Chisel Making (Paging Mr. Baxter?)

[Jared McMahon]

Looking back over the January threads about milling one's own chisels, it put a real itch in the back of my brain. Machining tools aren't cheap but it looks like you can get a decent amount of tool for a not outrageous amount of money. And of course it doesn't help that the good Mr. Baxter makes it look easy. :p

Is there a steep learning curve with milling/machining? Or if you get solid equipment, make a well thought-out plan, and execute on it carefully and patiently, can someone with limited experience begin making usable/useful tools? I have no idea how reasonable it is, but it would obviously be fantastic to run into a woodworking need for a tool and be able to say "Well now, I'll take care of that...", walk over to the machining part of the shop and get to work.

PS: Can you tell yet that my ambitions outstrip my time or budget? :D

[Russell Sansom]

I haven't read the mentioned thread, but as an amateur machinist and a once-pro woodworker I'd like to say that a vertical mill is one of my private little secret weapons. It is superb for cutting mortises ( yes, you can reference the good side of the board if you want to ). It's amazing for machining tenons. And it will make you wonder why you ever bothered with a drill press. For some small work it's unexcelled for cutting slots and groves. Besides all that, it can be used on metal.
I have a 20 year-old manual taiwanese that's good well under .001" for all 3 degrees of freedom on the table with even smaller runout on the head. It cost me $1,200. They show up on CL fairly often and they generally are hobbiest's machines, so they haven't seen thousands of hours of use. They weigh in under 1,000 pounds. A Bridgeport or one of its clones has its charms, but at almost 3,000 pounds it's a challenge to get it into your shop and it can wreck an everyday garage floor.

I tell everybody I meet that I love my vertical mill madly. It's almost like cheating because some operations are now almost trivial.

Sorry, I wax on. On the matter at hand, though, you can forge and grind a set of chisels rather easily. When I started out several decades ago as a starving artist/student I ground down a handful of used-up files, re tempered them, and ended up with a truly amazing set. A couple of them are still my favorites after all these years. I believe my reference was "The COmplete Modern Blacksmith" by Weygers, but I'd have to look it up to be certain.

It depends on your goals, but for me, forging my own tools gave me a confidence that I couldn't get anywhere else. It deepened my understanding of tools and of steel. As a bonus, If I ended up with an edge that crushed or fractured, I could go back and rework it until I found the perfect temper ( alway a compromise, but still...)
Good luck. If you do this, you'll never see a chunk of steel the same way again.

[george wilson]

You could make your own chisels by buying flat annealed tool steel. The tangs could be made by hack sawing by hand. Bolsters could be added to the tapered tangs by drilling a round hole,and filing it square to slip over the sawn and filed out tang. It would jam tight against the tapered tang,and would be perfectly strong for using the chisel with a mallet. It wouldn't really be necessary to silver solder or weld it in place.

Filing or grinding the bevels would be one of the biggest jobs. When the chisels are hardened,the bevels would most likely cause the chisel to warp across its width. I'd suggest only hardening the first inch of the chisel for that reason,and not grinding the bevel on the end of the chisel (the one you sharpen),at all until the hardening and tempering is done. Warping would be kept minimal so you could lap it out.

Life would be a lot easier if the maker had a belt grinder,or at least a belt sander. I used to get along without any machine tools or belt grinder,and just a few bricks and a Mapp gas torch (or 2). The 3 metal planes I made that are still in the FAQ section were made by hand. The blades were hardened with a Mapp gas torch. The blades were 01. They were made about 1974,when I was more vigorous !

[Brian Ashton]

Depending out your resourcefulness (read - ignorance to what you're getting into and an attitude of never give up...) you don't need all the machines. The attached pics are of two sets I've made, all by hand. The tool I used to shape them was a 4" angle grinder and a disk sander mounted on my lathe. With the coarsest of wheels you can actually remove a lot of material quite quickly. They were made out of 01 tool steel, hardened with a tiger torch in my back yard and tempered back in my oven.

[Randal Stevenson]

Now you guys are making me want to make a mortising chisel again. Always get outbid at the auctions, and never have found one locally (garage sales and swap meets).

[David Weaver]

If you're committed to making chisels and willing to make a tang style, you can do it with nothing more than a hacksaw, a few files, a mapp torch, a metal scribe and a belt sander. I would think you could lay out, rough out, finish and harden a respectable chisel in two hours.

If you want to harden more than an inch wide chisel, a propane weed torch is a nice way to increase your heat source, otherwise, I've had luck doing what george mentions - an inch of an iron or chisel with a mapp torch and then quench in oil, and put in the oven to temper.

I work with the roller end of a cheap ryobi 4x36 belt sander to remove metal to scribe lines, and use files where it's critical to file only to a line.

Once you can make your own irons, you can also pick up old forlorn infill joinery and smooth planes for very cheap and make irons for them and have done everything for a fraction of the price of a complete plane, too. It's a very good skill to have.

[Russell Sansom]

A forge is a beautiful thing. A hibachi, some charcoal, and a hair dryer work very well. I alway thought a squirrel fan would work, but never tried it. You can turn the dryer off to conserve fuel and back on 30 seconds before you need a hot fire.
It is very fast and simple to forge (switching from the noun to the very ) a tang if you can find a chunk of steel to use as an anvil. Annealing is easier in a forge. I heard somewhere that the a gas torch was not good for the chemistry of the steel.

[David Weaver]

A forge is a beautiful thing. A hibachi, some charcoal, and a hair dryer work very well. I alway thought a squirrel fan would work, but never tried it. You can turn the dryer off to conserve fuel and back on 30 seconds before you need a hot fire.
It is very fast and simple to forge (switching from the noun to the very ) a tang if you can find a chunk of steel to use as an anvil. Annealing is easier in a forge. I heard somewhere that the a gas torch was not good for the chemistry of the steel.

If you leave the steel under the torch too long, the carbon migrates. I don't know what the right term is, decarb or something.

You have to be careful about how long you leave the steel in the heat, and you have to heat from a point in from the edge outward toward the edge and as soon as the carbon starts to migrate, quench it.

I've never not done that, so I'm not sure. The biggest thing I've done with a mapp torch successfully, though, was a shoulder plane iron about 1.1 inches wide. I don't think you could uniformly heat much more than that, and uniformity is nice so that the carbon migration starts at the same time on the whole iron and none is left at too low of a temperature when you quench it.

[Tony Shea]

I must say that all this temper, anneal, and migrates talk is a bit beyond my metal understanding. I think some research will be in order as I've always been interested in working with metal at some point in my life either as a hobby machinist or blacksmith. But I really have a lot of studying to do if I plan to undertake either hobby. Very interesting though. I also need to learn more about files and using them in general. I know there are so many different ways to use them and more types than I've ever bothered to look at. I'm sure files could be a fairly involved subject to learn in of itself.

I was just working on some half blind dovetails a minute ago and was thinking to myself that it'd be awful nice to make me a skew or fishtail chisel. Even out of one of my older ones laying around doing nothing. But really just am not educated enough on metal properties and what to watch out for in terms of temper.

[David Weaver]

I must say that all this temper, anneal, and migrates talk is a bit beyond my metal understanding. I think some research will be in order as I've always been interested in working with metal at some point in my life either as a hobby machinist or blacksmith. But I really have a lot of studying to do if I plan to undertake either hobby. Very interesting though. I also need to learn more about files and using them in general. I know there are so many different ways to use them and more types than I've ever bothered to look at. I'm sure files could be a fairly involved subject to learn in of itself.

I was just working on some half blind dovetails a minute ago and was thinking to myself that it'd be awful nice to make me a skew or fishtail chisel. Even out of one of my older ones laying around doing nothing. But really just am not educated enough on metal properties and what to watch out for in terms of temper.

To do as much grinding as you're saying, I would take an old chisel, heat it cherry red with a torch and let it cool by air. Should be soft enough to grind very easily then. To harden it, just do the same thing, heat it cherry red, except quench it in cooking oil or motor oil or whatever oil you want.

You don't have to worry about all of the terminology in terms of anneal, temper, etc, you just have to see or do the process one time with O1 steel and you're good to go.

O1 is nice to work with because you quench it as soon as it gets to the stage where carbon migrates (so you don't have any real issue with loss of carbon), and you can temper it just by throwing it in the kitchen oven.

Larry Williams' moulding plane making DVD had the best visual and camera work of the process that I've seen.

You can also do an air hardening steel like W1, but I think O1 is much easier to work with, and you can get it in nice ground strips from places like mcmaster carr. It's "annealed" when you get it already, all you have to do is harden it and throw it in your kitchen oven.

[Tony Shea]

How long wpuld one put it in the oven for to temper it and at what temp? It seems as though this would be somewhat important as the tempering process must negate some of the hardening effects. It seems as though the temper process is actually a real light anneal. What does the temper function do for the blade? Maybe make it so it's more workable?

[David Weaver]

How long wpuld one put it in the oven for to temper it and at what temp? It seems as though this would be somewhat important as the tempering process must negate some of the hardening effects. It seems as though the temper process is actually a real light anneal. What does the temper function do for the blade? Maybe make it so it's more workable?

Temper is the last step, you're not working it any longer by then. When you harden it, it's still a little bit brittle. Tempering drops the hardness and removes some of that brittleness.

O1 is great for a combination of two reasons:
1) you quench it right when it gets to critical temperature, so it doesn't need to be done in a vacuum
2) it tempers to a very useful tooling hardness and toughness at about the same temperature you'd bake anything in an oven

For me, tempering is usually 45 minutes or an hour. I doubt it needs to be that long for a tool steel blade, but it doesn't hurt it. You'll hear "straw color" mentioned for tempering a lot. When you get it out of the oven, it's a straw color. With more skill, you could do it just with heat, but it's easy to do in the oven.

if you order steel from mcmaster carr (all of it that I've gotten is starrett brand), it even has tempering instructions on the package wrapper.

All of this is something that is much easier to see and do one time, and all makes a lot more sense than it does as a bunch of words online.