Bevel for Paring

[Jim Foster]

I have several chisels that are not "paring" chisels, but would like to hollow grind, hone and use for paring tasks, mostly Q-Sawn White Oak for now. Any suggestions on the bevel angle. I'm not using micro-bevels, just honing at the hollow grind touch points resulting from a 10" grinding wheel. I've seen some blogs where guys use 15 degree bevels for paring, seems pretty extreme, so I was thinking of using 20 degrees. Any advice would be appreciated.

[Zach Dillinger]

If you're going to use them on white oak, I'd probably go with 25ish, which means as low as you can without knocking big chunks of the edge off every time you use it.

As far as I'm concerned, any chisel can be a paring chisel. It's all in how you use it.

[Jim Koepke]

Some of my paring chisels have bevels at 15º. Most of my work is in soft woods. For oak, I would use a bit steeper angle.

This may be a good use for micro bevels in your case. At least on one chisel. Start with 20º and if that dulls to quickly, then sharpen it with a micro bevel of 22º. Then keep adjusting the angle on the one chisel until you find your sweet spot.

At times, my chopping chisels do some paring. They are usually at about 30º.

jtk

[Tony Shea]

White oak I believe needs a steeper angle than 15* and reallly probably should be steeper than 20* as well. I suppose you could start out with 20 but if it were me I would just go to 25 and be done with it. White oak can be a very resiliant wood, my last small project was in white oak and required a few mortises. I was touching up my mortise chisel more often than I like just to keep it cutting efficiently. And that's with a 35* bevel.