How important is it for wood chisels to have squarely cut tips??

[Duane Bledsoe]

How important is it for wood chisels to have squarely cut tips?? I got a few for Christmas and some of them are not cut with the tip edge at true 90 degree angles to the sides.

I would think it would matter more on the wider ones. For instance I got a 2" chisel and across the width of the edge it's not quite a 1/16 off. I guess maybe I might be making more out of it than needs be. I'm thinking in terms of cleaning out a mortise that is not a through mortise. Having a chisel that's not 100% square would leave wood still in the bottom of the mortise on one side. Am I overthinking it??

[James Taglienti]

I dont think i have a single chisel that is dead square... My 2" has a little camber on it purely by mistake but it works alright

[Mike Henderson]

If the error is small, my experience is that it won't make a lot of difference. Small means that if you put a square on the side of the chisel and the blade on the edge, there's more light on one side than the other - not that the chisel looks like a skew.

The amount you describe, I'd call "small". BTW, I don't find much use for chisels that wide. For most of the work I do I use chisels less than 1" wide.

Mike

[Jim Koepke]

BTW, I don't find much use for chisels that wide. For most of the work I do I use chisels less than 1" wide.

My 2" chisel is used mostly for keeping the wolves & bears at bay.

There aren't any wolves & bears around my shop, so it must be working.

jtk

[glenn bradley]

Doesn't bother me as long as I know. I have a group of chisels that I know are 90* are darn-near. If what I am doing will benefit from that, I grab one of those.

[Tony Shea]

The biggest concern about a wide 2" chisel is not neccessarily the edge being 90* but more so the back of the chisel need to be very flat. This chisel gets a ton of use in my shop and pretty much stays on my benchtop the whole time in the shop. It is great for layout jobs, paring small grooves in a layout line to create a fence for my saw, and many other tasks. But if the back of this chisel wasn't flat than many of the tasks would be impossible. Sharpen it up and learn to use this size chisel in your shop, is a great asset to mine.

[Duane Bledsoe]

I got a bunch of Stanley Fat Max chisels for Christmas. Some of them were out of square in one way or another, and one actually was bowed across the edge instead of being straight. I returned all of the bad ones to Lowe's and took a small square with me, picked out all new ones from what they had in stock and got as nearly squared ends as I possibly could, and at least none of them have little chips out of the blades now either. Some were from the ones I returned, not badly but enough that I felt it might leave less than a clean cut from time to time.

I have the following sizes now:

1/4, 3/8, 1/2, 5/8, 3/4, 1", 1 1/2" and 2". They had one more size too, 1 1/4, but none of the ones they had instock were cleanly sharpened or squared. Some were badly off, so I skipped that size. I may get one later just to have an entire set of all of them but I figured having one above and one below that size was good enough for now.

[Sam Takeuchi]

Couldn't they be fixed with little time on the stones?

[Duane Bledsoe]

Not with my current level of skill. I might be able to take the burrs off of a fairly straightly sharpened chisel, but to put a straight edge on one when it's not straight or square already?? Nah. Especially since they were brand new and still packaged. I just returned and swapped out for new ones again. All fixed that way............until I drop one and chip it and then I don't know what I'll do.:eek:

[Frank Drew]

Couldn't they be fixed with little time on the stones?

This was my thought, too, and there's nothing wrong with using a honing guide. As much as possible, I'd like my chisels to be pretty much at 90º to the sides, for predictability, but I don't think the small amount mentioned is a big deal. As for camber on a chisel, if there's any deviation from precisely straight across I'd like a very small amount of reverse camber, so the two corners hit the cut line first, just ever so slightly before the rest of the edge, so that there's no tendency for the tool to pivot off the line on a mid-edge high spot.

As for the bottom of mortises, though, there's no reason they have to be precisely square to the mortise sides, since you don't want your tenon to bottom out anyway.

[Sam Takeuchi]

Buy a $15 honing guide and you'll be able to fix any of that easily. I and many others use bench grinder for this kind of stuff, but honing guide and abrasive papers on granite/float glass or oil/water stones will work fine, you can fix anything from off-square edge, re-grinding new bevel, chipped edge, create skewed edge and so on. You don't have to use it every time you need to sharpen and hone if you don't want to. Simply whip it out when blade maintenance is needed.

[Zach England]

That depends on how you sharpen them...

regarding wide chisels: A while ago I bought some 1.5 and 2 inch wide Ray Iles bench chisels and am yet to find a use for them. What was I thinking?

[Jim Koepke]

My concern about cutting edges being square to the sides is more toward plane blades than chisels.

For chisels, as long as it is pretty close it is close enough.

My 2" chisel is seldom used. Mostly when working with bigger pieces of lumber and rough stuff outside.

My 1-1/4 & 1-1/2" chisels are often used when making a stopped dado to mark and deepen the edge lines.

One of the 1-1/4" chisels is short and is comfortable for rounding corners. Often a 1" chisel is also used for this purpose.

Sometimes I make things with 2X4 or 2X6 lumber and it is nice to have a big chisel to cut and pare dovetails.

jtk

[Pam Niedermayer]

Except for skews and fishtails, you need pretty close to square; but I would just eye it when sharpening, no need for squares and the like.

Pam

[george wilson]

I just sharpen them about 45º and sort of push them a bit sideways.:)

[Michael Titus]

I have a set of Ashley Isles Mk2 bevel edge chisels. Almost all of them had the primary bevel ground out-of-square. I used a honing guide to put 30-degree secondary bevels on them, which also straightened the cutting edge. This resulted in a sloped line where the primary and secondary bevels meet, which is really immaterial (see photo).

175286

[John A. Callaway]

My 2" chisel is used mostly for keeping the wolves & bears at bay.

There aren't any wolves & bears around my shop, so it must be working.

jtk

That made me laugh.

[David Weaver]

I just sharpen them about 45º and sort of push them a bit sideways.:)

haha...

for the OP, at some point, you'll be grinding the chisels yourself and you'll get them square. Until then, you can work with what you have.

Once you start grinding, there is no good reason to settle for chisels that aren't square when they're supposed to be square.

[Terry Beadle]

I'm very careful to make the cutting edge as close to square as possible. I check it with a machinist square. The reason being that control of an out of square cutting edge on a chisel is just too loose. When you hit the chisel, if it's a got a square cutting edge, then the force of the hammer blow goes as close to the mortise direction as you can make it. If it's not square, then you can't control the chisel hammer blow mid stroke. I believe David Charlesworth addressed this issue in his using chisels for precision jointery very well.

That said, if your mortise doesn't need to be precise, say if you are making a quick jig or something that's not going in the Smithsonian (hoot!), then if the cutting edge isn't exactly square, you can use it, control the next cut by chisel lean etc. For me, I never know what I'm going to use my chisels on next ( usually ) so I always go to the slightly extra effort to make the cutting edge square. It's easy to square up on the stones...so why risk it and give my skills a better chance to succeed.

Two cents...probably worth it !

Enjoy the shavings.

[Steve LeLaurin]

I have a set of Ashley Isles Mk2 bevel edge chisels. Almost all of them had the primary bevel ground out-of-square. I used a honing guide to put 30-degree secondary bevels on them, which also straightened the cutting edge. This resulted in a sloped line where the primary and secondary bevels meet, which is really immaterial (see photo).

175286

Now that you mention secondary bevels ... I have been thinking about a recently purchased set of mortise chisels. They are incredible sharp right out of their packaging. I've never (rarely?) seen anyone say you should put a secondary bevel on mortise chisels. Should I?

steve

[Pam Niedermayer]

Now that you mention secondary bevels ... I have been thinking about a recently purchased set of mortise chisels. They are incredible sharp right out of their packaging. I've never (rarely?) seen anyone say you should put a secondary bevel on mortise chisels. Should I?

No, no, no, no, no.....

Pam

[Tri Hoang]

I keep mine square...it's easier to chop straight. It does not take much to square them up so I always do.

The Ray Iles mortise chisels some with a small secondary bevel. I've been using them that way for sometime. I do use single bevels on some chisels just so I could use them bevel down.

Perhaps someone could explain the issues around using secondary on mortise chisels.