Reclaimed Pine & Chisel Bevel

[Mark Wyatt]

I'm attempting to use some reclaimed pine timbers to make a small document box. It is dry and somewhat brittle. I compensate in the saw cuts by leaving plenty of material for clean-up. However, I'm having problems with chip out when attempting dovetails.

Most of my bench chisels have 25 degree primary and 30 degree secondary bevels. Would it make sense to lower the bevel to 22 or 20 degrees to reduce the chip out on the dovetails? The wood is easy to cut through.

Thanks.

[Bill Houghton]

Pine, at least the varieties I find out here on the Left Coast, is an awful wood to chisel cross-grain; the wood tends to collapse under the chisel. A very high degree of sharpness is needed, and paring rather than chopping. You might try, yes, lowering the bevel on a chisel and see if it makes a difference.

[Jonathan McCullough]

Pine is not conducive to dovetails having tails any smaller than four inches across. Paring it is like trying to pare through striations of fiberglass and styrofoam. Once you get through the tough part, the other layer bruises, so you get a bruised, mangled, splintery mess. I haaaate it.

[Russell Sansom]

Mark,
Yes. Pull out a spare, very thin ( responsive ) chisel and put the most acute angle you can imagine on it. Tap lightly. Krenov says, "Tap, tap, tap." Iterate on the angle and your technique until it cuts the pine and retains the edge. Treat it carefully and when you're done, put it in wraps somewhere for the next pine project.

Here are two boxes I did forty-some years ago in pine. Sorry, the flash was cruel to the middle photo. The ones on the right are the same DT's but blurred. It's late, what can I say.
Anyway, nothing dubbed over, chewed off or mashed in. Just pretty dovetails that were a joy to cut. Isn't Pine beautiful stained black?

213010213009213008

[Bill Haumann]

I've heard 17 degrees recommended for chisels for pine. Haven't tried it yet myself, though.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

Something about some types of pine, too, it seems like it gets more ornery the older it is, the longer it's sitting - the resins in it set up or something? I haven't noticed it in all pieces, but some it was pretty noticeable. I was working with some offcuts I had been hanging onto for years, and it's tougher every time.

As others have said, it's the soft/hard/soft/hard of the growth rings that makes things a pain. If you can work with quartered stock, it's easier sometimes, or if you can skew your cut using a smaller chisel.

I made a couple of things with pine, and I found I liked to cut deeply with a knife to get a good show face, and with dovetails to clear out the waste with a coping saw as close as I dare, so there was a lot more paring than chopping. Paring out a small sliver before I even removed the waste (like Derek showed in one of his build logs for his campaign chest) helped a lot too for getting a clean show face. When I felt like chopping, I found if I could do most of it splitting in from the end grain helped a lot.

[john brenton]

The only problem I have with dovetailing pine is not really a problem at all. The fibers on the inside crumble out, but the outside remain crisp. It's a bit of a help maybe even.

[David Weaver]

Same problem here on radiata pine at the borg when I'm trying to make a cheap drawer. The stuff in the middle will crumble before it shears at a 25 degree angle. It probably wouldn't do it at 20 degrees, but you can't see it once the drawer is together, so I've never bothered. A bunch of very light cuts would also probably do the trick, but I don't like to spend a lot of time on dovetails.

[Mark Wyatt]

Thanks everyone for the advice. I'll find a spare chisel tonight and give it another try.

[jamie shard]

+1 on using a coping saw/fret saw to remove as much waste as possible before paring. Chopping out (some pine) results in crisp baselines but collapsed wood an 1/8" or so underneath.

[Derek Cohen]

Hi Mark

I think that the bevel angle is less important than the level of sharpness you achieve .... and you want the edge to be razor sharp. The moment that the chisel stop cutting effortlessly is the time to rehone the edge.

The second point is that technique is equally important. You must pare thin slices to prevent breakout. If you attempt to chop slices that are even 1mm too thick, the wood will crumble.

Below are a couple of pictures from an article on my website (about a jig for dovetails - but that is not important here). The point is that I was using a Japanese dovetail chisel with a 30 degree bevel. The wood is Radiata Pine - the most horrible wood to dovetail. Obtaining a smooth, clean endgrain is a miracle!

213046

213047

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Jim Koepke]

I work a lot of pine and it can be a pain.

At least with old pine it will likely be less inclined to move on you while you are working it. Fresh pine has a propensity to change dimensions more times in a day than I care to think about.

I use chisels with bevels of varying degrees.

Sharp is most important. I like a chisel with an acute bevel for pine. I have been able to slowly pare away with a 25-30º bevel. My paring chisels are about 15-20º.

I also pare a sliver out at the knife line, then use the chisel with hand pressure to make the knifed line deeper. Then another sliver is cut out. Continue until about half way through and then do the same from the other side. If you want to go a touch faster, then light taps only from the mallet and a small mallet to boot.

jtk