Older can sometimes mean Better

[Glenn Samuels]

Until recently, I thought that newunused tools had to be better than vintage tools. Then I had arevelation! I had ordered some brand new paring chisels and was veryexcited about having them for a lifetime ! Started paring and whatdo you know, the edges started rolling over. Tried another but gotthe same result. Obvioiusly, I was very disappointed.


I had made a post about this sadsituation and rec'd a PM from a very nice member on this site (heasked not to be mentioned here). He offered to send me a vintagebuck brothers chisel and asked me to try it. A few days later itarrived, and after setting the edge and polishing the back I gave ita try. It worked head and shoulders better than the new chisels thatI had purchased.


I want to thank members who want toeducate us newbees on the virtues of older vintage chisels. I am aconvert. I even bid on a old Hibbard, Spencer, and Barlett...... andwon. Obviously, not all chisels will be good quality but searching for a good older chisel can be fun!!!

[Chris Griggs]

I wonder if this anonymous tool donor is the same person sending me a couple parers. The Robin Hood of vintage tools... he takes from the evil collectors and antique dealers and gives to lowly woodworkers in an effort to drive down demand and thus exorbitant prices on vintage tools....

Glad to hear about your experience!

[Jim Belair]

Great to hear you're a convert to vintage tools thanks to the generosity of a fellow Creeker.

In fairness to the modern chisel makers, it's not that uncommon for new chisels to have poor edge holding out of the box. You just need to grind back a bit and get into the better steel.

[greg Forster]

Older can sometimes mean Better (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?200414-Older-can-sometimes-mean-Better)

that's what I keep telling everyone

[Glenn Samuels]

double meaning? hhhmmmm

[Mike Henderson]

While you might find some older tools that are better than some newer tools, if you compare older tools to the better modern tools you'll find that the newer tools are superior. Do a head-to-head comparison of old chisels (for example) to the modern LN, LV (especially the PM-V11 chisels) or Blue Spruce chisels. I think you'll find that the modern chisels hold an edge longer than any older chisel. Additionally, the quality of older chisels are hit or miss, while the quality of modern chisels are pretty consistent.

It would be sad if in the last 100+ years we were not able to improve the performance of chisels and plane blades. It is extremely rare to find any product that has not been improved on in the last 100 years.

Mike

[The idea that older things are better is common in our society, and I don't know why. I encountered this when I was a kid, when grownups lamented how things were better when they were young - and I didn't understand it then. I continue to hear such things today and I still don't understand it. Lots of engineers have works lots of hours to improve every product that's made today. Surely those engineers are not incompetent so there must be some other reasons.

One, perhaps, is the "rose colored glasses" effect of looking back.

Second may be the definition of quality. W. Edward Deming defined quality as, "Quality is what the customer says it is." In modern terms, it's defined as "Meeting the needs of the customer." So a product may be made to meet certain criteria, and that criteria is not what a reviewer thinks it should be. And remember that price is a quality specification.

In our woodworking areas, there are many options to choose from, and each may be a quality product depending on the needs of the user. For a long lasting edge (without regard to cost) we have the brands I mentioned earlier. For products at a more affordable price point, there are many options, each with specific advantages and disadvantages.]

[Jim Koepke]

Yes, there are improvements in the processes of making tool steel that enable chisels to have superior edges when compared to those made a century ago.

Unfortunately, just like a century ago, there are makers who are more concerned with making profits than making good tools.

My luck with older chisels from many makers has been pretty good.

jtk

[george wilson]

In recent years,the expensive saws,chisels,and planes make by companies like LV,LN,and saws by them,and the private makers who make them one at a timer,using 1095 steel,are better than any of the old tools. Excluding these examples,old tools of quality ARE better. It depends upon the brand of old tool you are looking at.

When I was real young,I thought new tools were better,too,but that was way back in the 50's,when decent established brands still amounted to something. But,even then,a good tool 100 years old,would have been better than the average new tool.

Today, companies like LV nd LN are making some of the finest tools ever made. But,you have to pay for fine tools.

[Dave Anderson NH]

Old vs New is always an area of controversy and opinions vary depending on personal experiences, the type of tool purchased, individual finances, and a host of other factors. Personally I have had both good and bad luck with both old and new over my 40+ years of woodworking and tool purchasing. If we lumped all new hand tools into 3 quality classes such as Superior, Adequate, and Tool shaped object, we could begin to decide whether new or old was the choice. Those tools produced by companies like LV, L-N, and almost all of the modern small boutique manufacturers fit into the Superior classification because of materials, improved design, and tighter process and tolerance control and generally they exceed the quality of old tools, but the cost is the rub. Adequate new tools are just that, adequate and usually require some tuning and perhaps some fussy setup. Tool shaped objects are just something to be avoided and most surviving examples of old tools will be a better buy.

My way of choosing over the last few years has been a very personal though informal value analysis. Is the new tool better in fit, form, and function, and if so is the premium cost justifiable on the basis of whether or not I can find an old tool that approaches the quality at a price good enough? I the particular tool I need (or want) even available as an old tool at a price equal to or preferably significantly less than the new tool? If in mediocre shape, is the old tool restorable without too much expense in time, money, or both? These are the type of value judgements that have to be made to make an informed choice. The difficulty comes when as a novice you don't have enough knowledge to make the informed choice. This pretty much means you have to take the plunge and buy both a new tool and an old tool and learn how to fettle and use both. Only from experience both good and bad will you develop the knowledge base necessary. The bottom line is that it is the school of hard knocks.

[Jim Koepke]

There needs to be a category between Superior and Adequate.

Many Stanley/Bailey, Sargent, Millers Falls and other planes are much better than adequate yet as much as they are loved and used, their owners would not be so foolish as to say they were superior in quality to some planes available today.

jtk

[Jim Belair]

There needs to be a category between Superior and Adequate.

Many Stanley/Bailey, Sargent, Millers Falls and other planes are much better than adequate yet as much as they are loved and used, their owners would not be so foolish as to say they were superior in quality to some planes available today.

jtk

I'd call these Decent.

[Rod Sheridan]

I would be interested in seeing a comparison of tool prices versus tradesman wages for older tools and modern tools.

My FIL served his cabinetmaking apprenticeship in England with Shappland and Petters more than 6 decades ago. He has frequently remarked on how many hours he had to work to purchase the required tools for his trade.

That's something my father often remarked about as well, and he served his apprenticeship in the thirties.

Does anyone have a historical perspective on this?

A modern tradesman will certainly earn enough for a LV plane in a day, was this true 100 years ago? Would a cabinetmaker earn enough in one day to purchase a high quality plane 100 years ago?

The same argument is often heard about machinery, when people compare an Oliver industrial jointer to a modern low end machine. Same issue, if you go out and purchase a Martin jointer, you'll obtain a better machine than an old jointer, however the price may cause you to reconsider your choices.

Regards, Rod.

[Mel Fulks]

Rod, I know Martin jointers are good quality.But your statement that they are better than old ones really got my attention! Just read their specs. Removes maximum of of 8mm in one pass, I could never get used to that. A lot of the better old machines can take off an inch in one pass . With cost of straight line saws ,the room they require,and the fact that some of us will not use one without a helper... A vintage jointer can do two jobs. Add to that the indexing wheel for knife changing and the big wheel table adjustment ,and I see no competion for GOOD old machines. And I can adjust a big wheel jointer faster and just as accurately as the motorized adjustment.

[Jim Belair]

An inch per pass? Wow, that's not a jointer, that a rotary axe. Amazing!

[Matt Ranum]

There needs to be a category between Superior and Adequate.

Many Stanley/Bailey, Sargent, Millers Falls and other planes are much better than adequate yet as much as they are loved and used, their owners would not be so foolish as to say they were superior in quality to some planes available today.

jtk


Well, I can say that my first ever plane was a Great Neck brand smoother I bought new in the early 90's just because I thought I should have one. Ruined several pieces of wood with it and finally stuffed it away as a paper weight. Next plane I touched was a type 9 Bailey. Took the time to learn how to use it, then went and found my paper weight and fettled it too. I can say without a doubt, all my old Bailey's are superior to the Great Neck paper weight smoother.

:p :D

[Bill Houghton]

Great to hear you're a convert to vintage tools thanks to the generosity of a fellow Creeker.

In fairness to the modern chisel makers, it's not that uncommon for new chisels to have poor edge holding out of the box. You just need to grind back a bit and get into the better steel.
If this is so, I do wonder why the modern makers don't make their chisels a little longer and then grind them back themselves?

[Mel Fulks]

Now that is a good question ,Bill .What if you grind them back a little and still don't like them? Please read my take on returning stuff in the CHISELS FOR MACHINE GUY THREAD. ...and tell your friends!

[Bruce Haugen]

[The idea that older things are better is common in our society, and I don't know why. I encountered this when I was a kid, when grownups lamented how things were better when they were young - and I didn't understand it then. I continue to hear such things today and I still don't understand it. Lots of engineers have works lots of hours to improve every product that's made today. Surely those engineers are not incompetent so there must be some other reasons.

One, perhaps, is the "rose colored glasses" effect of looking back.

Second may be the definition of quality. W. Edward Deming defined quality as, "Quality is what the customer says it is." In modern terms, it's defined as "Meeting the needs of the customer." So a product may be made to meet certain criteria, and that criteria is not what a reviewer thinks it should be. And remember that price is a quality specification.

When it comes to tools, we certainly are in a remarkable period. There's scarcely any category that isn't better today than it once was. Cars, the same thing (especially compared to my 1972 Pinto). When I was a kid a car that lasted 100K was a rarity, and now, well, any car that doesn't get 200K is pretty bad. However, there are other categories of things that don't even come close. I measure quality in terms of longevity, and any appliance that is designed to last 10 years instead of 30 - 50 is a complete failure AFAIC.

[Jim Matthews]

But,you have to pay for fine tools.

Has this not always been the case?

[Jim Matthews]

I think there can be three things contributing to the OP's concerns -

Some of the original crucible steel used for fine chisels "back in the day" had never been a toaster, fender or other metal item before they were cast as tools.
Some of the modern tools are made to look good, with additives that fight discoloration but make edge retention nearly impossible.
Sharpening with a bevel that is inappropriate to the application is an exercise in frustration.

I can get a cheapo Chrome-vanadium modern chisel razor sharp with a shallow grind angle, but if I use it with a mallet on some of the denser South American species, it's dull fast.

I've migrated to a convex bevel on all my cutting tools, and this seems to be a good compromise between keen-ness and durability.

In short - don't get hooked on the unobtanium, when you can get excellent results from some of the median quality modern tools.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

I don't mean this as a challenge or a rebuttal, but I'm curious how the convex bevel is supposed to aid in durability - are you saying it's more durable than a flat grind or secondary bevel of the same bevel angle? Or is the idea that like a secondary on a mortise chisel it provides a more durable higher angle, with a lower angle behind the bevel to allow the chisel to continue penetrating deeper past the cutting edge by getting rid of excess metal behind the cutting edge.

[Mike Henderson]

When it comes to tools, we certainly are in a remarkable period. There's scarcely any category that isn't better today than it once was. Cars, the same thing (especially compared to my 1972 Pinto). When I was a kid a car that lasted 100K was a rarity, and now, well, any car that doesn't get 200K is pretty bad. However, there are other categories of things that don't even come close. I measure quality in terms of longevity, and any appliance that is designed to last 10 years instead of 30 - 50 is a complete failure AFAIC.
Remember that quality is what the customer defines it to be. If many people want an appliance at a certain price point, even if it will only last 10 years, that product is a quality product - to them. Additionally, it appears to me that some appliances, such as washing machines, are progressing technologically at a rapid rate - so many people may not want a washing machine that lasts 30 years. They'd prefer to pay less now and then buy the upgraded model 10 years later.

My guess is that you could find commercial appliances that would last much longer but would cost more.

Mike

[Kees Heiden]

I like vintage tools a lot. They are cheap, which helps to build up a large toolset with not much money. When you get them from the late 19th century or early 20th, it's usually pretty good quality, good enough for me.

But when you look at what is offered new at the moment, it is remarkably good! Even the Chinese planes from Quangsghang are very high quality. At the other hand, there is also loads of rubish, available from the big box stores. Not just handtools but also electric ones and the comsumables you need for them. Cheap stuff, inadequate for even the lightest of duties.

Anyway, back in the day you also could get lots of bad quality. When you read in the Seaton tool chest book, you find all kinds of bad tools. Planes made from knotty wood and cracked blades. At the other hand, the Kenyon saws in the cheast are very good, with thin plates, with remarkably constant gauge throughout the plate.

In the thread about the economics of plane making in the 19th century (some weeks back) I concluded that planes are now rather expensive when compared to the 19th century wages. A simple beech smoother from ECE in Germany, now costs about 1 day wages for a carpenter, while it was about a half days wages in the middle of the 19th century. And most people buying a new quality plane now, opt for the far more expensive iron planes.
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?197081-Economics-of-planemaking-in-the-19th-century

[Jim Matthews]

I'm curious how the convex bevel is supposed to aid in durability - are you saying it's more durable than a flat grind or secondary bevel of the same bevel angle?

For me, it's what works most quickly.
I'm after a fully polished bevel that I can get back into shape without laying out an array of stones.

I found that micro bevels sufficient to get a keen cutting edge were easily fractured, with my rough handling.

A convex bevel may not be any more durable, but it's MUCH easier to refresh.
I think that's because no guide is required.

Back to the OP issue - if you spend all your time looking for the chisel, or the right formulation of plane blade you're off on a Fool's errand.
Modern steel is excellent, and cheap. Just don't get hooked on bright and shiny - that's for advertising purposes, and Father's Day presents.

[Jim Belair]

Remember that quality is what the customer defines it to be. If many people want an appliance at a certain price point, even if it will only last 10 years, that product is a quality product - to them. Additionally, it appears to me that some appliances, such as washing machines, are progressing technologically at a rapid rate - so many people may not want a washing machine that lasts 30 years. They'd prefer to pay less now and then buy the upgraded model 10 years later.


This is the IKEA model of furniture marketing. Few people want to buy a dining room suite for example that will last their whole lives. They'd rather change the "look" every 5 or 10 years and throw the old stuff on the scrap heap. Ditto bath and kitchen renos etc. Lowe's tagline? Never Stop "Improving" (quotes mine)

Sorry, this is a bit off topic.

[george wilson]

A convex edge is thicker immediately after the keen edge put on it. It is therefore much stronger than a hollow ground edge in not chipping or turning back the cutting edge like a fish hook.

The only tools I can think of that I would always say buy NOS are files. Certainly Nicholson files are now soft. Grobets are still good,but I have sets of 100+ year old needle files made in Switzerland. They are better cut than ANY you will find today,period. Their corners are absolutely without any flat spots at all. When Nicholson needle files were last made in USA,they cost about $125.00 per set. My old sets beat them by a mile for quality.

We are talking in generalizations in this thread. I will make this as a general statement.

[Jeff Duncan]

So what were the new chisels that didn't hold up? I think that makes all the difference in the world and I didn't see it in this post? Were they Marples? Sorby? LV? Craftsman? I mean how do we know how to compare old vs new when we don't know where we are in the overall quality spectrum?

FWIW I recently bought 2 sets of new chisels. One was a set of Buck Bros cranked neck chisels which were inexpensive, but so below what I expected in quality they were sent back. I then ordered a set of Henry Taylor paring chisels based on an old post from another member who was happy with them. I have tuned 2 of them so far and they are of very nice quality. I used them both a good amount yesterday and so far they hold a good edge and are a joy to use compared to my stubby little bench chisels;) When I save up a bit more I'll likely go with the Henry Taylor cranked neck chisels as well.

So I guess my point is generalizing old vs new is a moot point unless you compare apples to apples. And as far as machinery goes I'll take new any day of the week. I'll put my 30 year old Martin shaper up against anything made before it! As far as jointers taking off an inch.....what would you ever need to remove a full inch for:eek: I routinely take off 1/4" per pass for crooked edges, but have never felt the need to take off more than that. From my perspective there's only one downside for new equipment and it has nothing to do with the quality of the machine...it's all about the electronics they're attaching to them:o

JeffD

[george wilson]

You are perfectly correct,Jeff. It is a complicated thing to name names and sort quality out.

In the Craftsman chisel category,of course they never made any tools themselves. It amounts to whose choses they are branding. Many years ago,perhaps in the 30's or 40's,Craftsman used to be re badged Greenlees(or some other good brand,I can't remember right now). In the 80's,they were made in Holland,according to the study of chisels Woodcraft did about that time. Of all the chisels tested,Craftsman were the worst. They were made of .50 carbon steel. That is about as LITTLE carbon as steel can have and still be hardenable to a decent degree. But,it has very poor wear resistance. Certainly the Craftsman badged chisels several decades earlier were infinitely better.

This is just one case to mention. The whole subject is pretty complicated. In the 19th.C.,Sorby made excellent chisels. Now,they are too soft,and I have no idea what grade of steel they use. I like my 1965 Marples chisels,and still use them. Today,they are not the same.

I have to go somewhere,but each case has to be examined individually. Perhaps others can shed more light on the history of different brands today.

[Jeff Duncan]

I almost forgot....there is one thing I like about older chisels that's rare on the new ones. Stamped names! I know, I know, it has nothing to do with the quality of the tool or how it works. There's just something about those laser engraved names I don't much care for. I'd much rather have the name stamped in as it just seems more permanent. A silly detail I guess, but I'd definitely prefer it if they went back to stamping the names in chisels.

JeffD

[Mel Fulks]

We all have certain features we put more emphasis on,but when you run a business isn't capacity near the top? When I have shown others that their jointers would remove an inch they were impressed and saw it is not dangerous. There are two reasons they had that capacity .One was to make mouldings and the other to use in the same way a straight line saw is used to quickly straighten an edge.If some company ever decides to bring back indexing wheels it will be hailed as a great stroke of genius.

[David Weaver]

As far as the name stamping, I'm a big fan of that and a big fan of the forged bolster. Both of those features make a for a nice looking chisel, and if done crisply, they're rarely on something cheap.

[Charlie Stanford]

Until recently, I thought that newunused tools had to be better than vintage tools. Then I had arevelation! I had ordered some brand new paring chisels and was veryexcited about having them for a lifetime ! Started paring and whatdo you know, the edges started rolling over. Tried another but gotthe same result. Obvioiusly, I was very disappointed.


I had made a post about this sadsituation and rec'd a PM from a very nice member on this site (heasked not to be mentioned here). He offered to send me a vintagebuck brothers chisel and asked me to try it. A few days later itarrived, and after setting the edge and polishing the back I gave ita try. It worked head and shoulders better than the new chisels thatI had purchased.


I want to thank members who want to educate us newbees on the virtues of older vintage chisels. I am a convert. I even bid on a old Hibbard, Spencer, and Barlett...... and won. Obviously, not all chisels will be good quality but searching for a good older chisel can be fun!!!

These kinds of threads erode to a point where you almost believe all of the fantastic hand tool woodworking of the past is all a figment of our collective imaginations, given all the bad tools and inconsistent quality. Those guys seemed to get it done, and without PMVII. A lot of them made a good living too. A talented cabinetmaker and family could live an upper middle-class life. Mama has to have a good job for that to happen these days it would seem (a few exceptions come to mind, maybe somebody like Frank Pollaro).

[David Weaver]

These kinds of threads erode to a point where you almost believe all of the fantastic hand tool woodworking of the past is all a figment of our collective imaginations, given all the bad tools and inconsistent quality. Those guys seemed to get it done, and without PMVII. A lot of them made a good living too. A talented cabinetmaker and family could live an upper middle-class life. Mama has to have a good job for that to happen these days it would seem (a few exceptions come to mind, maybe somebody like Frank Pollaro).

The talented cabinetmakers probably had one car and a 1500 square foot house. These days, it seems like two cars less than 5 years old is mandatory for any "successful" middle class person, and they can't be no valiant. Have to have heated seats.

Need 3000 square feet upstairs, and a finished basement on top of that (so that people can get as far away from each other as possible and avoid communicating) 6 TVs, organic food, 3 sit-down restaurant meals per week (no hot dog shops or dollar menus), three or four phones with data plans and enough money for two vacations per year that in prior lifetimes would have been reserved for the upper crust.

The best of the best cabinetmakers today could probably still live the same lifestyle as the good ones of the past. Toolmakers seem to be doing fine, too. How many planemakers do you think were making the equivalent of $400 bench planes and $3600 H&R half sets 125 years ago? And how many had such a crop of gullible cubicle workers to teach basic woodworking to, etc. That seems to be the really lucrative avenue for many of the folks these days.

I can recall when I was little, my dad's (not a cabinetmaker, but probably similar in earning power) hobbies consisted of disappearing to read the paper and make sure he spent no money otherwise. He did cut and split wood in his spare time so we didn't have to pay for heat. We lived pretty well. These days, people would tell my parents their shorted their kids because they refused to pay for goofy clubs, gymnastics classes, 3 years of private pre school, etc.

[Mike Henderson]

These kinds of threads erode to a point where you almost believe all of the fantastic hand tool woodworking of the past is all a figment of our collective imaginations, given all the bad tools and inconsistent quality. Those guys seemed to get it done, and without PMVII. A lot of them made a good living too. A talented cabinetmaker and family could live an upper middle-class life. Mama has to have a good job for that to happen these days it would seem (a few exceptions come to mind, maybe somebody like Frank Pollaro).
Our ancestors used time in place of better tools. When I was just starting out in woodworking, I used some tools that would be considered inferior. I was able to do good work (if I say so myself) because I was willing to take more time to do the work. For cutting tools, especially hand tools such as chisels, it meant stopping more often to sharpen them.

Look back a long ways. Egyptians did some pretty amazing woodwork (found in tombs) without any steel tools at all. If that's all you have, you make do. But it usually means taking more time to do the work.

Today, we have options, and one of those options is superior tools made with superior steel. Those tools hold an edge longer, allowing the woodworker to spend more time woodworking and less time sharpening.

Old tools are absolutely usable, and you can do some excellent work with them, but don't expect them to be the same as the best modern tools.

Mike

[Tyler A Anderson]

The talented cabinetmakers probably had one car and a 1500 square foot house. These days, it seems like two cars less than 5 years old is mandatory for any "successful" middle class person, and they can't be no valiant. Have to have heated seats.

Need 3000 square feet upstairs, and a finished basement on top of that (so that people can get as far away from each other as possible and avoid communicating) 6 TVs, organic food, 3 sit-down restaurant meals per week (no hot dog shops or dollar menus), three or four phones with data plans and enough money for two vacations per year that in prior lifetimes would have been reserved for the upper crust.

The best of the best cabinetmakers today could probably still live the same lifestyle as the good ones of the past. Toolmakers seem to be doing fine, too. How many planemakers do you think were making the equivalent of $400 bench planes and $3600 H&R half sets 125 years ago? And how many had such a crop of gullible cubicle workers to teach basic woodworking to, etc. That seems to be the really lucrative avenue for many of the folks these days.

I can recall when I was little, my dad's (not a cabinetmaker, but probably similar in earning power) hobbies consisted of disappearing to read the paper and make sure he spent no money otherwise. He did cut and split wood in his spare time so we didn't have to pay for heat. We lived pretty well. These days, people would tell my parents their shorted their kids because they refused to pay for goofy clubs, gymnastics classes, 3 years of private pre school, etc.


When we chose to not put our kids in pre school and have our wife teach them at home, our freinds and neighbors couldn't believe that we would deprive them like that. Its amazing that our kids now read better than most, and just fit right in when they went to school. I guess we just got "lucky":)

[Glenn Samuels]

So what were the new chisels that didn't hold up? I think that makes all the difference in the world and I didn't see it in this post? Were they Marples? Sorby? LV? Craftsman? I mean how do we know how to compare old vs new when we don't know where we are in the overall quality spectrum?

I did not want to be specific when I started this thread for obvious reasons. Lets just say the the first letter of the company is an "S". Hopefully that will sufice. I also have a Blue Spruce that I consider exceptional quality and I like my Two Cherries too. I was just saying that I was presently surprised to get a very good quality chisel from the early 1900's and disappointed with what I thought was a high end company.

[Zach Dillinger]

There are vintage tools of superb quality that surpass most of what is available today. There are new tools made today that far exceed the quality of virtually every other tool ever made. The question, to me anyway, is how much of this "quality" is actually needed to make furniture. Up to a certain quality point, the tool itself can hinder the execution of the work (this point is "lower" for a skilled tradesman who can make the most out of junk if forced to do so). Beyond this point, the quality of the tool adds very little to the actual execution of the work (perhaps speed and efficiency but, again, a skilled tradesman will be able to work quickly with just about anything of passable quality). After this, using the higher quality tool is purely for the enjoyment of the user. Not something typically associated with a professional, who must make each dollar spent on tooling count to the utmost.

I enjoy using the high quality tools. Take my planes, for example. I have a "complete" set of infills (I lack an infill miter and good rebate plane), literally hundreds of vintage wooden planes, and a couple of LN planes. I could easily work with nothing but the vintage wooden planes, even if they aren't of the same "high quality" that the other planes are. They work well enough to execute my designs. Anything beyond that is purely for my own gratification and doesn't actually affect my ability to do my work.

[Jim Koepke]

I could easily work with nothing but the vintage wooden planes, even if they aren't of the same "high quality" that the other planes are. They work well enough to execute my designs. Anything beyond that is purely for my own gratification and doesn't actually effect my ability to do my work.

As long as the vintage wooden planes do not have blades slipping out of adjustment or chattering like nobody's business, then they do have the most important qualities of a "high quality" plane.

Same for chisels and other tools. A worker's gratification can have a strong effect on the ability to do their work. A tool that dulls every three strokes is not going to make for a satisfied worker and unsatisfied workers will often do less than satisfactory work.

If a worker's tools are uncomfortable to use, how often will they be used?

Low quality tools will have many workers blaming the tool as opposed to trying to discover how they can do better.

jtk

[Zach Dillinger]

Jim, the characteristics you describe would be attributes of those tools below the minimum level of quality, as I described, in that they would have an impact on the work itself.

[David Weaver]

One of the easiest thing to say to someone (and I find myself doing it) who is new to the hobby is "yeah, well most of the old wooden planes that aren't blown out on the sides are actually just fine, they just need either some wedge tuning or a new wedge".

I think that's true....All of the older out-of-use woodies I've gotten benefit a lot from a new wedge, but I didn't have the skills to understand exactly how to make that relatively easy fix (mark it, do it, etc) that early on.

Judging from the quality of the tools that came between 1750 and 1880 or so (especially if you look only at england for the latter part), I'm guessing that a lot of craftsmen were a lot more critical of their tools than charlie is letting on. I'm guessing also that there were a lot of very competent cabinetmakers that didn't exactly live a cushy lifestyle, either, but more one of constant work and hand to mouth type living.

[Zach Dillinger]

I'm with you David. I love my wooden planes and use them constantly. What I meant by "not of the same high quality" refers to the perception (or misperception) of quality that many modern woodworkers have. Heavy means quality. Bronze and brass means quality. Surface ground to be .00001 flat means quality. I don't agree with these statements, but I think that many people (especially beginners) have that idea. I've said a million times that my wooden planes work as well as a Lie-Nielsen for the work I do. That is quality; the rest is simply beautification or a marketing appeal to sell more tools. That said, I do like my LN planes also, they sure are pretty.

[David Weaver]

I think (is this rude), I'd rather avoid dealing with suggestions to beginners any longer, other than to suggest where they'll be in two years and give them the confidence to believe that's really where their purchase decisions should point. By no means am I saying that anyone else should, but I get tied up in logical knots when someone tells me they want a point and shoot tool and I try to explain how little I've done to what is now my favorite smoother.

I like the LN planes, too. I sold off my smoothers, though, the weight is of no benefit after the whole double iron thing. If I had a better double iron wooden smoother (I don't), I would probably use it. As it is, my only one is a late-model ohio tool smoother that cannot feed when the double iron is set correctly, and making it feed well isn't worth the trouble because the iron is both chippy and not very hard (not so great a combination for a smoother).

Now with the double iron thing, though, I LOVE the tsunesaburo smoother irons. They are like carbon steel on steroids, but for eons i avoided them because they're thinner than stock stanley irons and I assumed that with a stock chipbreaker they would be incapable of working things like maple and beech. Experience does change things for the better. I beat the expensive tool drum for a long time, and if I am honest, my house-made infill is easier to use than any other smoother I have, but there's something about that getting-something-for-nothing feeling of using an unwanted millers falls smoother.

[Zach Dillinger]

I don't think its rude. There are millions of posts talking about such things. I would like to see a discussion about things that aren't widely talked about, like jappanned furniture, or gilding, or simulated tortoise-shell. But no one seems to be interested in those things, or those that are don't say anything.

[Dave Anderson NH]

David and Zach

I think you are both saying the same thing the same thing but emphasizing different parts of the equation for the beginner. It all boils down to the, " It ain't the arrow, it's the Injun." We who inhabit the forums and our toolmaker allies have in a sense done a disservice to beginners by getting overly technogeek on the features, tolerances, and describing what is necessary to succeed. I think we have all seen sufficient examples of outstanding quality work coming out of 3rd world countries where the artisan has produced furniture and other work with virtually nothing. We have many like that in our own 1st world countries today. Is it a comfortable way to work....certainly not, but it can be, and is done. With some forethought I am certain that I could (but won't) rid myself of over half of my tools and not have any impact on the quality of work I produce. We need to place more emphasison tool adjustment, fettling if necessary, and most importantly skill development by practice and repetition to those just starting out. WE do them a major disservice by pushing tool acquisition and by confusing them with minutae. Just my personal opinion.

[Zach Dillinger]

Well said Dave.

[David Weaver]

I don't think its rude. There are millions of posts talking about such things. I would like to see a discussion about things that aren't widely talked about, like jappanned furniture, or gilding, or simulated tortoise-shell. But no one seems to be interested in those things, or those that are don't say anything.

I got a chuckle out of this. I'm going to guess if you go for faux tortoiseshell in an article, you'll be able to do it without too much competition.

I'll bet george could already do a treatise on gilding, even if it's not something he does much of.

[David Weaver]

David and Zach

I think you are both saying the same thing the same thing but emphasizing different parts of the equation for the beginner. It all boils down to the, " It ain't the arrow, it's the Injun." We who inhabit the forums and our toolmaker allies have in a sense done a disservice to beginners by getting overly technogeek on the features, tolerances, and describing what is necessary to succeed. I think we have all seen sufficient examples of outstanding quality work coming out of 3rd world countries where the artisan has produced furniture and other work with virtually nothing. We have many like that in our own 1st world countries today. Is it a comfortable way to work....certainly not, but it can be, and is done. With some forethought I am certain that I could (but won't) rid myself of over half of my tools and not have any impact on the quality of work I produce. We need to place more emphasison tool adjustment, fettling if necessary, and most importantly skill development by practice and repetition to those just starting out. WE do them a major disservice by pushing tool acquisition and by confusing them with minutae. Just my personal opinion.

About the repetition, I wonder what the woodworking world would be like if we insisted on making something five times before we moved on to something else. I'll bet our sense of satisfaction and our feeling of productivity (not that there's a need for productivity for some of us) would be a lot better. I think we learn from the magazines to try to be the master of everything right out of the gate, and end up being really the master of nothing.

[Zach Dillinger]

I got a chuckle out of this. I'm going to guess if you go for faux tortoiseshell in an article, you'll be able to do it without too much competition.

I'll bet george could already do a treatise on gilding, even if it's not something he does much of.

No competition, and no interest from the mags I bet :)

C'mon George, write a book already! You and Jack Plane from the Pegs and Tails blog.

[David Dalzell]

Many new edged tools/blades have an initial problem with edge retention. The process of tempering often overheats the thin leading edge of these blades. The result is that these front edges are soft. After several grinds and resharpenings (carefull to not overheat) the soft steel is removed and the true temper is available. Don't give up on new edges. They are probably quite good after accounting for tempering issues on thin leading edges.

[Anthony DeStefano]

As someone that's new (as in started to really get into woodworking in January) to the hobby I can add in with my experience. I've been pretty diligent about trying to find good deals that are both money conscious, but also will last me until I really get bitten by the tool bug. So far I've been lucky except for one tool.

I bought a Stanley #4 that looked to be pretty good shape to my untrained eye. Doing some research, I found that it wasn't a newer dud and it was a model from around the WW II time frame. I even got, what I think, is a good deal paying around $25 shipped for it. The problem is that I've had a hell of a time getting the thing to work well. I think I've figured out the problem as being poorly ground blade and the chip breaker not matching well, but it's a back burner project that I look at for 20 minutes here and there.

Now in the long run this doesn't really bother me. One of my new tool purchases was a LV low-angle jack plane which I just adore, but that #4 taught me a good lesson. I'm trying to get into this hobby not to fix up tools, but to actually build something. There are other people out there that enjoy fixing up or finding great working old tools and sell them. I'll let them do what they love and buy my vintage tools from them instead of taking Ebay or Craigslist chances.

One these days I'll get that #4 to take whisper thin shavings, damn it! But for now I'm just going to keep practicing by making a couple more boxes, build myself an actual workbench, and maybe a blanket chest for my wife.

And I agree Zach, more talk about things that aren't tools or how to sharpen them!

[Jim Koepke]

I bought a Stanley #4 that looked to be pretty good shape to my untrained eye. Doing some research, I found that it wasn't a newer dud and it was a model from around the WW II time frame. I even got, what I think, is a good deal paying around $25 shipped for it. The problem is that I've had a hell of a time getting the thing to work well. I think I've figured out the problem as being poorly ground blade and the chip breaker not matching well, but it's a back burner project that I look at for 20 minutes here and there.

Now in the long run this doesn't really bother me. One of my new tool purchases was a LV low-angle jack plane which I just adore, but that #4 taught me a good lesson. I'm trying to get into this hobby not to fix up tools, but to actually build something. There are other people out there that enjoy fixing up or finding great working old tools and sell them. I'll let them do what they love and buy my vintage tools from them instead of taking Ebay or Craigslist chances.



The first time at restoring an old plane may take some time. It will teach a person about some of the problems found with planes. After awhile one will learn what to look at when purchasing an old plane.

If one only goes with new planes and has a bad out of box experience, how will they know what to do other than send it back?

Yes, my time spent fettling old planes has been enjoyable, but it isn't something that needs much doing these days. For what my accumulation of Stanley/Bailey bench planes cost me I likely wouldn't be able to get much more than a jointer, a jack and maybe a smoother. Not to mention how long it would have taken me to earn that kind of money to drop at one time.

So for me it came down to how much time would be spent working to earn money to buy new planes or how much time it would take to earn less money and spend a little time restoring planes.

jtk

[Steve Voigt]

Our ancestors used time in place of better tools. When I was just starting out in woodworking, I used some tools that would be considered inferior. I was able to do good work (if I say so myself) because I was willing to take more time to do the work. For cutting tools, especially hand tools such as chisels, it meant stopping more often to sharpen them.

Look back a long ways. Egyptians did some pretty amazing woodwork (found in tombs) without any steel tools at all. If that's all you have, you make do. But it usually means taking more time to do the work.

Today, we have options, and one of those options is superior tools made with superior steel. Those tools hold an edge longer, allowing the woodworker to spend more time woodworking and less time sharpening.

Old tools are absolutely usable, and you can do some excellent work with them, but don't expect them to be the same as the best modern tools.

Mike

OK, I won't "expect them to be the same as the best modern tools." But a lot of us can't afford a set of PMV-11's to go with a set of LN's, so we do our best with what we can afford. The OP's original point was that he had an incredibly positive experience using a vintage tool. I have also had similar experiences. On the other hand, it's a bummer to continually read posts about how these tools just don't measure up, and how we're missing out because we haven't spent $400 for 5 chisels. And it discourages people from going the vintage route, which is a shame. Vintage tools are a great way to build a hand tool workshop that doesn't cost a fortune. I got a nice Buck chisel for $15 last week. For that price in a new tool, I'd get a chrome-vanadium piece of junk, or some clunky thing with giant lands and a handle fit for a tennis racket.

-Steve

[Jim Koepke]

On the other hand, it's a bummer to continually read posts about how these tools just don't measure up, and how we're missing out because we haven't spent $400 for 5 chisels. And it discourages people from going the vintage route, which is a shame. Vintage tools are a great way to build a hand tool workshop that doesn't cost a fortune. I got a nice Buck chisel for $15 last week. For that price in a new tool, I'd get a chrome-vanadium piece of junk, or some clunky thing with giant lands and a handle fit for a tennis racket.

-Steve

+1 on that.

My old tools have never given me a reason to not do my best.

jtk

[Rodney Walker]

I like my vintage tools and I like fixing them up to use. A good sharp hand saw was probably the biggest revelation to me. A sharp hand plane was the other. The saw was the first one I had sharpened myself and it actually cut quickly and well (at least compared to the before). I was used to dull rusty ones that came out maybe once a year to trim the bottom of a Christmas tree. I learned then how it was possible in the old days for carpenters to put up houses without power tools in a timely fashion. It also taught me those old tools had to be built and designed well for a carpenter to use them 12 hours a day.

Yes it is possible for tools to be engineered better than before and with better materials and there are people doing exactly that. Those tools are also well worth the prices being charged for them. Good materials and skilled labor have never been cheap.

Three major things get in the way of the better quality tools being more than a small corner of the market.

1: Value engineering. A near contradiction in terms- this would be the cheap tool shaped junk made in China at the request of importers here. It may look like a chisel, but it's made out of cheap materials and won't hold an edge long enough to sharpen it.

2: Planned obsolescence: Shiny materials that quickly fade or hand saws with induction hardened teeth that really can't be resharpened once they're dull. Basically designing for a shorter useful lifespan in order to sell more in the future.

3: Customer awareness: In some ways we are our own worst enemies. Serious wood workers that actually know and understand what a quality tool is and why it's important aren't nearly as common as the weekend warrior type who just wants to replace a broken lock. For him a chisel you can only use once before bending or breaking it is fine because he probably won't use it more than that anyway. I know I'm guilty of buying the tool shaped objects at Harbor Freight at times even though I know there's better out there. Sometimes I end up paying the consequences of buying cheap tools when I do as well.

I will say just because a tool is old doesn't automatically make it good. There were plenty of dogs made in the old days too that just didn't work out. Some of those dogs were interesting design failures and some were just the same problems of poor materials and workmanship that we see in cheap tools today.

My long winded opinion.
Rodney

[Jim Matthews]

I will say just because a tool is old doesn't automatically make it good. There were plenty of dogs made in the old days too that just didn't work out. Some of those dogs were interesting design failures and some were just the same problems of poor materials and workmanship that we see in cheap tools today.

My long winded opinion.
Rodney

Not long winded; thorough.

[Anthony DeStefano]

The first time at restoring an old plane may take some time. It will teach a person about some of the problems found with planes. After awhile one will learn what to look at when purchasing an old plane.

If one only goes with new planes and has a bad out of box experience, how will they know what to do other than send it back?

Yes, my time spent fettling old planes has been enjoyable, but it isn't something that needs much doing these days. For what my accumulation of Stanley/Bailey bench planes cost me I likely wouldn't be able to get much more than a jointer, a jack and maybe a smoother. Not to mention how long it would have taken me to earn that kind of money to drop at one time.

So for me it came down to how much time would be spent working to earn money to buy new planes or how much time it would take to earn less money and spend a little time restoring planes.

jtk

Jim, I whole heartily agree with you and I'm hopeful that I get to the point where I can do the same. I think I left out a little bit from my post.

One of the points that I was trying to get across was I like seeing recommendations from people around here for both new and old tools and I hope that doesn't stop. Heck one of my first purchases was a set of 4 Narex chisels because I could get a set of 4 pretty good chisels for less than $45. I wouldn't feel bad if I screwed them up learning to sharpen and I've even chipped one and brought it back to life. That's certainly better than seeing recommendations from some, shall we say more commercial people, saying don't waste your time with anything that's less than $65 a chisel.

I'm now on the look out for some mortise chisels and a large bench chisel, but I will not hesitate to pickup a vintage example since I know how to get pretty good edge on a chisel.

[Jeff Duncan]

A lot of good points have been made as this thread has developed, and it reminds me that most important thing of all is.....knowledge! Tools are secondary and the quality of them is a moot point without the knowledge of how to prepare and use them. I bought my first tools at flea markets and yard sales over 2 decades ago and as many a beginner has, struggled with them at first. But I kept at it and over time learned how to make that plane take a whisper thin shaving. And no new tool out of the box, regardless of price will ever give me the same satisfaction as the tool I tuned myself!

My understanding is that in the days of apprenticeship one would spend months or even years learning to do the mundane things like keeping chisels and plane irons sharp, before you would ever use one on a project. In other words you would learn to crawl before you walked, and walk before you run. These days it's more about instant gratification and beginners buy tools before understanding how to really use them. I'm at a point where I've learned a lot about how to get my tools sharp enough for my needs, but am really still in my hand tool infancy having barely learned to walk. When I was younger I bought my first LN plane thinking it being of better quality would work better than my Stanley and Record planes. Having gotten a little older and having a bit more knowledge, I still occasionally buy a LN plane when I have the extra cash but not b/c it works better than my Stanley, but b/c it has a quality to it that I enjoy. Sure the better tools will have certain advantages, but I'm not sure you can truly appreciate those difference without having learned to use a basic good tool?

So I guess my overall point is to learn how to use your tools and enjoy the time spent using them. Doesn't matter if they're new or old, cheap or expensive, if you can tune them to work for you that's all that matters. If not, there's plenty of other choices out there to replace them. In fact, I think I've just convinced myself I need to start going to yard sales again:D

JeffD

[Charlie Stanford]

OK, I won't "expect them to be the same as the best modern tools." But a lot of us can't afford a set of PMV-11's to go with a set of LN's, so we do our best with what we can afford. The OP's original point was that he had an incredibly positive experience using a vintage tool. I have also had similar experiences. On the other hand, it's a bummer to continually read posts about how these tools just don't measure up, and how we're missing out because we haven't spent $400 for 5 chisels. And it discourages people from going the vintage route, which is a shame. Vintage tools are a great way to build a hand tool workshop that doesn't cost a fortune. I got a nice Buck chisel for $15 last week. For that price in a new tool, I'd get a chrome-vanadium piece of junk, or some clunky thing with giant lands and a handle fit for a tennis racket.

-Steve

I demo'd a PMVII chisel. You aren't missing much. Yes, the edge holds up a little longer when used at the factory grinding angle but it gets no sharper than any other chisel I've ever owned. If honing and quick touchups don't scare you then, again, you aren't missing much.

Ground and honed at 20* (might have been a little lower) the edge lasted no longer than the same size/same grind Marples Blue Chip in paring and very light chopping - just taps, really. To me, paring and 30* chisels are not congruent. 5* makes a difference. 10* makes a big difference. PMVII is not a breakthrough steel. It's just not. All of the usual trade-offs are still very much in play. Metallurgical physics has not been turned on its head. It doesn't tolerate low grinding angles any better than other steels, and possibly less so. Practically everything holds up at 30* and higher, at least for a reasonable amount of time. If you have more honing gear than God and perceive the need to tend two grinders, a half-dozen stones, water baths, spray bottles, diamond flattening plates, honing jigs, nagura slurries, and assorted grits, bits and bobs just to knock a bit of a rolled edge off then maybe these will work for you. It is only in this hyper-equipped environment that these chisels, somewhat conversely, would seem to make sense.

It's unclear to me why somebody would spend $70 per for a chisel that appears to require a minimum 30* grind to perform its magic and becomes practically indistinguishable, other than for its looks, at lower angles. If the fine folks at Lee Valley come up with something that kicks ass at 15* I'll buy two lifetime's worth. This would be a breakthrough worthy of all the internet teasers, 'leaked' release dates, and hype. Give me something I can chop a mortise with one minute and pare tissue the next, and not at some silly relatively obtuse angle, with no work at the stones in between. THAT would be a breakthrough and I'll be more than happy to claim it as such when/if it comes around.

They are beautiful chisels, the fit and finish is fantastic. No doubt about it. I'm sure the guys who have sunk a bit of coin into them want to believe they're the cat's pajamas, but if you aren't susceptible to that sort of consumer psychology then use what you already have in your shop and spend the saved money on wood.

[Michael Ray Smith]

Has this not always been the case?

I suspected that might not have been as true in the past as it is today. My thought was that, while manufacturing technology and materials have certainly improved, the market and the economics have also changed. My thought was that in, say, the 1920's the market for high quality tools would have been, relatively speaking, larger than it is today because they were used by the professional carpenters and woodworkers.

So I looked at the 1923 E.C. Atkins catalog. Their top-of-the-line Four Hundred (it seems they almost always spelled that one out rather than using numerals) hand saw sold for $72.65 a dozen for 26-inch saws. The next ones down, No. 53 and No. 65, sold for $44.55 a dozen. At the back of their hand saw listings was the Sheffield Saw works series, including the No.62 which they described as "a good serviceable saw for the money" sold for $18.40 a dozen.

Then I remembered reading a speech by the president of Atkins to some civics organization (a Rotary club, maybe -- don't recall) sometime in the 20's or 30's. He pointed out that the total annual market for saws (I don't recall if he was talking about hand saws or all types of saws -- they made a lot of industrial equipment as well as hand tools) was less than the smaller than the market for the single product, Coca-Cola. So I guess that's why my theory didn't hold up.

[Mike Henderson]

OK, I won't "expect them to be the same as the best modern tools." But a lot of us can't afford a set of PMV-11's to go with a set of LN's, so we do our best with what we can afford. The OP's original point was that he had an incredibly positive experience using a vintage tool. I have also had similar experiences. On the other hand, it's a bummer to continually read posts about how these tools just don't measure up, and how we're missing out because we haven't spent $400 for 5 chisels. And it discourages people from going the vintage route, which is a shame. Vintage tools are a great way to build a hand tool workshop that doesn't cost a fortune. I got a nice Buck chisel for $15 last week. For that price in a new tool, I'd get a chrome-vanadium piece of junk, or some clunky thing with giant lands and a handle fit for a tennis racket.

-Steve
Please re-read my post. I never claimed that you can get a good $15 modern chisel. What I was commenting on is the original post, which says "Older can be better". The point I made was that we've made a lot of progress in the past 100+ years and the best chisels of today are better than the best chisels of the past.

I also commented that you can do very good work with antique tools, as long as you're willing to work with them.

And let me add a comment about quality. W. Edward Demming defined quality as "Quality is what the customer says it is." In modern terms that has been rephrased as "Quality is meeting the needs of the customer." There are many different options in tools, and each can be a quality tool to a particular user. For example, the induction hardened teeth on Japanese saws is a quality feature to me (and others) because the saw goes for a long time without dulling, and when you do dull it or lose teeth, you can just buy a new blade for the saw. For people who don't wish to sharpen saws, this is a major quality feature. And the cost of a Japanese saw is also reasonable, which is another quality feature. And the saw works well, which is another quality feature.

So back to my point - the woodworking products we have today are better than the woodworking products of the past. And the woodworking products of the future will be better than the woodworking tools of today.

Mike

[Mike Henderson]

I demo'd a PMVII chisel. You aren't missing much. Yes, the edge holds up a little longer when used at the factory grinding angle but it gets no sharper than any other chisel I've ever owned. If honing and quick touchups don't scare you then, again, you aren't missing much.

Ground and honed at 20* (might have been a little lower) the edge lasted no longer than the same size/same grind Marples Blue Chip in paring and very light chopping - just taps, really. To me, paring and 30* chisels are not congruent. 5* makes a difference. 10* makes a big difference. PMVII is not a breakthrough steel. It's just not. All of the usual trade-offs are still very much in play. Metallurgical physics has not been turned on its head. It doesn't tolerate low grinding angles any better than other steels, and possibly less so. Practically everything holds up at 30* and higher, at least for a reasonable amount of time. If you have more honing gear than God and perceive the need to tend two grinders, a half-dozen stones, water baths, spray bottles, diamond flattening plates, honing jigs, nagura slurries, and assorted grits, bits and bobs just to knock a bit of a rolled edge off then maybe these will work for you. It is only in this hyper-equipped environment that these chisels, somewhat conversely, would seem to make sense.

It's unclear to me why somebody would spend $70 per for a chisel that appears to require a minimum 30* grind to perform its magic and becomes practically indistinguishable, other than for its looks, at lower angles. If the fine folks at Lee Valley come up with something that kicks ass at 15* I'll buy two lifetime's worth. This would be a breakthrough worthy of all the internet teasers, 'leaked' release dates, and hype. Give me something I can chop a mortise with one minute and pare tissue the next, and not at some silly relatively obtuse angle, with no work at the stones in between. THAT would be a breakthrough and I'll be more than happy to claim it as such when/if it comes around.

They are beautiful chisels, the fit and finish is fantastic. No doubt about it. I'm sure the guys who have sunk a bit of coin into them want to believe they're the cat's pajamas, but if you aren't susceptible to that sort of consumer psychology then use what you already have in your shop and spend the saved money on wood.
I have also tested the LV PM-V11 chisels. My interest was for chopping dovetails and I use them with a 35* secondary bevel. For that application, and with that bevel angle, they are superior to any other chisel I have.

I sharpen the chisels by establishing the primary bevel on a WorkSharp (120 grit) and then use two Shapton stones (5000 and 8000) to put on the secondary bevel. I do not need more honing gear than God. I'm very satisfied with the resulting edge.

I do not expect to have one chisel that will do all things. For paring, I use one chisel with a low bevel angle and for dovetails, I use another chisel with a higher bevel angle. If you try to chop dovetails with a 20* bevel angle, the edge of any chisel will fail fairly quickly.

Mike

[Bob Black Atlanta]

Very interesting thread. More so due to the lack of comments on Japanese chisels. I'm a newbie here so it there are constraints here such as OWWM on only 'Mericun tools I apologize.

I have sets of Stanley #60's and #40's as my go to chisels. I have one Japanese chisel, a 3/4" from Japan Woodworker that was about $55. There is a difference, both is edge development and edge holding ability. A really big difference. Ditto for price difference.

I think there is a lot to recommend the old Stanley planes as flea market finds. Spend $20-$40 on a No. 4 especially if you have done it a time or two so you can spot the junkers.Then spend the time to restore to first class worker condition. Then you have a servicible plane. If a LN No. 4 Bedrock copy fell out of the sky would I take it? You bet. Would I spend the stack of hunnert' dollar bills to buy one? No way.

Let's say a young guy decides that his woodworking projects shouldn't have machine marks. I think he will need a variety of planes as he develops his skills. Since he's young he probably can't hide a few thousand dollars worth of new planes from SWMBO, but he might fill the bench with old planes and rework them as necessary for a few hundred.

The other end is the older guy who has made his mark in the world and has been well rewarded for his toils, wants to do woodworking, then he is the prime candidate for the high dollar stuff. More power to him. Just not everybody qualifies.

Bob Black, putting the soapbox away and going to bed in NE Atlanta

[Adam Cruea]

Eh, sometimes I prefer old tools because they're very similar to today's. For example, I have 2 #8 jointers (#8 and #8C). If I bought the same thing from LN, I would have spent $800. Fleabay and Supertool? < $500 for the pair, and perfectly usable in the condition received. I just fettled the Supertool one because, well, I wanted a shiny brass knob. :-D But like someone else here mentioned, I could not get all my planes as LN or LV for what I have in them.

Sometimes there's a new tool that will do the job better; rarely is it cheaper. The exception I can think of right now is LN's shooting plane. I plan on getting one, and while it's a very specialized tool, I think it will make shooting much easier. I've used a LA jack plane, and while it did the job, having a proper handle and a wider base for the shootboard channel would have helped. Hopefully when the Hand Tool event in MD rolls around in May, I can stop by and check it out to make sure it's really worth it.

Anyway. . .older isn't always better. Newer isn't always better, either. Sometimes it's a mix of old and new, sometimes it's just ingenuity.

I look at it this way. . .the Egyptians, Mayans, and other cultures built pyramids using methods we don't know, using tools we consider "inferior" by today's standard. Were they really that inferior? Or are we just too dumb to understand how to properly use tools? There's more than one way to skin a cat, more than one way to sharpen, and there's sure as hell more than one way to make something flat and true. Free your mind in thinking, don't be afraid to try and fail. As Jeff said above, it's the knowledge. I mean, really. . .who here thinks just because they have a LN/LV shop full thousands of dollars in tools that they can make something better than, say, George with some of his older tools? I'd say pretty much anyone is a fool if they think that.

It isn't the tool; it's the tool user. There's knowledge, patience, skill, and intuition that goes into working any material. The tool used is just a means to an end.

[David Weaver]

It's funny that japanese chisels are mentioned. I don't know if anyone said much about them in these threads, but the comment is often "except i don't want japanese chisels".

If the price floats up into the $60 per chisel range, they are my choice easily for tools that are going to be used for cabinetmaking type stuff (not mortising planes or cutting brass rod, but stuff like dovetailing, cleaning out dados, etc.

they sharpen easily if they are decent white steel chisels, they hold their edge as well as the absolute best vintage stuff that's ever been seen in the US, maybe just a bit better due to the hardness, and you can maintain them all the way through a project with a finish stone.

The key is to get white steel from a competent maker, and in that price range white II is probably safer than white I, and more likely to be right. White I has a chance of being harder to sharpen and easier to chip if it isn't done correctly. Koyamaichi chisels would be my choice if I got new bench chisels.

For someone with diamonds, the semi HSS all-one-metal are very nice to use, like the koyama shusezai. (koyama and koyamaichi are not the same maker, though, that's *not* something you want to confuse with white steel chisels, but the semi-hss koyama chisels are pretty nice, and very tough).

There might not be a lot of consensus about some tools needing to be "good" ones, like chisels and planes, but there are places where you don't want to go cheap. I've never met a carver who likes inexpensive gouges.

[Zach Dillinger]

I've never met a carver who likes inexpensive gouges.

Funny, 'cause I went down to the Michaels and bought that little set of carving chisels, you know the ones that look like black exacto blades stuck in small diameter dowels? I carved a Philadelphia cartouche for a tall case clock just fine. I love them!

/I can't believe I got through that whole post without busting out laughing. Cheap is the enemy of good, 95% of the time.
//I didn't really do this. I would never attempt something like that with such execrable tools.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

[QUOTE=Mike Henderson;2081965I sharpen the chisels by establishing the primary bevel on a WorkSharp (120 grit) and then use two Shapton stones (5000 and 8000) to put on the secondary bevel. I do not need more honing gear than God. I'm very satisfied with the resulting edge.
[/QUOTE]

Mike, how do you add the secondary bevel?

My typical workflow with my chisels is to hollow grind on my Tormek and then free hand on my water stones. As I use them, I free hand them on my fine water stones and just keep going.

I have not done this yet with my latest Lee Valley chisels because (1) they are so incredibly sharp, I don't really want to mess with the existing edge until after I have dulled them and (2) I don't think that I can free hand the secondary bevel. I could drop it into a guide I suppose, but it just feels like that would take a lot of time. I suppose that I could also create a "guide block" at the correct angel and just drop the chisel onto that.... should be fast and easy.....

[Andrew Pitonyak]

The saw was the first one I had sharpened myself and it actually cut quickly and well (at least compared to the before). I was used to dull rusty ones that came out maybe once a year to trim the bottom of a Christmas tree. I learned then how it was possible in the old days for carpenters to put up houses without power tools in a timely fashion. It also taught me those old tools had to be built and designed well for a carpenter to use them 12 hours a day.

I envy you a bit on that. My first attempt at saw sharpening produced very poor results, so at the moment I own some very nice sharp back saws, I own no sharp "regular" saws such as a panel saw. Someday I will figure that out I hope since every now and then it feels like it would be a very useful thing to have in working order.


As for the older is better, I will admit that I own two sets of the Stanley 16-150 150 Series Short Blade 3-Piece Wood Chisel Set. One is probably 35 years old and one is a couple of years old. I purchased the newer set to practice sharpening (I paid $2.50 on clearance for the newest set). The older set was given to me by my Father.

I actually like using the cheap Stanleys, but I rip through the edge very quickly and must touch them up often.

I have a nice set of Pfeil chisels that are very sharp and they seem to hold an edge OK, but I am mostly cutting dovetails when I use my chisels, and I don't like the handles for that task.... I keep thinking that I should sell the set but I just never get around to it.

I inherited a bunch of old chisels, I have no idea what they are, but the ones that look like the Stanley sweet heart chisels are very nice. They hold and edge and feel great in my hand.

I purchased one new Stanley sweet heart chisel, and it is a very nice chisel on all accounts.

I have the latest cool steel on a set I purchased from Lee Valley, also nice to use and they hold the edge very well. I just need to get around to figuring out how to best use them as initially sharpened by Lee Valley, or resharpen them as I have all of my other chisels.

If you do a lot of small detail work..... these are awesome

http://www.leevalley.com/US/wood/page.aspx?p=46035&cat=1,41504

I purchased a set when I was cutting dovetails in the small boxes that I built to hold my chisels. These things are wicked sharp and small enough to get into the tiny little dovetails that I cut.

So, I think that you can find new and old that are great :-)

[Mike Henderson]

Mike, how do you add the secondary bevel?

My typical workflow with my chisels is to hollow grind on my Tormek and then free hand on my water stones. As I use them, I free hand them on my fine water stones and just keep going.

I have not done this yet with my latest Lee Valley chisels because (1) they are so incredibly sharp, I don't really want to mess with the existing edge until after I have dulled them and (2) I don't think that I can free hand the secondary bevel. I could drop it into a guide I suppose, but it just feels like that would take a lot of time. I suppose that I could also create a "guide block" at the correct angel and just drop the chisel onto that.... should be fast and easy.....
I'll either do the secondary bevel freehand or I'll put the chisel in the Lee Valley sharpening jig (the MK II jig) if I want the angle to be exact.

Mike

[Andrew Pitonyak]

I'll either do the secondary bevel freehand or I'll put the chisel in the Lee Valley sharpening jig (the MK II jig) if I want the angle to be exact.

Interesting.... then maybe free handing the secondary bevel is worth a shot.... Free handing a hollow grind is dead simple.

[Chris Griggs]

Interesting.... then maybe free handing the secondary bevel is worth a shot.... Free handing a hollow grind is dead simple.

Free handing a secondary bevel is very very easy as long as you grind it back as it grows. Its small enough that it sorta self adjusts even if you match it perfctly from honing to honing. Eventually it will likely either creep up steeper and/or round over, but that's when you go back to the grinder. I tend to hone directly on the hollow for the most part but like Mike will freehand a secondary bevel on when I'm doing heavier chopping and need the extra strength....for my smaller chisels (1/4 and 3/8) this means that they have a secondary bevel on them more often then not.

[Charlie Stanford]

While you might find some older tools that are better than some newer tools, if you compare older tools to the better modern tools you'll find that the newer tools are superior. Do a head-to-head comparison of old chisels (for example) to the modern LN, LV (especially the PM-V11 chisels) or Blue Spruce chisels. I think you'll find that the modern chisels hold an edge longer than any older chisel. Additionally, the quality of older chisels are hit or miss, while the quality of modern chisels are pretty consistent.

It would be sad if in the last 100+ years we were not able to improve the performance of chisels and plane blades. It is extremely rare to find any product that has not been improved on in the last 100 years.

Mike

[The idea that older things are better is common in our society, and I don't know why. I encountered this when I was a kid, when grownups lamented how things were better when they were young - and I didn't understand it then. I continue to hear such things today and I still don't understand it. Lots of engineers have works lots of hours to improve every product that's made today. Surely those engineers are not incompetent so there must be some other reasons.

One, perhaps, is the "rose colored glasses" effect of looking back.

Second may be the definition of quality. W. Edward Deming defined quality as, "Quality is what the customer says it is." In modern terms, it's defined as "Meeting the needs of the customer." So a product may be made to meet certain criteria, and that criteria is not what a reviewer thinks it should be. And remember that price is a quality specification.

In our woodworking areas, there are many options to choose from, and each may be a quality product depending on the needs of the user. For a long lasting edge (without regard to cost) we have the brands I mentioned earlier. For products at a more affordable price point, there are many options, each with specific advantages and disadvantages.]

I see you're still hawking the canard about PM-Whatever, A-2 and that stuff. Those chisels are fine as long as you like grinding angles more suited to mortise chisels. Below 30*, they are barely as good (certainly no better) than 1980s and earlier Blue Chips which sold for five bucks apiece. Haven't we had this discussion before?

[Mike Holbrook]

As far as chisels go steels may have gotten better but I'm not sure that those who forge steel by hand are any better today than back when forging produced a much larger % of tools like chisels. I wonder how my Barr chisels would compare to older forged chisels? I am no expert on forging but that process certainly throws a twist into comparisons as well. Now there are companies who specialize in heat, cold....treating steel, that individuals or companies can send steel off to, but are the results better than ancient Japanese sword making masters were able to create, I'm not so sure.

Hand saws are where I think modern manufacturing has yet to match older history. I don't doubt that a modern group of engineers could come up with machinery that would forge and hammer saw plates better than Disston, Atkins or Simonds did many years ago. I just don't think there is enough market for the resulting product to convince some company to make the initial financial outlay for machinery designed to make better saw plates. So I think my Disston # 12 and a few Atkins and Simonds saws have no competitor in the current market. LN, Wenzloff...make nice saws but they are limited to the extent that they have to buy plates from companies who are not dedicated to that one process like the older saw companies were.

I would imagine that those of us who make wood hand planes have a significant advantage in the materials we have available to us to make planes from. I doubt I would have had the variety of woods or steels available to me 50-100 years ago that I do today. Although Purple Heart, for example, is a challenging wood to work with, it makes a very durable, stable plane body. Modern high grade sand paper with a sticky back on a dead flat steel table saw table provides a reliable way to make a very flat plane bottom, even with Purple Heart.

It is exciting to be in a place in history where we are able to take some of the old and some of the new to make better hand tools.

[David Weaver]

I see you're still hawking the canard about PM-Whatever, A-2 and that stuff. Those chisels are fine as long as you like grinding angles more suited to mortise chisels. Below 30*, they are barely as good (certainly no better) than 1980s and earlier Blue Chips which sold for five bucks apiece. Haven't we had this discussion before?

I had early 1980s english blue chips. There's nothing to brag about with them, they were actually the lowest quality chisel I had short of 1950s chrome stuff. Their saving grace was their grind was what a lot more current chisels should be, but at 25 degrees, they were not on par with V11, and a couple of them were different in hardness than the rest. They were perfectly adequate to do work, but also perfectly inferior to every vintage chisel I've ever tried, save some versions of chisels that came from companies in their death throes. They were, however, also $37 shipped for 5 of them. Can't argue too much with that cheap, but they were substantially inferior to every vintage, new O1 or even A2 chisel I've used from a reputable maker. They certainly have nothing on V11 unless it's a contest to see which will fan out the largest wire edge on a finish stone.

I can't imagine using them at 20 degrees, unless everything is white pine and poplar.

It's too bad they (marples) couldn't be as considerate about the quality of the hardening and tempering with the blue chips in the 1980s+ as they were about the grinds back then. Now, the grinds on them are crap, too, and they turned to crap before production even left england.

[Mike Henderson]

I see you're still hawking the canard about PM-Whatever, A-2 and that stuff. Those chisels are fine as long as you like grinding angles more suited to mortise chisels. Below 30*, they are barely as good (certainly no better) than 1980s and earlier Blue Chips which sold for five bucks apiece. Haven't we had this discussion before?
We have and I thought we settled it in the other thread. I'm not willing to discuss it again, here.

Mike

[David Weaver]

As far as chisels go steels may have gotten better but I'm not sure that those who forge steel by hand are any better today than back when forging produced a much larger % of tools like chisels. I wonder how my Barr chisels would compare to older forged chisels? I am no expert on forging but that process certainly throws a twist into comparisons as well. Now there are companies who specialize in heat, cold....treating steel, that individuals or companies can send steel off to, but are the results better than ancient Japanese sword making masters were able to create, I'm not so sure.

Hand saws are where I think modern manufacturing has yet to match older history. I don't doubt that a modern group of engineers could come up with machinery that would forge and hammer saw plates better than Disston, Atkins or Simonds did many years ago. I just don't think there is enough market for the resulting product to convince some company to make the initial financial outlay for machinery designed to make better saw plates. So I think my Disston # 12 and a few Atkins and Simonds saws have no competitor in the current market. LN, Wenzloff...make nice saws but they are limited to the extent that they have to buy plates from companies who are not dedicated to that one process like the older saw companies were.

I would imagine that those of us who make wood hand planes have a significant advantage in the materials we have available to us to make planes from. I doubt I would have had the variety of woods or steels available to me 50-100 years ago that I do today. Although Purple Heart, for example, is a challenging wood to work with, it makes a very durable, stable plane body. Modern high grade sand paper with a sticky back on a dead flat steel table saw table provides a reliable way to make a very flat plane bottom, even with Purple Heart.

It is exciting to be in a place in history where we are able to take some of the old and some of the new to make better hand tools.

There is a little bit of confusion talking about modern stuff like hitachi white steel and tamahagane or a vintage equivalent. The very best of the tamahagane would probably be similar to hitachi white steel. I've seen various opinions about it, including So yamashita's opinion that modern carbon steel is better than vintage tamahagane across the board. Whether that's true, I don't know, but most of the older japanese tools before they went to english and swedish suppliers were not on par with emperor sword quality tamahagane. They were not as hard as a lot of the more recent tools, and not as consistent. Maybe the absolute best stuff from the best makers is similar, that's a different issue, but the best makers have never been reserved for hobbyists, and I doubt they would've sold to them (some still won't).

The excellent modern smiths who specialize in carbon steel (like mosaku, and from Stan covington's account, kiyotaki, who is now deceased) can make white steel into something that is hard like ice and still tough. The only vintage western steel that I have seen that is comparable (likely due to the sharpening mediums) is vintage razors. Most of our vintage forged tools never saw the kind of quality that the western razors attained.

[Jim Koepke]

Speaking of Japanese chisels, FWW's latest issue has an article on them.

Must not be any good since in just a quick glance it appears they recommend against using a secondary bevel.:eek:

For those who do not get the sarcasm, I do not use secondary bevels on most of my blades. Most of the time my chisels are in multiples of a size and set up with different bevel angles for different work.

Buying a bunch of old used chisels for a little money allows this more than buying one new chisel for the price of five or ten of the former.

jtk

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

You guys got me thinking now, I've wanted to pick up a japanese chisel or two to play around with, see if I like them - with the Yen down over the dollar, maybe I should look into that again . . .

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

Adam brings up planes - I recently picked up a Clifton #7 for a song on the eBay, because a jointer was the one plane where I could really see the benefit of modern machining. When the primary goal is flat above all else, a nicely machined sole is boon - I haven't really put this jointer to work as much as I'd like, but the little bit I'm using it, I'm already appreciating how much easier it makes the jointer plane work over my (admittedly non-flat) Millers Falls.

I don't care that much how well tuned a jack is, and at least for the woods I work, a vintage smoother is easy to tune to perfection.

I'd probably rather have a Lie Nielsen than the Clifton; I've used one a bit at their show - but the more I use this plane, I'm thinking the better approach would be tracking down the best vintage jointer I could, and having someone like Tablesaw Tom machining it flat to get that little extra kick. (No, I'm not lapping a metal jointer by hand.) Or going with a wooden jointer, and dealing with the seasonal tuning.

Why? Weight. If you work primarily by hand (I do - not out of any sense of purity or anything, but simply because I can work rough lumber by hand in my house, but there's not way my current living accommodations would work with powered tools like a jointer or planer.) working with these modern planes gets tiresome faster than it needs to. I'm a lightweight, but in shape enough I can deal with it, but I don't know why I should if I don't have to.

The more I try out modern planes (I also have a Lie Nielsen BU jack); the more I appreciate some things (ductile over gray iron, pretty much spot on flat soles and square sides, adjusters with less slop, etc.) but the more I wonder why they need to be so damn heavy. Maybe it gains me a little more "oomph" in a small smoother, but I don't know why a jack or jointer needs sidewalls so thick. The Clifton planes are even crazier than the Lie Nielsens - I think the no. 7 I have is just under 12 lbs, but even the LN I tried out was appreciably heavier than my Millers Falls.

I don't know, that's my reason for older over newer in the planes .

[Chris Griggs]

Adam brings up planes - I recently picked up a Clifton #7 for a song on the eBay, because a jointer was the one plane where I could really see the benefit of modern machining. When the primary goal is flat above all else, a nicely machined sole is boon - I haven't really put this jointer to work as much as I'd like, but the little bit I'm using it, I'm already appreciating how much easier it makes the jointer plane work over my (admittedly non-flat) Millers Falls.

I don't care that much how well tuned a jack is, and at least for the woods I work, a vintage smoother is easy to tune to perfection.

I'd probably rather have a Lie Nielsen than the Clifton; I've used one a bit at their show - but the more I use this plane, I'm thinking the better approach would be tracking down the best vintage jointer I could, and having someone like Tablesaw Tom machining it flat to get that little extra kick. (No, I'm not lapping a metal jointer by hand.) Or going with a wooden jointer, and dealing with the seasonal tuning.

Why? Weight. If you work primarily by hand (I do - not out of any sense of purity or anything, but simply because I can work rough lumber by hand in my house, but there's not way my current living accommodations would work with powered tools like a jointer or planer.) working with these modern planes gets tiresome faster than it needs to. I'm a lightweight, but in shape enough I can deal with it, but I don't know why I should if I don't have to.

The more I try out modern planes (I also have a Lie Nielsen BU jack); the more I appreciate some things (ductile over gray iron, pretty much spot on flat soles and square sides, adjusters with less slop, etc.) but the more I wonder why they need to be so damn heavy. Maybe it gains me a little more "oomph" in a small smoother, but I don't know why a jack or jointer needs sidewalls so thick. The Clifton planes are even crazier than the Lie Nielsens - I think the no. 7 I have is just under 12 lbs, but even the LN I tried out was appreciably heavier than my Millers Falls.

I don't know, that's my reason for older over newer in the planes .

I agree on all counts. The precise machining on the modern planes really does make it easier to get things flat, but on the big planes the extra weight that feels so nice when you try them for a few minutes at a tool show can become when cumbersome when prepping a lot of stock. Of course, as always YMMV.

[Charlie Stanford]

Your experience is completely different from mine.

[David Weaver]

8 years ago charlie.

Maybe someone with V11 chisels who uses them strictly at 25 degrees will talk about them, I spent my chisel wad on white steel, a couple of times. But in shooting, garden variety chrome vanadium is not close to V11. Not remotely. I have no bias either way, and sent my plane that uses that iron across the state last week.

[Charlie Stanford]

8 years ago charlie.

Maybe someone with V11 chisels who uses them strictly at 25 degrees will talk about them, I spent my chisel wad on white steel, a couple of times. But in shooting, garden variety chrome vanadium is not close to V11. Not remotely. I have no bias either way, and sent my plane that uses that iron across the state last week.

I demo'd a LV 1/2" PM-VII and reground to somewhere a little less than 25* and it was *charitably* on equal footing with an old Blue Chip at the same grind when paring white oak and red oak. Considering cost, the BC beat the pants off the thing.

[Erik Manchester]

David,

I have a set of 5 Marples Blue Chip chisels that were bought new in 1981 and they are excellent value for the money spent. They take a respectable edge and for everyday bench work do a fine job. I don't use these chisels much anymore as I have replaced them with some much newer ones as well as a host of vintage ones.

I have some Veritas PMV11 chisels that I am really impressed with, and I have a few sets of older chisels by quality manufacturers. I have accumulated these vintage chisels over a long period and those that wouldn't hold up well are long gone and the ones I have kept are because they perform and are often in sizes that are not made commonly any more.

For certain there are lots of new chisels out there of amazing quality for those that don't want to waste time searching for vintage tools to tune up.

[David Weaver]

If you're correct, then lots of people will come out and say the same thing. I'll wait for the throngs of people decrying $80 chisels that hold an edge less well than common soft chrome vanadium chisels, I don't generally use either of them. The plane iron provided no behavior (I used it only to shoot, same kind of activity it would see with a parer) that would indicate that it would dip down into the real of what is really the bottom of the barrel in acceptable tool steels, and that which marples chose to do less well and less consistently than even woodcraft's chinese made bubinga handled chisels.

i.e. i'm not buying it until several unbiased folks say the same thing.

[David Weaver]

David,

I have a set of 5 Marples Blue Chip chisels that were bought new in 1981 and they are excellent value for the money spent. They take a respectable edge and for everyday bench work do a fine job. I don't use these chisels much anymore as I have replaced them with some much newer ones as well as a host of vintage ones.

I have some Veritas PMV11 chisels that I am really impressed with, and I have a few sets of older chisels by quality manufacturers. I have accumulated these vintage chisels over a long period and those that wouldn't hold up well are long gone and the ones I have kept are because they perform and are often in sizes that are not made commonly any more.

For certain there are lots of new chisels out there of amazing quality for those that don't want to waste time searching for vintage tools to tune up.

I agree, I would lean toward the folks more consistent with budget CV steel, like narex, if I were buying. The set of marples I had were M444 vintage, they are a good beginner set because of the grind they had, they won't have a beginner bruising stuff with fat bevel sides, but their hardening was inconsistent. I was very pleased with the grind, less happy about the QC applied in making them, though certainly if I didn't have other chisels, I could've kept them and used them.

Pretty lame, though, compared to anything from 1900 or so that hasn't been damaged by ham hands (I can usually find chisels of that type cheaper than I can find marples chisels, I just can't find a set one day in an hour).

[Charlie Stanford]

The throngs you are looking for are unlikely to appear if they are satisfied with the chisels they already have. The professional tool shoppers and compensated tool reviewers are always sure they've just bought or handled the Holy Grail of whatever is currently to hand. As mentioned before, the D-2 crowd come immediately to mind as being comparable to last season's Prada. So, like, out you know?

[David Weaver]

There's already one.

I don't remember any chisels in D2 other than RI mortise chisels. I've been using one for the last three weeks on face frames. It's superior to any vintage mortise chisel I've used by a wide margin, plain and simple.

You're always searching for digs at things you have no experience with, like "can't sharpen a skew on a shapton stone". You can't be surprised if people dismiss everything you say as stirring the pot.

[Jim Koepke]

...

The more I try out modern planes (I also have a Lie Nielsen BU jack); the more I appreciate some things (ductile over gray iron, pretty much spot on flat soles and square sides, adjusters with less slop, etc.) but the more I wonder why they need to be so damn heavy. Maybe it gains me a little more "oomph" in a small smoother, but I don't know why a jack or jointer needs sidewalls so thick. The Clifton planes are even crazier than the Lie Nielsens - I think the no. 7 I have is just under 12 lbs, but even the LN I tried out was appreciably heavier than my Millers Falls.

I don't know, that's my reason for older over newer in the planes .

I have also noticed the increased weight of newer planes. I love my LN #60-1/2 but at times it seems a bit heavy and hard to grip with my arthritis bothering me.

My reason for choosing older over newer is mostly the price. My set of planes from #3 to #8 with all of the duplicates likely cost me less than a single jointer from Lie Nielsen. When it comes to the finished piece is there anyone who could tell what plane was used to do the job?

jtk

[Charlie Stanford]

Oh I think mortise chisels in D-2 make a ton of sense. I agree with you. So, where are everybody else's? It's fashion David - somebody already made a pair of killer red pumps. I'd better go over here and make a pair in navy blue.

We won't even be talking about PM-VII a year from today. It'll be beyond old news.

[David Weaver]

Everybody else's what? Every other manufacturer's D2 mortise chisels? Most of the others probably chose chrome vanadium because it's cheap. Both are probably cheaper than trying to laminate carbon steel to wrought iron and forging a bolster.

[David Weaver]

I have bought a lot, I've used them on wood, still have the ones I like. I used one of them on metal once making an infill plane flushing the infill with the sides. It finished the job, needed a little extra work resharpening several times. Oh, and I wrote fermat's last theorem on the back of another one. Siskel and Ebert gave it a 9.5.

I could have done all of it probably with two sets of chisels, one for heavy work and one for light. Siskel and Ebert gave unnecessary personal constraints and recording fermats last theorem on cheap chrome vanadium a 0.0 with zero stars.

Next time I see an old BB or butcher chisel at my normal hand tool honey hole for $10, i'll buy it. Siskel and Ebert give butcher, BB and properly done white steel an 11 on a scale of 10 with a trollproof rating of 5 stars.

[Charlie Stanford]

I have bought a lot, I've used them on wood, still have the ones I like. I used one of them on metal once making an infill plane flushing the infill with the sides. It finished the job, needed a little extra work resharpening several times. Oh, and I wrote fermat's last theorem on the back of another one. Siskel and Ebert gave it a 9.5.

I could have done all of it probably with two sets of chisels, one for heavy work and one for light. Siskel and Ebert gave unnecessary personal constraints and recording fermats last theorem on cheap chrome vanadium a 0.0 with zero stars.

Next time I see an old BB or butcher chisel at my normal hand tool honey hole for $10, i'll buy it. Siskel and Ebert give butcher, BB and properly done white steel an 11 on a scale of 10 with a trollproof rating of 5 stars.

Do please let us know how all of this works out.

[george wilson]

For what it's worth,I am well satisfied with my LV VII block plane iron.

[Stanley Covington]

It's funny that japanese chisels are mentioned. I don't know if anyone said much about them in these threads, but the comment is often "except i don't want japanese chisels".

If the price floats up into the $60 per chisel range, they are my choice easily for tools that are going to be used for cabinetmaking type stuff (not mortising planes or cutting brass rod, but stuff like dovetailing, cleaning out dados, etc.

they sharpen easily if they are decent white steel chisels, they hold their edge as well as the absolute best vintage stuff that's ever been seen in the US, maybe just a bit better due to the hardness, and you can maintain them all the way through a project with a finish stone.

The key is to get white steel from a competent maker, and in that price range white II is probably safer than white I, and more likely to be right. White I has a chance of being harder to sharpen and easier to chip if it isn't done correctly. Koyamaichi chisels would be my choice if I got new bench chisels.

For someone with diamonds, the semi HSS all-one-metal are very nice to use, like the koyama shusezai. (koyama and koyamaichi are not the same maker, though, that's *not* something you want to confuse with white steel chisels, but the semi-hss koyama chisels are pretty nice, and very tough).

There might not be a lot of consensus about some tools needing to be "good" ones, like chisels and planes, but there are places where you don't want to go cheap. I've never met a carver who likes inexpensive gouges.

Besides a lot of practical experience both with hand and wallet, I have been studying the history of Japanese steel and tool manufacturing a lot recently with the help of a couple of University Professors over here. I have tools in vintage American steel, New American steel, vintage English steel, new English steel, Swedish steel, Japanese Hitachi steel, and Tamahagane. Here is my opinion.

Tamahagane is a case of turning a horrible disadvantage into an advantage, something the Japanese on their mountainous islands with no natural resources but wood, water, fish and people excel at. Japanese has no iron ore except as black sand found in rivers and the coastline. This sand makes a very strange steel that is very difficult to work. One of the biggest differences between tamahagane and western carbon steel is the working temperatures. Tamahagane must be worked at temperatures that will destroy (burn out the carbon) of western steels. And when heated, it tends to work more like butter than stiff clay. Mr. Iwasaki, a well-educated man, now deceased, spent much of his life studying tamahagane. He is famous for the razors he produced in tamahagane (I have one). He wrote that when shaping and forging western steel, his efforts were focused on making the steel expand (nobiru) as much as possible, but with tamahagane, his focus was on keeping the hot metal from expanding too much. Difficult to control. Another problem with Tamahagane was that smiths procured it not in sheets but in clumps which they were forced to hand-forge into it useable rods or sheets. Very time consuming and required a high-level of skill. Lots and lots of QC problems. So those smiths that had figured out the techniques of working tamahagane became famous and prospered. The highest levels of skills were held by the swordsmiths who were supported by the warrior class. Some of these skills found their way to the village blacksmith level, but not uniformly. When western steel (English steel at first followed by Swedish steel) became available in sheets and rods, the impact in Japan was tremendous. It took some effort to learn how to work import steel, but it was much easier to work and much more consistent than tamahagane. There are documented studies that indicate that the productivity of the average blacksmith increased tenfold. And the end user could tell the difference, but was quite happy with the quality and cutting ability of products made from import steel.

Soon afterwards, carrying swords in public was outlawed in 1876, and most of Japan's highly skilled swordsmiths were almost instantly out of work. These guys had a huge impact on the quality and design of Japanese woodworking tools that is still seen today. Kind of like banning a Mayo clinic brain surgeon to work in a small village in Nepal. Health care in that small village is going to improve dramatically.

Besides being a fire-breathing bitch to work, tamahagane had another problem. The black sand it is made from was dredged from rivers and seashores severely damaging the environment and causing wide-spread erosion. In some areas, feudal lords went so far as to forbid mining black sand in their domains. Over time, tamahagane production ceased entirely around 1925. But swordmaking was never entirely stopped in Japan, and swordmaking relied on tamahagane, so around 1977 the tatara process for producing tamahagane was revived on an extremely limited scale (once or twice a year) at a single location called Yasugi with cooperation from Hitachi Metals.

These pages by Hitachi have some interesting historical information. http://www.hitachi-metals.co.jp/e/tatara/nnp0205.htm

Tamahagane is NOT a commercial product nowadays, and you cannot buy it or new tools made from it. The commercial steel manufactured by Hitachi nowadays called White Paper Steel, Blue Paper Steel, etc., are made at Hitachi's Yasugi plant nearby the location where the tatara process was resurrected, but despite what some people would have you believe, they are not made in the very inefficient tatara process, they do not use satetsu (domestic black sand) and they are not related to tamahagane in anything but nationality. In fact, I have it on good authority from one of Hitachi's competitors that Hitachi uses Swedish ore, as do all the other Japanese manufacturers making virgin steel. Swedish ore is simply the purest ore available anywhere in the world, and has been for centuries. So white steel, blue steel etc are excellent steels for simple reasons: Excellent raw materials combined with excellent technical quality control, and manufactured in response to meet consumer demand (Deming's "Quality"), where that consumer is obsessive about sharpness and eager to find any QC failures. I work in Japan making things for Japanese consumers, and I can testify how hard it is to satisfy Japanese cosumers when it comes to quality. They are unforgiving. By comparison, American consumers are easily satisfied. Hitachi Metals does not have the luxury of nonchalant consumers. That said, Swedish steel is also used a lot in Japan and has very high quality as well. If you own a kaeba Japanese saw, for instance, that is made from Swedish steel.

The point I am trying to make is that Japanese tool/weapon making was hampered greatly by a lack of a good source of iron ore, but despite this, blacksmiths developed advanced skills to satisfy extreme consumer expectations. So the Japanese cutting tool industry entered the industrial age with a higher level of practical skill than its Western counterpart, and has subsequently maintained much of that skill due to consumer demand.

Japanese chisel design evolved to meet the demand of consumers in what was for thousands of years a heavily forested island nations populated by a people obsessed with sharpness and in love with wood to the point of worshipping it. On the other hand, American and European chisel design has not evolved (some would say that American and European design has digressed with the advent of cheap steel). Hitachi Metals (and Sandvik, for that matter) decided to continue to produce high-quality tool steel to meet Japanese consumer demand for sharp tools, while America and Europe decided to make steel to meet the demand for easily and cheaply mass-produced tools for consumers with lower expectations for sharpness.

The fact that there is a significant segment of the American and European market that actively seeks out Japanese chisels (perhaps in response to J Krenov's books) despite their higher price, is a testament to their practical value. The average Japanese chisel is better than the best American or European chisel of any vintage, in my experience. And the best modern Japanese chisels make the best American or European chisels of any vintage seem backward.

Just my opinion, but it is a well-informed opinion if I do say so myself. Please do not take offense if I have kicked your dog.

[Charlie Stanford]

Besides a lot of practical experience both with hand and wallet, I have been studying the history of Japanese steel and tool manufacturing a lot recently with the help of a couple of University Professors over here. I have tools in vintage American steel, New American steel, vintage English steel, new English steel, Swedish steel, Japanese Hitachi steel, and Tamahagane. Here is my opinion.

Tamahagane is a case of turning a horrible disadvantage into an advantage, something the Japanese on their mountainous islands with no natural resources but wood, water, fish and people excel at. Japanese has no iron ore except as black sand found in rivers and the coastline. This sand makes a very strange steel that is very difficult to work. One of the biggest differences between tamahagane and western carbon steel is the working temperatures. Tamahagane must be worked at temperatures that will destroy (burn out the carbon) of western steels. And when heated, it tends to work more like butter than stiff clay. Mr. Iwasaki, a well-educated man, now deceased, spent much of his life studying tamahagane. He is famous for the razors he produced in tamahagane (I have one). He wrote that when shaping and forging western steel, his efforts were focused on making the steel expand (nobiru) as much as possible, but with tamahagane, his focus was on keeping the hot metal from expanding too much. Difficult to control. Another problem with Tamahagane was that smiths procured it not in sheets but in clumps which they were forced to hand-forge into it useable rods or sheets. Very time consuming and required a high-level of skill. Lots and lots of QC problems. So those smiths that had figured out the techniques of working tamahagane became famous and prospered. The highest levels of skills were held by the swordsmiths who were supported by the warrior class. Some of these skills found their way to the village blacksmith level, but not uniformly. When western steel (English steel at first followed by Swedish steel) became available in sheets and rods, the impact in Japan was tremendous. It took some effort to learn how to work import steel, but it was much easier to work and much more consistent than tamahagane. There are documented studies that indicate that the productivity of the average blacksmith increased tenfold. And the end user could tell the difference, but was quite happy with the quality and cutting ability of products made from import steel.

Soon afterwards, carrying swords in public was outlawed in 1876, and most of Japan's highly skilled swordsmiths were almost instantly out of work. These guys had a huge impact on the quality and design of Japanese woodworking tools that is still seen today. Kind of like banning a Mayo clinic brain surgeon to work in a small village in Nepal. Health care in that small village is going to improve dramatically.

Besides being a fire-breathing bitch to work, tamahagane had another problem. The black sand it is made from was dredged from rivers and seashores severely damaging the environment and causing wide-spread erosion. In some areas, feudal lords went so far as to forbid mining black sand in their domains. Over time, tamahagane production ceased entirely around 1925. But swordmaking was never entirely stopped in Japan, and swordmaking relied on tamahagane, so around 1977 the tatara process for producing tamahagane was revived on an extremely limited scale (once or twice a year) at a single location called Yasugi with cooperation from Hitachi Metals.

These pages by Hitachi have some interesting historical information. http://www.hitachi-metals.co.jp/e/tatara/nnp0205.htm

Tamahagane is NOT a commercial product nowadays, and you cannot buy it or new tools made from it. The commercial steel manufactured by Hitachi nowadays called White Paper Steel, Blue Paper Steel, etc., are made at Hitachi's Yasugi plant nearby the location where the tatara process was resurrected, but despite what some people would have you believe, they are not made in the very inefficient tatara process, they do not use satetsu (domestic black sand) and they are not related to tamahagane in anything but nationality. In fact, I have it on good authority from one of Hitachi's competitors that Hitachi uses Swedish ore, as do all the other Japanese manufacturers making virgin steel. Swedish ore is simply the purest ore available anywhere in the world, and has been for centuries. So white steel, blue steel etc are excellent steels for simple reasons: Excellent raw materials combined with excellent technical quality control, and manufactured in response to meet consumer demand (Deming's "Quality"), where that consumer is obsessive about sharpness and eager to find any QC failures. I work in Japan making things for Japanese consumers, and I can testify how hard it is to satisfy Japanese cosumers when it comes to quality. They are unforgiving. By comparison, American consumers are easily satisfied. Hitachi Metals does not have the luxury of nonchalant consumers. That said, Swedish steel is also used a lot in Japan and has very high quality as well. If you own a kaeba Japanese saw, for instance, that is made from Swedish steel.

The point I am trying to make is that Japanese tool/weapon making was hampered greatly by a lack of a good source of iron ore, but despite this, blacksmiths developed advanced skills to satisfy extreme consumer expectations. So the Japanese cutting tool industry entered the industrial age with a higher level of practical skill than its Western counterpart, and has subsequently maintained much of that skill due to consumer demand.

Japanese chisel design evolved to meet the demand of consumers in what was for thousands of years a heavily forested island nations populated by a people obsessed with sharpness and in love with wood to the point of worshipping it. On the other hand, American and European chisel design has not evolved (some would say that American and European design has digressed with the advent of cheap steel). Hitachi Metals (and Sandvik, for that matter) decided to continue to produce high-quality tool steel to meet Japanese consumer demand for sharp tools, while America and Europe decided to make steel to meet the demand for easily and cheaply mass-produced tools for consumers with lower expectations for sharpness.

The fact that there is a significant segment of the American and European market that actively seeks out Japanese chisels (perhaps in response to J Krenov's books) despite their higher price, is a testament to their practical value. The average Japanese chisel is better than the best American or European chisel of any vintage, in my experience. And the best modern Japanese chisels make the best American or European chisels of any vintage seem backward.

Just my opinion, but it is a well-informed opinion if I do say so myself. Please do not take offense if I have kicked your dog.

No dog kicked here. The Japanese make great edge tools. There seems to be little doubt there is a need to own anything but. But for some reason people do, even you I guess. I wonder why. Do you have a theory about why people would even bother running down vintage western chisels, or buy western chisels from current boutique makers? Are they simply misinformed? It's odd that even people who already own Japanese chisels continue to buy both vintage western chisels and new offerings from western manufacturers. On its face, this doesn't seem to make sense. I assume it would be your position that it, in fact, does not make sense -- if you already own the best then why waste money on nice, but at the end of the day inferior western chisels? What sort of actual in-the-shop woodworking functionality can be found in a western chisel when one has a Japanese chisel sitting right next to it? None? What sort of consumer psychology would compel a craftsman to buy an inferior chisel when they already own better chisels?

[Chris Griggs]

AWESOME! Thats not a post that's a dang treatise Stan. Seriously, really interesting, thanks for taking the time to write it.


Besides a lot of practical experience both with hand and wallet, I have been studying the history of Japanese steel and tool manufacturing a lot recently with the help of a couple of University Professors over here. I have tools in vintage American steel, New American steel, vintage English steel, new English steel, Swedish steel, Japanese Hitachi steel, and Tamahagane. Here is my opinion.

Tamahagane is a case of turning a horrible disadvantage into an advantage, something the Japanese on their mountainous islands with no natural resources but wood, water, fish and people excel at. Japanese has no iron ore except as black sand found in rivers and the coastline. This sand makes a very strange steel that is very difficult to work. One of the biggest differences between tamahagane and western carbon steel is the working temperatures. Tamahagane must be worked at temperatures that will destroy (burn out the carbon) of western steels. And when heated, it tends to work more like butter than stiff clay. Mr. Iwasaki, a well-educated man, now deceased, spent much of his life studying tamahagane. He is famous for the razors he produced in tamahagane (I have one). He wrote that when shaping and forging western steel, his efforts were focused on making the steel expand (nobiru) as much as possible, but with tamahagane, his focus was on keeping the hot metal from expanding too much. Difficult to control. Another problem with Tamahagane was that smiths procured it not in sheets but in clumps which they were forced to hand-forge into it useable rods or sheets. Very time consuming and required a high-level of skill. Lots and lots of QC problems. So those smiths that had figured out the techniques of working tamahagane became famous and prospered. The highest levels of skills were held by the swordsmiths who were supported by the warrior class. Some of these skills found their way to the village blacksmith level, but not uniformly. When western steel (English steel at first followed by Swedish steel) became available in sheets and rods, the impact in Japan was tremendous. It took some effort to learn how to work import steel, but it was much easier to work and much more consistent than tamahagane. There are documented studies that indicate that the productivity of the average blacksmith increased tenfold. And the end user could tell the difference, but was quite happy with the quality and cutting ability of products made from import steel.

Soon afterwards, carrying swords in public was outlawed in 1876, and most of Japan's highly skilled swordsmiths were almost instantly out of work. These guys had a huge impact on the quality and design of Japanese woodworking tools that is still seen today. Kind of like banning a Mayo clinic brain surgeon to work in a small village in Nepal. Health care in that small village is going to improve dramatically.

Besides being a fire-breathing bitch to work, tamahagane had another problem. The black sand it is made from was dredged from rivers and seashores severely damaging the environment and causing wide-spread erosion. In some areas, feudal lords went so far as to forbid mining black sand in their domains. Over time, tamahagane production ceased entirely around 1925. But swordmaking was never entirely stopped in Japan, and swordmaking relied on tamahagane, so around 1977 the tatara process for producing tamahagane was revived on an extremely limited scale (once or twice a year) at a single location called Yasugi with cooperation from Hitachi Metals.

These pages by Hitachi have some interesting historical information. http://www.hitachi-metals.co.jp/e/tatara/nnp0205.htm

Tamahagane is NOT a commercial product nowadays, and you cannot buy it or new tools made from it. The commercial steel manufactured by Hitachi nowadays called White Paper Steel, Blue Paper Steel, etc., are made at Hitachi's Yasugi plant nearby the location where the tatara process was resurrected, but despite what some people would have you believe, they are not made in the very inefficient tatara process, they do not use satetsu (domestic black sand) and they are not related to tamahagane in anything but nationality. In fact, I have it on good authority from one of Hitachi's competitors that Hitachi uses Swedish ore, as do all the other Japanese manufacturers making virgin steel. Swedish ore is simply the purest ore available anywhere in the world, and has been for centuries. So white steel, blue steel etc are excellent steels for simple reasons: Excellent raw materials combined with excellent technical quality control, and manufactured in response to meet consumer demand (Deming's "Quality"), where that consumer is obsessive about sharpness and eager to find any QC failures. I work in Japan making things for Japanese consumers, and I can testify how hard it is to satisfy Japanese cosumers when it comes to quality. They are unforgiving. By comparison, American consumers are easily satisfied. Hitachi Metals does not have the luxury of nonchalant consumers. That said, Swedish steel is also used a lot in Japan and has very high quality as well. If you own a kaeba Japanese saw, for instance, that is made from Swedish steel.

The point I am trying to make is that Japanese tool/weapon making was hampered greatly by a lack of a good source of iron ore, but despite this, blacksmiths developed advanced skills to satisfy extreme consumer expectations. So the Japanese cutting tool industry entered the industrial age with a higher level of practical skill than its Western counterpart, and has subsequently maintained much of that skill due to consumer demand.

Japanese chisel design evolved to meet the demand of consumers in what was for thousands of years a heavily forested island nations populated by a people obsessed with sharpness and in love with wood to the point of worshipping it. On the other hand, American and European chisel design has not evolved (some would say that American and European design has digressed with the advent of cheap steel). Hitachi Metals (and Sandvik, for that matter) decided to continue to produce high-quality tool steel to meet Japanese consumer demand for sharp tools, while America and Europe decided to make steel to meet the demand for easily and cheaply mass-produced tools for consumers with lower expectations for sharpness.

The fact that there is a significant segment of the American and European market that actively seeks out Japanese chisels (perhaps in response to J Krenov's books) despite their higher price, is a testament to their practical value. The average Japanese chisel is better than the best American or European chisel of any vintage, in my experience. And the best modern Japanese chisels make the best American or European chisels of any vintage seem backward.

Just my opinion, but it is a well-informed opinion if I do say so myself. Please do not take offense if I have kicked your dog.

[David Weaver]

Stan - I figured the white steel was some modern process, whatever the equivalent of the bessemer process is now. I mention it because it's as close as someone is likely to get with modern steel, to the original carbon steels that were used a hundred or two before (or like the tamahagane).

There is someone manufacturing steel with the same process as tamahagane in minnesota. I don't know that they do the process as well, but I believe they're using it for knives. I only know that they're doing it, but am not that interested to find out where it ends up.

Not surprised that hitachi would be using swedish ore.

[Charlie Stanford]

For what it's worth,I am well satisfied with my LV VII block plane iron.

Here's a guy you probably already know:

http://austinot.com/angel-sword-best-sword-maker-world

[Stanley Covington]

Stan - I figured the white steel was some modern process, whatever the equivalent of the bessemer process is now. I mention it because it's as close as someone is likely to get with modern steel, to the original carbon steels that were used a hundred or two before (or like the tamahagane).

There is someone manufacturing steel with the same process as tamahagane in minnesota. I don't know that they do the process as well, but I believe they're using it for knives. I only know that they're doing it, but am not that interested to find out where it ends.

I had not heard about Minnesota tamahagane. I will have to see what can be found on the web. Thanks David.

Stan

[David Weaver]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDbg1aikq1I

I don't know anything about the guy, looks like the word tamahagane might be used pretty loosely.

[Chris Griggs]

looks like the word tamahagane might be used pretty loosely.

Yeah, they seem to be calling Tamahagane any steel that is forged in a traditional manner, regardless of iron source. Seems like what they are making is more akin to high quality modern Japanese HC steels. Cool video though.

[Stanley Covington]

AWESOME! Thats not a post that's a dang treatise Stan. Seriously, really interesting, thanks for taking the time to write it.

Chris:

Thanks, Chris. I am glad you found it interesting despite the poor organization and faulty sentence structure.

Stan

[Stuart Tierney]

Stan,

You can still get new tools made with Tamahagane.

But, there are a lot of caveats to it and for me, it's not worthwhile except for the novelty factor. Which I don't do as a rule.

(Not sword grade stuff of course, but made from the traditional process.)

As far as making steel from scratch, take a look at this; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXbLyVpWsVM

Very cool, but I'd have to actually watch it to know what it was about. I had it running while I was filling boxes the other day.

Stu.

[george wilson]

Charles,the Angel swords appear to have real Wootz steel in them(not the pattern welded stuff misnomered Damascus). I can't say I'm crazy about the workmanship,but genuine Wootz is the superior blade material. The real Wootz is not impressive to look at. It just has little sparkles of carbide in it. The carbides are in a soft matrix,making Wootz swords very tough. This process was finally re discovered by scientists back in the 70"s,IIRC. They heated high carbon steel up only to red,and ran it through powerful rollers,reducing its thickness to 1/8 of the former. Heating it only to red does not let the carbides melt. Then,they get crushed into tiny particles surrounded by softer steel. Of course,the originals were hammered down to do the same thing.

Believe it or not,I had begun making steel engraving chisels doing this same thing before I read about the rediscovery. I cannot recall what my reasoning was by now. It made great engraving chisels. However,hammering on only red hot high carbon steel was hurting my bad shoulder. I hired a blacksmith to hammer me a bunch. He,too,complained about the steel being very hard to hammer. I took an engraving chisel over to the Gunsmith Shop in the museum. They started driving the chisel up the tang of a file. When it reached the hardened area,I told them to go ahead. The chisel cut more than 1/8" into the hardened part of the file before the tip broke off,to their amazement!

European smiths heated steel to a much higher temperature,which made it MUCH easier to forge. But,the carbides melted and re formed into a crystalline matrix upon quenching,leaving a hard,but brittle blade which had to be softened by tempering. Wootz can be left fully hard without being brittle as glass.

These blades are good for cutting flesh. Used on wood,they would develop a fine,irregular toothy edge because the softer steel in between would wear away some,leaving the carbides sticking out proud.

[David Weaver]

Life so short, craft so long to learn my a$$... Ruskin never met you.

Nobody has a clue what you're talking about. I don't appreciate the trolling, though, nor the changing your posts after I already responded to them, solely so that you could troll more. I'm going to see what can be done about it.

[Jim Koepke]

I'm going to see what can be done about it.

Hopefully you will succeed.

It is difficult for most of us who like to regard people as being serious when someone comes along with the sole purpose of leaving something foul smelling floating in the pool to remind us of their having visited.

It would be nice if he was like teeth and would go away by being ignored.

jtk

[Charlie Stanford]

Charles,the Angel swords appear to have real Wootz steel in them(not the pattern welded stuff misnomered Damascus). I can't say I'm crazy about the workmanship,but genuine Wootz is the superior blade material. The real Wootz is not impressive to look at. It just has little sparkles of carbide in it. The carbides are in a soft matrix,making Wootz swords very tough. This process was finally re discovered by scientists back in the 70"s,IIRC. They heated high carbon steel up only to red,and ran it through powerful rollers,reducing its thickness to 1/8 of the former. Heating it only to red does not let the carbides melt. Then,they get crushed into tiny particles surrounded by softer steel. Of course,the originals were hammered down to do the same thing.

Believe it or not,I had begun making steel engraving chisels doing this same thing before I read about the rediscovery. I cannot recall what my reasoning was by now. It made great engraving chisels. However,hammering on only red hot high carbon steel was hurting my bad shoulder. I hired a blacksmith to hammer me a bunch. He,too,complained about the steel being very hard to hammer. I took an engraving chisel over to the Gunsmith Shop in the museum. They started driving the chisel up the tang of a file. When it reached the hardened area,I told them to go ahead. The chisel cut more than 1/8" into the hardened part of the file before the tip broke off,to their amazement!

European smiths heated steel to a much higher temperature,which made it MUCH easier to forge. But,the carbides melted and re for men into a crystalline matrix upon quenching,leaving a hard,but brittle blade which had to be softened by tempering. Wootz can be left fully hard without being brittle as glass.

These blades are good for cutting flesh. Used on wood,they would develop a fine,irregular toothy edge because the softer steel in between would wear away some,leaving the carbides sticking out proud.

Very informative. Thanks. I guess the steel is suited to purpose.

[Charlie Stanford]

Nobody has a clue what you're talking about. I don't appreciate the trolling, though, nor the changing your posts after I already responded to them, solely so that you could troll more. I'm going to see what can be done about it.

It was a hat tip to your productivity and apparent short learning curve, David. Nothing more. To have acquired the knowledge you seem to possess and to have done it in eight years implies working at a very high level of intensity and depth.

Perhaps my reference to the quote makes more sense with a little more explanation.

N.B. I attributed the quote improperly. It was from Chaucer.

[Mike Henderson]

Charles,the Angel swords appear to have real Wootz steel in them(not the pattern welded stuff misnomered Damascus). I can't say I'm crazy about the workmanship,but genuine Wootz is the superior blade material. The real Wootz is not impressive to look at. It just has little sparkles of carbide in it. The carbides are in a soft matrix,making Wootz swords very tough. This process was finally re discovered by scientists back in the 70"s,IIRC. They heated high carbon steel up only to red,and ran it through powerful rollers,reducing its thickness to 1/8 of the former. Heating it only to red does not let the carbides melt. Then,they get crushed into tiny particles surrounded by softer steel. Of course,the originals were hammered down to do the same thing.

Believe it or not,I had begun making steel engraving chisels doing this same thing before I read about the rediscovery. I cannot recall what my reasoning was by now. It made great engraving chisels. However,hammering on only red hot high carbon steel was hurting my bad shoulder. I hired a blacksmith to hammer me a bunch. He,too,complained about the steel being very hard to hammer. I took an engraving chisel over to the Gunsmith Shop in the museum. They started driving the chisel up the tang of a file. When it reached the hardened area,I told them to go ahead. The chisel cut more than 1/8" into the hardened part of the file before the tip broke off,to their amazement!

European smiths heated steel to a much higher temperature,which made it MUCH easier to forge. But,the carbides melted and re formed into a crystalline matrix upon quenching,leaving a hard,but brittle blade which had to be softened by tempering. Wootz can be left fully hard without being brittle as glass.

These blades are good for cutting flesh. Used on wood,they would develop a fine,irregular toothy edge because the softer steel in between would wear away some,leaving the carbides sticking out proud.
For those interested in learning more about Damascus type steel, here's (http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9809/Verhoeven-9809.html)an article from the Journal of Metallurgy, although I don't know if it's the final word. I think research is still being done on how it was produced. As George points out, the term "Damascus steel" is widely used today to refer to steel that was not made from Wootz. The article is about original Damascus steel.

Mike

[Charlie Stanford]

For those interested in learning more about Damascus type steel, here's (http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9809/Verhoeven-9809.html)an article from the Journal of Metallurgy, although I don't know if it's the final word. I think research is still being done on how it was produced. As George points out, the term "Damascus steel" is widely used today to refer to steel that was not made from Wootz. The article is about original Damascus steel.

Mike

Another interesting article:

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/09/29/science/the-mystery-of-damascus-steel-appears-solved.html (http://www.nytimes.com/1981/09/29/science/the-mystery-of-damascus-steel-appears-solved.html)

[george wilson]

That article is rather full of mis information,I'm afraid. 1700º is too high a temperature. It should be red heat. A red heat seen in a darkened room can be about only 800 or 900º F. Also, steel with as much as 2% carbon is going to be more like cast iron.

The article fails to mention that the modern experiment was done by rolling the steel through rollers ,reducing it to 1/8 former thickness,while only at red heat. Looks like this article was written by someone with a poor knowledge of steel.

Real Wootz steel has no "watery" pattern. That was the result of Europeans trying without success to duplicate true Wootz steel,by laminating steels of different carbon content,and etching it with acids.

[Charlie Stanford]

The actual research can apparently be found in: "The research is described in Volume 25 of Progress in Materials Science, a British publication."

Were we able to lay our hands on it some of the confusion might be cleared up.

Did this paragraph from the article make any sense:

"The superplastic steel developed at Stanford [Stanford University I presume] is kept at high temperature for only a few hours. It is shaped during cooling, reheated to moderate temperature for further working and may then be quenched to achieve extreme hardness. This process, Dr. Wadsworth said, produces very small carbide grains and hence even greater hardness and ductility than in Damascus steel.