Chisel Problem - Keep, Repair Or Junk?

[Jared McMahon]

My last [gigantic online auction website] purchase was a big and ruggedly-beautiful millwright chisel. When it arrived, I noticed the top inch or more was tweeked at an angle, and there was a crack at the base of the angled portion. I was in a bad mood and got fed up with online auctions. I didn't return it or bother rating the seller, I just rolled it to the back of my chisel drawer and tried to forget about it.

I've recently pulled it out and am trying to figure out what it's good for. I don't know exactly how these things were made so I don't know if the tip is harder metal applied to a softer shaft, or if it got wrenched just hard enough to bend and not snap, or what. So my question to you fine and knowledgeable people is, what would you recommend I do with this chisel?


Use it as is?
Bend the tip back into alignment?
Grind off the tip and reshape?
Rescue the handle and junk the steel?

I've attached pics of the chisel, the skew, and the fracture.


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[Erik Manchester]

Jared,

These older chisels were often made by a blacksmith who forge welded a piece of tool steel onto a softer piece that had been formed into a socket. Often you can see the demarcation between the two pieces once they have been cleaned up.

I would suggest that the best solution is to have a blacksmith heat the tool and beat it back into true, temper it, and then you can reflatten the back and sharpen it.

That sounds like an awful lot of work to me unless you know a smith who can do the work.

[Matt Evans]

Personally, I would CUT the chisel at the crack, and use the tip of the steel for something else, like a marking knife. Then, grind the chisel to suit your needs, as long as you still have hard steel to work with.

I have a chisel or two that the hard steel goes all the way up to the tang of the chisel, and a few tools where it is only the last few inches that have the lamination. Its hard to tell on some tools though, and easy on others. I would guess that it all depended on the individual toolmaker as to how they did it, but I am by no means an expert in the steel and blacksmith area.

[John Coloccia]

Look like a perfect glue chisel to me. You know that some of us spend good money on chisels like that?

http://www.lmii.com/CartTwo/thirdproducts.asp?CategoryName=Chisels+%26+Gouges&NameProdHeader=Glue%2DClearing+Chisel

[Jim Matthews]

I'm not convinced that this shape is from abuse.

The curve or "belly" looks deliberate, straight from the forge.
Scarf slicks have an intentional angle at the socket to get the user's hands above the work and the steel down into the groove.

It may be worth brazing, to stabilize the crack. Just don't drive it with a mallet.

[David Weaver]

I would snap it off at that crack and then decide what to do with it. You could grind it blunt and use it as a scraper, or you could put a bevel on it and use it for heavy chopping. Someone was probably levering it too hard.

A lot of those old millwright chisels have a strong belly on them, I would assume because of where they're intended to work and getting a little bit of clearance to clean sides of joints, etc. Hard to tell how much of that belly is from the crack, though.

[george wilson]

DON'T cut that chisel off!!! Some were bellied so the handle will clear the surface of the wood. I have some like that. The "crack" may well be where the hardened steel bit was forge welded onto the soft steel body.

File carefully along the edges of the chisel. The hardened steel bit will look more silvery and brighter than the soft body of the chisel,and will be harder to file,or may not file at all. The steel bit will be a thin "veneer" of hardened steel as seen from the edge. Use a new smooth cut Nicholson file to test with. Lesser files may not work.

In the photo,the bitted part already looks brighter than the rest of the chisel,even through the corrosion.

You are new here. Best listen to my advice as I was the toolmaker in a museum for 39 years. Handled many such tools.

[Dave Anderson NH]

I agree with George. That "crack" is just too perfectly straight to really be a crack. That is the line where the hardened steel was forge welded to the softer material. Bellied chisels are common in the larger sizes and I have a couple. Based on the chisel shape and the handle design I would guess that the chisel is an Underhill made right where I live in Chester, NH.

[Jared McMahon]

When I say "fine and knowledgeable people", this sort of thing is just what I mean.

Thanks all for the feedback. George, I'll gingerly take a file to it when I get home from work this evening and try to get a better idea of its metals. Dave, thanks for the tip on it possibly being an Underhill. The only marking I can pick out is "WARRANTED CAST STEEL" on the shaft up near the socket, and even that is worn enough where it takes me a minute to re-find it each time.

[john brenton]

That sounds like something you'd hear on your first day at Riker's...followed by "and give me your applesauce."



You are new here. Best listen to my advice...

[george wilson]

Not quite in jail yet,John.:) I had to Google Rikers. I'd not have said that,except cutting off the chisel would have completely ruined it,and I wanted to prevent it.

[David Weaver]

Yeah, listen to george's advice over mine! I was guessing that wasn't the forge line since it's not very far up the chisel, but I guess there'd be no incentive for the blacksmith to use any more than that.

[george wilson]

The welded in bit is never much longer than that. I think it would be very difficult to weld a longer bit unless they had a power hammer. The old Williamsburg blacksmith,John Allgood,said "Once you done hammered two hits,you done done all the welding you gone do". He was an old shipyard blacksmith before coming to Williamsburg.That doesn't leave enough time to weld in a long bit,and I have never seen a Western chisel with more than 2" of bit,more or less like a plane iron.

I have had a few of those old chisels with welded in bits come to my shop with the weld coming loose right at the bevel. One was not hardened well at all,and the bit was bent like a fish hook. All I could do was grind the separated weld away,and properly harden the chisel after that. Old tools are not always good tools. They can vary a lot in quality even from the same maker. You don't usually see an open seam like shown in the picture,either. Most often the weld is blended into the soft steel(or wrought iron) of the rest of the chisel. The metal in this particular chisel does not look like wrought iron,though. It shows no wood like grain.

Tool steel was hand made,though,and valuable enough early on,that it was not used for the whole tool like we have today. I have even had 20th.C. plane irons made in England,that were still bitted. In some tool shops,they hung on to the old ways for a long time to save a nickel.

[Jim Koepke]

+1 on what George and the Davids have said.

The line looks like the demarcation of where the laminated steel ends.

File testing or scratch testing will likely show this.

A chisel like that can be used for many things just as it is.

Well, after it has been sharpened.

jtk

[Jared McMahon]

The bottom line on this situation is:
- My files are all junk
- This chisel is really [insert random word here] hard
- It's almost certainly bitted

I'll work on it with sandpaper and stones for a bit sometime here, but the closer I look at it, what I see is a visible difference between the material of the flat of the tip versus the rest of the tool, and a gap in the metal that's very square and uniform across its width. I spent a while trying to find any further markings on it but it has nothing anywhere. From the pictures I found of other Underhill chisels, it does bear a definite resemblance especially in the shape of the socket and handle.

Thanks again, all, for the advice and information.