My new 99 cent chisel

[george wilson]

Larry,it seems a bit difficult to try to educate those who appear here,and say that experience does not count. That has happened twice here lately. Both admitted they were novices in steel or woodworking,respectively.

The steels that I am interested in are W1,01,D2,A2,ATS34,and other hardenable tool steels,and wrought iron. Except for the wrought iron, the steels that you can make cutting tools with. Not much interested in mild steel. The manganese in A36 was not pertinent to the question. I was only interested in the 28% carbon in it,as not being sufficient to make a decent cutting tool. I wanted to keep the discussion as simple as possible since Luke is a total beginner(Even if he has things to teach me!)


I have even made my own alloys of bronze. Mostly 10% tin and 90% copper,when I used to cast bronze chariot planes and other tools. But,at the time I had to do it out doors,which wasn't that convenient. Couldn't run my gas and coke furnaces inside the house! I unfortunately left them 2 moves ago. I made an experimental brass alloy containing 20% lead,which I read as making a VERY HARD brass. Sure enough,the casting could not be touched with a file! Probably would have shattered if struck.

Yes,it was possible to use bronze chisels to make the pyramids-IF you have an army of black smiths behind you,re working the cutting edges!


Patrick,if he is using a Mapp gas or propane torch,it is seriously doubtful if any carburization took place. I HAVE carburized mild steel parts,but I had to use a carburizing (carbon rich) flame with an oxy-acetelyne torch. After about an hour,I got the part(a pistol hammer)when I was a teenage ,hard as blazes after water quenching(Not,not a zip gun,a legitimate .22 cal. target pistol). I have also used Kasenite(no longer available),and aquarium charcoal (In a heavy,cast iron container with lid) to case harden small tools such as chasing hammer heads. But,using a good,hardenable steel is still the best approach. Those other things were just experimental,though I still use the Kasenite hardened hammer head to this day. They sell "Cherry Red",a Kasenite substitute these days,though I don't think it is as good as Kasenite. Kasenite apparently had something deemed harmful(cyanide?) in it. I know of no one who experienced any harmful effects using it. Too bad,a good product is gone(Except for the stash I still have!)

Some cast bronze tools I made,and the head of a chasing hammer I hardened with Kasenite. The face takes small little dents,but it has held up quite well since the 70's (1979 on this hammer),when I was doing a lot of experiments. A bar of 1 1/2" )01 drill rod cost enough that I decided to just try case hardening the hammer. I could have gotten a deeper case with aquarium charcoal,but used what I had at the time.

Sorry,the picture of the cast bronze chariot plane is over lit,and you can see only part of the engraving. I never was a decent photographer.

Larry,I am sure that you know much more about steels than I do,as my interests are of a limited focus on tool steels,and wrought iron(working in a museum situation). Many tools in the 18th. C.,were wrought iron,bitted with a high carbon steel bit for the cutting edge. As Japanese tools are made these days(If they can get the wrought iron- used only on their more expensive tools).

Oh,BTW,Luke,I have tried the "magic" soap-salt,etc. solution you refer to. And tested the resulting quenching with my Versitron hardness tester. The magic quench is hardly worth the effort,producing only a few points of higher hardness. But,not sufficient to make a good cutting tool from.

We have a World class blacksmith shop here in Williamsburg. I can learn anything I need to from them. BTW,I made the patterns for their anvils many years ago. Just before I retired,I made another pattern from an original anvil. It has 5 legs and a rather small horn. Both these anvils are about 300#.

You have stated that I use modern methos for everything. That is not true. For 40 years I worked in a museum dedicated to the 18th. C.. A LOT of my work methods are taken from that period. I used wooden planes for many years,and still do,for example.

[Patrick Chase]

Just to be clear, I wasn't suggesting that Luke had created a case-hardened chisel. As you point out that can be a bit difficult even when you're *trying* to do it, and carbon diffusion isn't that fast. I was merely trying to acknowledge [some of] the ways in which a low-carbon steel can be hardened.

I suspect that selective hardening of a chisel would be a bad idea anyway, as the resulting internal stresses would cause the tip of the chisel to warp whenever the primary bevel is reground.

[george wilson]

I see nothing wrong with case hardening a SMALL chisel. And,tempering it back just as you would a regular piece of water hardening steel. After all,only the cutting edge does the cutting,and that edge is quite thin.

In the Millwork shop,,I was friendly with the staff. They used to make long,wide chisels out of just hot rolled steel to cut the dried foam off of Gorilla glue. They used it on out door furniture.

I made a quick and dirty chisel for one of the men,and did case harden the last 3" of the cutting end of his chisel. It worked fine for scraping glue off.i wouldn't say it would be a good tool for actual chiseling wood,but for a 1/8" chisel,i think it would be fine. I think a ice pick ground into a chisel might be a better idea. I don't know off hand how hard ice picks are,but they must have reasonable hardness to not bend the point when chipping ice. I know some guys have used them for small chisels.

[Patrick Chase]

In the Millwork shop,,I was friendly with the staff. They used to make long,wide chisels out of just hot rolled steel to cut the dried foam off of Gorilla glue. They used it on out door furniture.

I was not aware that they had polyurethane adhesives in the 18th century :-):-):-)

I've noticed that all of the chisels I own from a certain brand (and no others) tend to "self-dub" a tiny bit whenever the primary bevel is reground. It's visible under close examination but not enough to have a large impact on cutting performance, and these chisels are fairly well-regarded by others. It seems very likely that it's the result of internal stresses, with the surface under compression and core under tension, such that grinding the bevel back allows the newly-unsupported part of the back at the tip to curl. I suspect that case hardening would have a similar impact, though obviously that's a "don't care" for the sorts of applications you described. Perhaps not coincidentally the brand in question is known to use a fairly unique hardening/quenching process.

[Tony Zaffuto]

Several comments:

First, George, I used some of the "Cherry Red" this past winter (don't remember for what), EXACTLY per instructions, and the results were no where as good as "kasenite". George, have you ever heard of heat treating by heating cherry red and plunging the piece into copper powder? I never tried it, but an old timer, about thirty years ago, swore you could harden steel that way.

Second, I'm not going to get involved in discussions of what method is right or wrong, but at my manufacturing plant, our sintering ovens and metals sintered, are processed per the raw material supplier's guidelines. At my in-house tool shop, tooling is heat treated and annealed exactly per the supplier's instructions (primarily Carpenter tool steel). There is a real danger in using tooling not properly heat treated (a neighboring plant had a punch mistakenly made from D2 instead of S7, heat treated like S7, and the punch shattered like glass, nearly kiling the machine operator).

My suggestion for experimenting is to either locate a local tool steel supplier and pickup an instruction book for the materials you're using, or get a copy of Machinery Handbook, which gives some general guidelines.

[Patrick Chase]

Second, I'm not going to get involved in discussions of what method is right or wrong, but at my manufacturing plant, our sintering ovens and metals sintered, are processed per the raw material supplier's guidelines. At my in-house tool shop, tooling is heat treated and annealed exactly per the supplier's instructions (primarily Carpenter tool steel). There is a real danger in using tooling not properly heat treated (a neighboring plant had a punch mistakenly made from D2 instead of S7, heat treated like S7, and the punch shattered like glass, nearly kiling the machine operator).

In fairness to Luke, a chisel isn't exactly a machine punch. If one shattered you could certainly get hurt, but probably not irrecoverably so (provided you wear eye protection etc)

The thought of oil-quenched (assuming the piece was big enough to require that under S7's guidelines) and under-tempered D2 makes me shudder though. Ugh.

[Tony Zaffuto]

In fairness to Luke, a chisel isn't exactly a machine punch. If one shattered you could certainly get hurt, but probably not irrecoverably so (provided you wear eye protection etc)

The thought of oil-quenched (assuming the piece was big enough to require that under S7's guidelines) and under-tempered D2 makes me shudder though. Ugh.

Punches in my industry are generally cored with interior pin. Wall thickness of the punch can run from a low of .050" to several inches or more.

As far as Luke goes, I would agree that an injury from shattering would probably not be life threatening, but then again I recall about 50 years ago a chum hammering/splitting nut off a bolt, using a cold chisel, hitting with an ordinary nail hammer. Sliver of metal flew off the strike point of the chisel and imbedded in another chum's arm deep enough that surgery was needed to get it out.

[george wilson]

Patrick,do not confuse the Millwork Shop with the Anthony Hay cabinet shop(which is in the Historic Area). The millwork shop is under no constraint to use 18th. C. methods in making the numerous outdoor furniture,doors,windows and hundreds of other things needed in the upkeep of historic area houses. They try to build furniture that can get rained on all the time and not fall apart.

Tony,when I was pretty young,I got "shot" in the left shoulder several times by a nearby kid hammering on a crow bar with a steel hammer,taking a large wooden crate apart. I didn't know at first what was happening. The hammer was shedding little bits of steel. Luckily I wasn't hit in an eye.

I never did anything about the bits of steel. They are either still in there,or dissolved. At least it wasn't stainless steel!

another time when I was still young,I had made a NICE 2" wide skew chisel from a large file. I got all the teeth off and polished the chisel nicely. Sharpened it up razor sharp. The first thing it did when I BARELY touched the wood in the lathe,was to bust in half,and send the razor sharp part whizzing JUST by my head! Now,THAT could have blinded me.or certainly gashed me badly. I didn't know at the time that I should have drawn the temper. To this day,though,I hardly EVER try making a turning tool from a file. Even when drawn BLUE,they are STILL TOO BRITTLE. I have made one or 2 SMALL turning tools,but very small,and very carefully used.

I don't try getting by cheap about tool steel. The results might not be cheap!!!

[Steve Voigt]

Dave Zellers,

Nice looking chisel. Anyone who says "your time is only worth 20 cents an hour" has probably never had the satisfaction of making a useful tool.

As others have said, files can be brittle and are not necessarily ideal for chisels, but if you use it mostly for pushing and sharpen it at 30° or steeper, it should be fine.

A couple years ago, I broke my narrowest chisel. It was the weekend, so I drove to the orange death star and resolved to buy a 1/8" chisel. I can't even remember if they had them or not; all I remember is that I looked at those hideous, oversize plastic handles and walked out. I took a small, used-up saw file and spent a few hours making an unbolstered chisel with octagonal handle. I'm still using it, two years later…

[Pat Barry]

When Lee Valley announced their recent free shipping event, I thought I would buy a 1/8" chisel which I have wanted for a while now.

Then when I was looking through my files a few days ago, I realized I could make one out of an old worn mill file that I never use anymore.

So I ground down the file marks almost all the way- (I wanted to stay as close to 1/8" thickness as possible) tapered it a bit toward the end and then put a 25º bevel on it. This steel seems really hard- it is sharp!

I made the handle from a scrap of 1 1/8" birch dowel and the ferrule from a 3/4" copper coupling which cost me 99 cents. Plus I only used half of it so technically only 49 1/2 cents! I already know I'll use the cutoff on another chisel.

The thinking for this actually started while I was watching Paul Sellers' recent video making light duty cam clamps. I couldn't be happier with the result. Maybe 4-5 hours of work, mostly because I was winging it the whole time.

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Nice work! I seriously doubt you will ever have any issues with this little gem. If it does snap whn you are using it (abusing it) by trying to lever out some deep mortise or even hammering it in, the piece that snaps off ( the tip) will be embedded into the wood anyway. There is no way you will snap that thing off in the wide area. You are not putting that much force into it to do that in normal woodworking. Just don't try to lever something out sideways!