Old chisels and plane blades

[Dave Cottrell]

Today's makers offer cutting tools in different alloys of steel.

Is this a new phenomenon? What metal are older tools made of? Is there a way to tell?

The reason I ask is that I have several old chisels and would like to set them up in parallel sets, one set for lighter hand work, paring, etc and one set for chopping with a mallet, demolition (I repair old instruments and need to split and clean up old hide glue joints) and other nasty tasks. It would be nice to match the sharpening scheme to the appropriate metal.

Dave

[David Weaver]

To figure them all out, you really just have to try them. The ones that are unusably soft may be worth trying to reharden and temper.

If you are talking about chisels and irons old enough to be laminated, the hard steel is likely a very plain cast steel - plain meaning iron and carbon and fine grain structure.

If you are talking about newer than that, where the steel is all one piece, then it really depends on how new you're talking about and what the steel looks like. Some of the early attempts at high chromium steel aren't very impressive.