Quick report from Berea

[Dave Jeske]

John (and anyone else who would like to comment) - would you mind explaining why you liked the Blue Spruce over the LN chisels? Was it the ergonomics or was it the steel (sharper, holds an edge longer, etc.). Or was it just the looks of the chisels?

Mike

Mike, If it is okay to reply, let me know and I will give a short explanation of the new chisels and what I was trying to accomplish. Otherwise I will have info on my site in a few days.
Dave

[Mike Henderson]

Mike, If it is okay to reply, let me know and I will give a short explanation of the new chisels and what I was trying to accomplish. Otherwise I will have info on my site in a few days.
Dave

As far as I'm concerned, I'd love to hear from you. Go ahead and post. If there's a problem, one of the mods will take some action.

Mike

Please note that I'm not throwing stones at Blue Spruce. In fact, I'm somewhat of a chisel nut - I have all kinds and ages. I just want to know why people like the Blue Spruce over other premium brands.

[George Beck]

I must say I had a great time in Berea. I did miss meeting some of you folks on Saturday Night as my wife was a bit down in the back from the HILLS. It was so great to see and use these wonderful tools and see them used by such masters like Frank and Adam. I agree with most here that there is really something special going on at Blue Spruce as these are just simply gorgeous chisels. They cut like surgical instruments it is amazing. I pared into a piece of maple and it felt like I was peeling a carrot. Mike Wenzloff makes wonderful saws! I kept going back to them. Gramercy Tools little dovetail saw is a very fine tool, different but equally nice. My high-point was talking at great lenght with Harrelson Stanley on Saturday morning. I purchased a beautiful Michio Tasai Mokume(woodgrain) plane and Jim Blauvelt offered to set it up and showed me how to shape the sole and tune it. I took a 6 foot see through shaving with my plane and I gotta tell ya that got me pretty stoked. Meeting Ron Hock who has been special to me for 25 years was touching. Everything Bridge City sells is great. John is a tool innovator. His JP pro is really a hoot. I love it! Lee Neilsen makes everything good. The only chisels I have ever purchased that are truly flat have been theirs. Well, I probably sound like an excited kid in a toy store and that pretty much is a fact. Here is my overall take. When I started woodworking back in the 70's you could not get really good tools. Many of us turned to Japanese tools because fine Japanese tools were available and western stuff was crap. These dedicated tool makers have changed all of that. Fine tools are available to us and I believe forums like this one continues to drive quality and expectations higher and that drives the craft higher. Our wonderful craft is alive and growing. These are great days.

George

[Brent Smith]

. I just want to know why people like the Blue Spruce over other premium brands.

Hi Mike,

My reasons, based on my experience with the DT chisels.....

Aside from the fact that IMO Dave got the balance and feel just right, it's the steel and shape of the blades. I have many sets of western chisels and these by far are the best at holding an edge. I find I can get them sharper easier and they stay that way longer. In this respect, they are more like some of my Japanese chisels than my other western chisels. The shape of the blades lend themselves to easy use. The flat at the top of the blades gives me a good finger positioning and the handles just seem to fit into my hands. The edges, being ground to almost razor sharpness, make cleaning Dts a breeze. I realize a lot of this is subjective, and other users may find differently, but for me these chisels couldn't be more comfortable to use if they had been custom made to fit my hands. Most other western chisels I have or have used, including LNs, have felt awkward or unbalanced in my hands. I think Dave got the balance between finesse and strength just right with these chisels and I'm looking forward to hopefully getting a shot at his bench chisels.

[Dave Jeske]

As far as I'm concerned, I'd love to hear from you. Go ahead and post. If there's a problem, one of the mods will take some action.

Mike,
I happen to be a chisel nut also. I have way more than I could ever really need (and not just my own) Many have commented on my dovetail chisels. They were designed as lighter weight, shorter blade versions of paring chisels. They are small and fit nicely into my hands. At Berea I gave a very short talk about handle design with Kevin Drake of Glen-Drake Tools. His portion of the talk was demonstrating turning your own tool handle and mine was more of the design thought process. I passed out numerous samples of vintage chisels with different designs for handles. I tried to get a couple of points across in a few minutes. One was there is no one "right" design for a handle. What is right is what feels best to you and how you like to work. I also tried to encourage everyone to experiment and turn handles. They are generally cheap and easy to make. They don't need to be as pretty as I try to make mine in order to work well. There are many older chisels out there that are high quality and would like to be put to good use with a nicely shaped handle.

So, from that standpoint, I try to design my chisels to be comfortable for most people. The small handles on my DT chisels are not for everyone so I offer two sizes of handle.

I have several odd bench chisels from various makers but do not have a "set" of anything. So when I designed the new bench chisels I decided to make my very own ultimate set of bench chisels; what would I want if I could have anything? Could I offer something other than the many chisels already on the market? I wanted a chisel that was well balanced and comfortable, not too heavy, high quality blade with thin edges so it could be used in various joinery including dovetails, good combination of edge holding and sharpness and overall VERY tough to last a lifetime of hard shop use. Oh, It had to be pretty too .

What I came up with was a blade made from carefully heat treated A-2 that is tapered from back to front and has large, beveled edges. This gives a very stiff blade with minimal weight. (It is much heavier duty than the DT paring chisels) The blade has a tang that runs deep into the handle for levering strength but also has a tapered socket with a bolster that takes the impact loading from mallet blows. The wood in the handle is hard maple which has been infused with an acrylic to fill all of the cellular structure of the wood. This makes for a very dense and tough handle that is virtually indestructable. It also polishes quite nicely. A few other woods lend themselves to the process but not all. I may experiment with other species but I am very pleased with the results of the maple. (My new mallet head also uses this process) I was hitting the 1/2" chisel at the show just as hard as I possible could given the circumstances and the handle never showed any signs of being hit. I would NEVER actually need to hit a chisel as hard as I was hitting it at the show. I also never once honed it at the show (except when I first got there when I realized I never had sharpened it!)

So, even if I never sell more than a few, I now have my ultimate set of bench chisels (and if I only sell a few they will be the worlds most expensive bench chisels). I am trying to price them reasonably and hope that others will give them a try. I hope I have not taken up too much space with my reply. Feel free to ask any questions I failed to answer.

[mike holden]

Mike Henderson,
Blue Spruce over LN - Adam Cherubini made a great case for thin bladed firmer style chisels as your bench chisels. I spoke briefly with Dave Jeske about making a set for me, they would have to be based on the original chisels, as the new ones are thicker (but not as thick as LN). It is a case of blade design rather than material. The originals with little or no bevel on the edges would approach Adam's. (see below)

wia adamc chisels.jpg

He also used these with a different grip, putting the blade between his fingers, so two were on top of the blade and two below. My LN's are uncomfortable to hold like this, Adam's arent.

Is this better? Adam thinks so, and I am willing to try his method to see if there is any advantage to me.

Mike

[Mike Henderson]

Dave - thanks for your posting. I'll check your web site to see how much the chisels are offered for. I'd like to get one to try it out and see for myself.

Mike

[Louis Bois]

Since there's a lot of interest in Dave's new chisels, I decided to post a few pics before I can get around to doing a formal review.

The photos below show the 1/2" chisel next to comparably sized offerings by other manufacturers, namely the Marples blue chip (with boxwood handle), the E.A. Berg socket chisel and a Witherby firmer.

You'll notice that the side land is substantially thinner along the full length of the new BST offering than any of the other brands, including the Berg which is considered quite thin by modern standards. I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

The fifth photo - chisels depicted from left to right: Marples, Berg, BS, Witherby.

[Louis Bois]

...a few more...

The two shown on edge are the Blue Spruce (left) and E.A. Berg (right).

[Adam Cherubini]

- Hand tool shop (Cherubini handed out his recent Pop Woodworking article and went through it for 2 hours)

I tried really hard to present new material. I passed out my article because I didn't want to repeat it. I also finished in about an hour, then talked about period tool chests for 15 minutes.

But I was nervous. There was no one there with less experience woodworking or speaking. PW's publisher was in the back of the room. I had practiced this presentation for months. I wanted to excuse anyone who wanted to bail. I have been in these positions where I wanted to bail on a speaker but was embarrassed or didn't want to embarrass the speaker. There were so many great things to see and do, I didn't want someone (turns out like you) sitting there wasting their time for my sake. I just forgot to mention it before I started. But then, I also forgot to remove my wireless microphone when I went to the bathroom so...

Same with Adam C. Don't show me several inventories of tool chests from 1780. Let me see his hands and see him work through problems with a chisel.

To be fair, I did this work in the marketplace, and I did this work in a clinic. You just missed it. In the marketplace, I had a hi-def video projector trained on an 8' screen so folks could see the details. I also had my own wireless sound system (which I didn't use). The problem was, the only time anyone came to see it was during their lunch breaks.

I go to a ww conference in Williamsburg each year. Though there's no hands on stuff, it's pretty great. But even there, you never know what you are going to learn. Some years I learn as much at the breakfast table from my fellow attendees as I do from the presenters. My feeling is that these conferences are a very cheap education. We seem to be more than willing to blow big money on tools we don't need or understand but have no budget for education. That's not good. I'm going to teach some classes next year, but I hope to take some as well. There's still so much to learn.

Adam

[Dave Jeske]

To be fair, I did this work in the marketplace

Adam, I had the good fortune to have my booth close to your spot so I could almost see your demonstrations. However, I wish I could have been right there to really see what you were doing. Similarly, I wish I could have talked more about chisel design and techniques with you. maybe next time. If you are ever in Portland (Oregon), let me know!

[Dan Evans]

John,

Your about the conference were good. You are very correct about Don Weber. I am very fortunate to live 20 miles from Berea and have visited with Don in his shop in Paint Lick,Ky which is 10 miles from Berea. he lives in Berea and his wife works at Berea College.

If you are interested in spending a weekend or week with Don he hold classes in his shop. At the conference he told me he was going to post his new 2009 schedule on his web site very soon.

Don is truely a jack of all trades. In addition to being a master chair maker, he is a master blacksmith and teaches classes in blacksmithing, he is a terrific woodworker in many different furniture styles. I believe he has an article appearing in Popular Woodworking about an Arts and Crafts Table. he also makes drawknives for Brian Boggs and Curtis Buchanan who take them to Latin America to teach the natives green woodworking.

I forget his web site address but you can google his name and find it. He is a very neat guy to work with.

Dan Evans

[Narayan Nayar]

Adam,

You did great. Really. I was fortunate to have picked pretty a pretty decent selection of sessions, but as I mentioned to you as you were packing up, the two of yours which I attended were my favorite. Furthermore, you were extremely gracious with your time and knowledge in the marketplace and in other settings (best Hindi I've heard in a long time!), even when confronted with onerous basswood .

I very much look forward to you doing more of the speaking circuit in the future.

Dave,

Your new products look great and show great promise. I look forward to trying them out in my own shop.

[Alan DuBoff]

I go to a ww conference in Williamsburg each year. Though there's no hands on stuff, it's pretty great. But even there, you never know what you are going to learn.

I wonder if they'll be holding all their conferences this year, they just laid off 140 folks at Williamsburg, including the Toolmaker and Musical Instrument Maker who had been with them for 39 years.

The economy is being felt at all levels.

[Alan DuBoff]

Alan - for anyone who can turn, they can make handles for most chisels. They can experiment with the shape of the handle and with different types of wood. Someone could even take a Blue Spruce chisel and duplicate the shape and size of the handle.

But that does not get the same tool, IMO. You can surely copy the shape and material of a tool, but so what?

I think you should buy one if your curious and find out for yourself, as you suggest later in another response.

So let me ask my question a different way. If someone took an LN chisel and made a new handle for it that was perfect for their hand, would that person still prefer the Blue Spruce chisel? Is there something besides the handle that makes the Blue Spruce chisel "better"

Not sure where you got the impression it's only the handle, I used that as one nice point of the chisels. If you doubt, go buy one and see. Make all the handles for your Stanley or other Chisels and if that makes you happy, go with it.

I have all the chisels I need at the moment, speaking for myself, and the 2 paring chisels I have which Dave made for me are wonderful. I don't see any value in me getting more chisels, the ones I have work just fine. But that has nothing to do with the quality of the tool that Dave makes. To me they are not like a LN chisel with a different handle in them.