Mortise chisel handles

[Adam Stevens2]

I've recently been hammering away making some mortise and tenon joints for my table build, and the chisel I am using at the moment is a Narex mortise chisel. No complains whatsoever about the blade, it's been working great. I am wondering, however, if it's possible to administer too great a beating to the handle? The top of the handle has a wide metal hoop with just a short piece of wood above it, and it's getting so flattened that it almost looks to be splintering. Is there a point of equilibrium where the top of the handle will more or less stay as is, or am I danger of smashing the top to smithereens? My mallet is a red oak one I made myself and I am wondering if the mallet itself is too hard for the handle.

[Tom M King]

I've beaten up too many chisels with wooden mallets. I've never put a dent in one with the Wood is Good urethane mallets. I've used one all day long for the past couple of days, inlaying red oak flooring, and neither the chisels or my arm are any worse for it. I always thought that the Wood is Good name was kind of strange, but I guess they mean wood is good, but urethane is better. I bought a 12 oz. one for woodworking chisels, and a 30 oz. one for timber framing. I've never regretted the money spent, and haven't picked up anything else since they came.

[Warren Mickley]

I have seen the Narex mortise chisels and I recall beech handles. A chisel with a ring like this can stand quite a bit of mushrooming on the top so you probably have a long way to go. I like beech the best for chisel handles and if I were using the Narex chisels I would replace the handles with beech that had a domed top and no ring at all. The eight mortise chisels in the Seaton chest (1796) have domed beech handles without ferrules or rings. I have used a 30 ounce dogwood mallet for mortising for 35 years. Dogwood is much harder than red oak but it has not wrecked any handles. I use a persimmon mallet (also extremely hard) for my bench chisels, most of which are beech.

I would say that fast and neat mortising is more about finesse than brute force. Some people talk about bashing or whacking or even abusing mortise chisels, but I would suggest maybe going a little easy on the bashing and thinking about good technique instead.

[Jim Koepke]

I would say that fast and neat mortising is more about finesse than brute force. Some people talk about bashing or whacking or even abusing mortise chisels, but I would suggest maybe going a little easy on the bashing and thinking about good technique instead.

One of the faults of the English language are the connotations associated with some words. Brute force often implies there is no control of the force. Bashing, whacking or abusing all seem to imply evil or even dangerous/mindless uses of percussive force.

Often my posts refer to whacking a mortise chisel. Whacking a chisel does not preclude using finesse in making a mortise. It surely makes a mortise quicker than light love taps atop a large chisel. If one looses control of a chisel whilst whacking with their mallet then it is likely they are too involved with the striking and not enough with the proper driving.

Though finesse "intricate and refined delicacy" versus whacking "to strike forcefully with a sharp blow" seem to exclude each other my belief is they can live together. I do feel "bashing" or "abusing" are definitely outside the realm of finesse.

To my way of thinking using a sledge hammer to drive a mortise chisel would be in the realm of "bashing & abusing."

Please note all of the above is in reference to using a mortise chisel.

I do not use full force on bench chisels.

It would likely be good for folks to take at least a preliminary interest or course in physics to help understand the transference of mechanical energy and how it applies to woodworking.

As mentioned above it is also important for folks to understand what one person means in the administration of a whack can be different what another person means.

One person may view it as an uncontrolled, eyes closed heavy blow, another may see it as delivering a forceful precision strike.

jtk

[Bill White]

My dogwood mallet has served me well for many years for both carving and mortising.

I would not be too concerned unless you're beating the chisel to death which would mean either the wrong chisel, or one that is dull.

Bill

[Adam Stevens2]

I wouldn't say I'm really going to town on the chisel and using all of my strength. But I am using some force. It's a little tricky to determine the right amount of force to use at this stage given these are literally the first mortices I've done on an actual piece of furniture. All of the demonstrations I've seen use a decent amount of force to drive the chisel in.

[Graham Haydon]

Adam, one of the chaps in our workshop has a set of the 8105 regular bench chisels which also features the hoop. He likes to use a claw hammer on his (his tools, his money, his choice) and the hoop contains things just fine. Yes it's a bit mushroomed but it does not prevent him turning out great work and the handle shows no sign of splitting.

[Frank Drew]

I've used a steel hammer longterm on Japanese chisels with hooped oak handles with no ill effects at all on the handles, and this has been for both bench work and timber framing.

[David Weaver]

Mortising is about feel. You should be able to keep a rhythm and have the wood removed from the mortise (split free as chips, etc) without having to do hard levering or hard pounding. At the same time, you don't want to take 1/16th slivers. You'll find the happy medium where the wood likes to be worked, and where you get predictable fast and accurate mortising. It'll just happen - it's like hand sawing. It's not comfortable to work hammering the stuffing out of everything, it's more comfortable to get in a rhythm and work with a level of firmness that gets the job done. I'd imagine that of apprentices and masters in the days before mechanization (not sure which would've done the mortising) that they could probably count their hammer strikes on commonly made mortises and be done in the same number of strikes fairly often.

The edge lasts better on the chisel as you get to finding the sweet spot, too.

I don't think you're going to damage your chisel handles, though, but if you do, you can replace them with a better style. I've never broken a chisel handle, but have burnished and mushroomed some to some extent where there are hoops. They're made to be used.

[Tom Vanzant]

One of the rituals of preparing a Japanese chisel for use is seating the hoop and peening/mushrooming the wood within. My Narex chisels get a similar treatment. I use a 24 oz wooden mallet and 24 oz Veritas brass/cherry mallet with no problems.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

I've beaten up too many chisels with wooden mallets. I've never put a dent in one with the Wood is Good urethane mallets. I've used one all day long for the past couple of days, inlaying red oak flooring, and neither the chisels or my arm are any worse for it. I always thought that the Wood is Good name was kind of strange, but I guess they mean wood is good, but urethane is better. I bought a 12 oz. one for woodworking chisels, and a 30 oz. one for timber framing. I've never regretted the money spent, and haven't picked up anything else since they came.
Or they mean "wood is good so don't beat it up.... user our mallets instead". :D

[Tom M King]

I'm finishing up a floor repair job. I don't know how many hundred 5/16 x 2-1/4 "mortise" ends I cut last week with a chisel, and don't want to count them. Most of the surface area was hogged out with a router jig, but the last half inch or so was left to be squared up with a chisel. I just counted how many I've done since this morning, and counted 76. This is old Red Oak. Chisel, mallet, and arm are all just fine. Back will be tired for a while from getting up and down off the floor. I don't care how lightly I would have done all this with a wooden mallet, but I've done such amounts of work with them before, and I have no doubt they would have shown some bad effects from use. I'll leave the fancy wooden mallets for cutting just a few for a piece of furniture......13 more to go to finish. My joints look better than the ones in the flooring from when it was first installed. Final fit of the inlays is with a shooting board.

I'll try to think to post pictures of a mallet I found behind a kneewall in an 1816 house. The guy had made it out or a tree limb, but it had broken where there was a knot. I guess he just tossed it down behind the kneewall where it would never be found.