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Thread: Soft New Irwin Chisel

  1. #31
    I guess specs that that set a low bar....can still be called "technical real specs". Good stuff gets melted down too. Ask
    Cellini.

  2. #32
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mel Fulks View Post
    I guess specs that that set a low bar....can still be called "technical real specs". Good stuff gets melted down too. Ask
    Cellini.
    Right, but before we talk about Irwin's 'low bar', I suggest getting some actual facts might be in order.

  3. #33
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    I have two brands of chisels, old Stanley and Lie Nielsen. The Lie Nielsen chisels are outstanding.
    Most of the Stanley chisels are good, there is some junk there. My Stanley chisels are old 750's.
    Stanley is an old line and they did occasionally put out junk.

    I don't hesitate to buy an old 750 if I run across one. The 720 line is good also.

  4. #34
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    I suspect I've provoked one or more people who invested in multiple Irwin chisels.

    Here is my take on it. This is not the first time I've checked a cutting tool's hardness by scratching it. I have done it with many knives. The ones that scratched easily turned out to be inferior and annoying to use. Maybe now someone will chime in with a hopeful, "Knives are not chisels."

    I remember trading pocket knives with my great uncle when I was a kid. Case knives from the 1960's were popular in his area. The steel was okay, and they cut pretty well for their time, although they were vastly inferior to stainless knives other companies were starting to make. Then someone at Case made a bad decision, and they started turning out knives with blades that were a lot like aluminum. They dropped down into the garbage tier along with brands like Camillus. The Irwin chisel reminded me of that.

    Perhaps I am making a horrible mistake, but I am content. To me, it's like going on a date and hearing calls from collection agencies while you wait for the woman in her living room. Not irrefutable proof, but not a good sign! A good signal to slip out the front door or even climb out a window. And I can get Narex for $2 more, with ample reason to believe they will provide fine service.

    I now refer all future complaints to George Wilson, who doesn't like them either. Go get him!
    Last edited by Steve H Graham; 06-27-2017 at 3:05 PM.
    Cry "Havoc," and let slip the dogs of bench.

    I was socially distant before it was cool.

    A little authority corrupts a lot.

  5. #35
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    A quick G.....e search finds multiple reviews citing Rc 58 to 61 for hardness. They say that's what a chisel should be. Who knows?

  6. #36
    Steve search for Hardness Testing File Sets. They start about $75 and go up from there. They will give you a more consistent comparison. Not perfect but a lot cheaper than a Rockwell tester.

  7. Howdy! And thanks for the gracious welcome

  8. #38
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    Quote Originally Posted by Peter Christensen View Post
    Steve search for Hardness Testing File Sets. They start about $75 and go up from there. They will give you a more consistent comparison. Not perfect but a lot cheaper than a Rockwell tester.
    The problem with those files is that they're pretty coarsely spaced. Typical sets go about Rc +5 between files, which is on the same order as the difference between a properly hardened file and an unusably soft one.

    If you all you want to know is whether A is significantly harder than B then the scratch test is about the best you can do short of a full-blown hardness tester.

  9. #39
    I know Patrick I was a quality inspector for better than 27 years so had training on hardness and conductivity for the aerospace parts we made. They will give Steve a ballpark reading to back up his other comparisons. When it bugs him enough he'll go out and buy a hardness tester of his own.
    Last edited by Peter Christensen; 06-27-2017 at 5:20 PM.

  10. #40
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    I don't like Irwins either, for chisels. Most of my "go-to" are from the 1920 or before. Butcher, Witherby, and the OLD Buck Brothers. "Modern" chisels were from Aldis. I really do not care if they can be scratched by metal, I try to avoid such things while using them on wood. IF I want to "chisel" metal...I have Cold Chisels by Endereres (sp) or Arrow.

  11. #41
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    Quote Originally Posted by Peter Christensen View Post
    I know Patrick I was a quality inspector for better than 27 years so had training on hardness and conductivity for the aerospace parts we made. They will give Steve a ballpark reading to back up his other comparisons. When it bugs him enough he'll go out and buy a hardness tester of his own.
    The method he used has a long history.

    Back before there were hardness gauges, much less Rockwell/Vickers/Knoop/etc scales, somebody noticed that diamond scratched everything else, so they said "let diamond be called a 10"

    Then they discovered that diamond and pretty much only diamond scratched carborundum, so they said "let carborundum be called a 9"

    Next they realized that diamond and carborundum scratched corundum, and said "let corundum be called 8"

    Then there was quartz, which could be scratched by diamond, carborundum, and corundum. As you might expect quart was 7, and so on. It's called the Mohs hardness scale.

    There is absolutely *nothing* unreasonable or invalid about what the OP did. For a long time that was the state of the hardness-testing art. I find it mildly amusing that our resident 18th-19th Century woodworking devotee/expert was the one who objected most strenuously to an historically correct 18th-19th century method for evaluating hardness.

    BTW, carborundum == SiC (wet/dry paper, Crystolon), corundum == AlOx (most synthetic stones and sandpapers), quartz == novaculite (Arks and Jnats).
    Last edited by Patrick Chase; 06-27-2017 at 8:41 PM.

  12. #42
    I objected to the original posters proclamation that harder steel is always superior. And that one can judge a chisel simply by knowing its hardness. All chisels could be manufactured to be harder simply by tempering less. We have known this technology for millennia. We deliberately temper for a tougher less brittle chisel.

    I happen to think that professional woodworkers of two hundred years ago had a better feel for chisel quality than today's dilettantes. The quality shows up in the surviving examples.

    Mohs hardness scale was around for 70 or 80 years before the discovery of carborundum.

  13. Quote Originally Posted by Steve H Graham View Post
    Surely you don't think 1880 steel cutting tools are just as good as the best steel tools made in 2017.
    Define "best"

  14. #44
    Quote Originally Posted by Patrick Chase View Post
    I find it mildly amusing that our resident 18th-19th Century woodworking devotee/expert was the one who objected most strenuously to an historically correct 18th-19th century method for evaluating hardness.
    No sir, he objected to the idea that hardness is the ultimate standard by which chisels should be judged.
    Last edited by bridger berdel; 06-27-2017 at 10:06 PM.

  15. #45
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    Quote Originally Posted by Warren Mickley View Post
    I objected to the original posters proclamation that harder steel is always superior. And that one can judge a chisel simply by knowing its hardness. All chisels could be manufactured to be harder simply by tempering less. We have known this technology for millennia. We deliberately temper for a tougher less brittle chisel.

    I happen to think that professional woodworkers of two hundred years ago had a better feel for chisel quality than today's dilettantes. The quality shows up in the surviving examples.

    Mohs hardness scale was around for 70 or 80 years before the discovery of carborundum.
    Yep, you're right. Mohs' 9 was Corundum, and 8 was Topaz. That's what I get for trying to regurgitate the scale from memory instead of looking it up.

    As you know and I've already said, I agree that hardness is far from the only factor in determining what's a good tool.
    Last edited by Patrick Chase; 06-27-2017 at 11:27 PM.

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