opinion it is a very important part of using edged hand tools. I have a wide variety of options that I have tired over many years including: Japanese water stones by; King, Shapton & Sigma, diamond plates, Tormek, granite stone with sand paper, belt sander, natural stones, grinders ...(both with stones & CBN wheels)....

I think it is wise to have a grinder because properly used they can the fastest at removing steel, particularly if using a 80-180 CBN wheel. On the other hand some grinders, like the Tormek, are very slow if trying to remove large amounts of metal. In my experience even diamond plates are not very fast at doing things like cambering plane irons, hollow grinding...especially compared to the CBN wheels. It is easy to spend hours with stones and still not do the job a CBN wheel does in a few minuets. For me it was the big sharpening jobs like cambering blades that drove me nuts. No telling how many, many hours I "wasted" trying to do large jobs with stones by hand.

Now I do the major forming of bevels, in my case typically hollow grinds with the CBN wheels. It is so good to be able to get the job done in minuets instead of working for hours without making significant progress. The hard part of working so slow is you just have a hard time telling that you are polishing a surface that just isn't sharp. Now I get a decent edge/bevel with the CBN wheel and then only have to polish my edges with stones, I like my 2x8" Spyderco ceramic stones (about $70 ea on Amazon, a medium & fine or extra fine will do the job). They last indefinitely, may never need to be leveled and need no messy water or oil to work. There have been a number of our more experienced woodworkers who have started using these stones in the last year or so, because they are so easy to use. One can buy a good grinder, two CBN wheels and a couple or three Spydercos for about what a single Tormek with a jig or two costs. The CBN wheels and Spyderco stones provide what can be argued is a permanent, total solution as neither the CBN wheels or Spydercos are likely to wear out in an average woodworkers life time.

[steven c newman]

Afraid my sets of chisels MIGHT be a bit hard for you to acquire...
chisels.jpg
Just a sample. There are ones by "Witherby" and a few that Stanley made for others. There are the ones I bought at Aldis as well. Other than the Aldi set, the rest are from yard sales and the like. The Skinny ones are mainly mortise chisels, including a Butcher or two. I have a decent set of both the tang and the Socket styles
FAT chisel.jpg
There is a set of yellow handled "beater" chisels for rougher work
chisel rack, again.jpg
Just some beaters. mainly I go after the Vintage ones.

[David Eisenhauer]

The Tormek (or any other power grinder) will perform the "grinding" stage of sharpening, but you will still have to hand sharpen ("hone") to the final cutting edge. Once a chisel (or plane iron) is ground to the desired main bevel angle, hand honing to the final bevel does not take very long. When I set up to start intensive chisel work, I plop my sigma stones into their water troughs and start working on my project. If a chisel becomes dull as I work along, it does not take me long to freshen up the cutting edge by rubbing it on (usually) one stone. Periodically, on a non-chisel use work day or prior to starting a new project or phase of an on going project, I may have to drop back and re "grind" the chisels on the rougher stones (or a power grinder if that is what is preferred), but, unless I have chipped an edge, it does not take very long. Point is, the initial sharpening session, including flattening the back of the chisel, is the most time consuming unless the edge is chipped severely. I would buy one chisel in the size (maybe 1/4" or 6mm ?) that I will use most and try it out before I bought several. Steel choices aside, in my opinion, the handle length/size/shape is very important and, if you do not have a previous extensive chisel use in your past experience, you may not know what you really prefer at this time. Or, you can go through the buy/sell rotation on expensive chisel sets until you settle on what you prefer.

[Robert Engel]

Hmmm,
..... as i just spent just under 20k on a jointer/planer and dust collector.

plus looking to buy a Tormek.

And this guy is worried about dropping $800 on a set of Japanese chisels?

??? All I can say is 'Hmmmmmmm'.

[Mike Holbrook]

I have to wonder if posters who state that a Tormek or any other grinder will perform the "grinding" stage of sharpening, have actually tried grinding a hollow grind into a A2 BU plane blade with one? Because I have owned a Tormek for 15-20 years and tried grinding with it many times and I am here to say it isn't easy. I made posts about my frustrations for years before I found other posters with Tormek's suggesting that the slow speed, relatively fine stone that tends to load/glaze fairly easy combine to make it a better sharpening/polishing tool than a grinding tool. Recently I read more posts about experienced guys selling or replacing their Tormek than posts about people buying new ones.

I bought a single Japanese mortise chisel off ebay, which David Weaver helped me locate. When the chisel arrived it had a corner nocked off. I bought a DMT Dia-Flat 120-grit diamond plate, because of claims of how fast it worked. I worked the chisel blade on the brand new DMT plate for several days for long periods before I finally got the corner worked off and it still needs work. Recently I tend to use a much less expensive Eze-Lap 2x6" 400/1200 double sided or 600 (off Amazon) as I don't try to "grind" edges with diamond stones/plates. If a few strokes on a small diamond sharpener want restore a decent edge that my ceramic stones can polish to working grade, the tool goes back to the grinder. I am trying to decide whether or not to go ahead and fix the old 5/8" mortise chisel on the CBN wheel, which will leave a slight hollow grind, as some Japanese chisel fans suggest against hollow grinding these blades. I am inclined to follow Derek Cohen's lead and just do it.

I am very grateful to guys like Derek and David who eventually convinced me to try hollow grinding. Just a slight hollow grind makes hand sharpening simple and very fast in my experience. I have spent untold hours sharpening over many years and nothing I have tried works as fast or makes restoring a sharp edge as easy as hollow grinding on a grinder and simply retouching/polishing by hand with very hard ceramic stones. Nothing I have found in my history of woodworking has proven to make using edged tools as pleasurable as this improved way of sharpening. Yes, I am on a mission to save other guys new to woodworking with edged hand tools many, many long, frustrating hours trying to regrind and sharpen. I am not questioning whether or not others can make other systems work, I am sure they can. I would question whether or not "other" methods are as fast or easy over the long term.

[Jim Koepke]

I would question whether or not "other" methods are as fast or easy over the long term.

My acquisition of old tools has slowed down of late. Last year I found a cheap hand crank grinder that only gets used occasionally.

For blades in terrible condition there is a 4' hunk of granite in the shop with abrasive paper attached. This has been able to remove the worst nicks, rust spots and other detractors from old, abused tools. Working by hand it is possible to get the blades warm.

For normal folks, a grinder may have many advantages. For the rest of us, there is always another way to get where we want to go.

jtk

[Mike Henderson]

I like A2 chisels or the LV PM-V11 chisels. I find that plain carbon steel chisels (except for Japanese chisels) do not hold up well.

As far as sharpening, I use a WorkSharp with diamond plates to put the initial bevel of 25 degrees on the chisels and then put a secondary bevel by hand on Shapton stones. I have some Japanese chisels and treat them the same way. I can get several "touch-ups" on the stones before I have to re-establish the primary bevel.

I like the WorkSharp because it's a dry sharpening technique. A Tormek (which I've used in the past) is too messy - it gets water all over the place - and it's a very expensive tool when you include all the "extras". Here's a tutorial on what I do.

As for preferences, I find the PM-V11 to be the best, both at getting a fine edge and holding that edge the longest. The Japanese chisels are next, the A2 are next and any plain carbon steel chisels are last. I have antique Swan and Witherby chisels as well as modern plain carbon steel chisels.

I teach hand cut dovetails and the students use my chisels so I do a lot of sharpening.

Mike

[I don't like the traditional handles on Japanese chisels so I've rehandled all my Japanese chisels with western style handles.]

[Some people say that carbon steel gets sharper but that's just subjective. I doubt if anyone has an objective test of sharpness. And I've never found that any of my chisels are not sharp (after sharpening, that is). If you do a good job of sharpening, the chisels will be quite serviceable, no matter what the steel. Then, you look at how long the edge lasts, and that's where carbon steel falls down.]