2 ? on mortise chisel angles and workbench issues.

[Jeffrey Larsen]

a couple questions and didn't want to waste multiple posts;

1: What angle should mortise chisels be ground at? I just got an old antiuqe set off the bay and will need to be cleaning them up.

2: I am strongly considering building a work bench. Is oak a reasonable wood to use for that project? If not what wood would be cheaper than maple but adeq2uate? Also, are kits available for tablebuilding?

Is it just smarter to buy a bench already completed? Was hoping to save some money, but if building is about as much could just buy. What starter benches are recommended?

Jeff

[Mike Henderson]

a couple questions and didn't want to waste multiple posts;

1: What angle should mortise chisels be ground at? I just got an old antiuqe set off the bay and will need to be cleaning them up.

Jeff
What kind of mortise chisels are they? Are they the English style "pigsticker" mortise chisels?

Normally, a mortise chisel will be ground with a 30 to 35* bevel angle. But a pigsticker will have a primary bevel of maybe 25 to 27*, with a secondary bevel of 35*. This is for chip clearance because the pigsticker chisel is so thick.

Also, if it's a pigsticker, round the top of the bevel into the main portion of the chisel.

Mike

[Mike K Wenzloff]

Hi Jeff,

Like Mike said, for an oval bolstered mortise chisel, a low primary works well for penetration and a small secondary for strengthening the tip. The slight rounding of where the primary bevel hits the face of the chisel allows an easier prying motion when doing deeper mortises.

http://www.wenzloffandsons.com/temp/mortise_chisels1.jpg


Oak is a good resilient and strong wood. I would use it for a bench at the right price. Depending on where you live, other species such as Douglas Fir, Yellow Pine, SYP, and others can also be effective as a bench.

A bench doesn't have to cost a tremendous amount. Depending on the style of bench, the cost can be quite reasonable in fact. If you do much hand work, the "English" bench Chris Schwarz recently built is a good option.

http://www.woodworking-magazine.com/blog/content/binary/flatten1.jpg

Of course, if you would rather have a conventional vise, that would work also with a little planing. Schwarz is also coming out with a book on benches this year, so if you don't build by the time it is published, consider picking up a copy.

Take care, Mike

[John Schreiber]

2: I am strongly considering building a work bench. Is oak a reasonable wood to use for that project? If not what wood would be cheaper than maple but adeq2uate? Also, are kits available for tablebuilding?

Is it just smarter to buy a bench already completed? Was hoping to save some money, but if building is about as much could just buy. What starter benches are recommended?
There is a ton of information on the web and I've checked Scott Landis's The Workbench Book from my library so many times they are considering buying another copy. I'm also really looking forward to Chris Schwarz's book which is coming out this fall.

Oak is generally too "splintery" for a workbench top, but it can be good for the supports. Maple or beech are the most common tops, but there are many options. A couple of layers of MDF will serve well, but it's not terribly pretty. I plan to use a prepared beech counter-top from IKEA, the price is right and quality is high.

Lee Valley has a "kit" of sorts, and they have lots of other well regarded hardware. I'm not aware of any other kits, except that any bench you buy mail order will be more or less a kit which will need assembly.

If your desire is to have a bench, buying does make more sense, but there is a lot of value in making your own bench. After all, very little hobbiest woodworking really makes "sense". It is done because it is rewarding in itself.

I'm in the planning stages for a Shaker style bench and have been playing with a design in SketchUp. I hope to start work on it next summer.

[James Mittlefehldt]

If your local sawmills have birch at a better price than maple, it is a viable option for the top, and use the oak that I assume you have for everything else. Also don't disregard soft maple, generally what uis sold as soft maple is actually as hard as white ash or walnut, and it is more dimensionally stable than hard maple.

[Jeffrey Larsen]

Thanks gentlemen!

The chisels I have purchased look like the ones in the photo--at least according to the poor ebay picture. Will have to see how they are when the arrive.

the photo of the bench is interesting--haven't seen anything like that before. different indeed--and pretty cool.


In terms of woods, I live in the nashville area, so oak is quite common around here--probably not birch. Will have to see what else is a possibility.

In terms of buying vs building, Most of the benches that look good to me look to be over 1000$--somehow, that seems like quite a bit to me. I know everything is relative and that some folks have a lot of money for such things or are purists, etc. I just need something that will be solid and work well for me for many years. It is appealing to me to build my own. I have a bench now that I made from 2 x 4s and plywood from lowes. I don't even have a vice. So, as you all can see, I am really at the early stages. I started being interested in woodworking over 30 years ago and I am 40 now. Still have dovetails I cut when I was nine. somehow, though, have just been too busy and haven't had it as enough of a priority. In the past 3-4 months, I have been having a ball buying old planes off ebay and learning to tune them to the best of my ability. Also, chisels, saws, miterbox etc--all made around 1900. My most rescent purchase was an ebay vice--very old, but solid that I will be assessing when it arrives to see if it will be a candidate for putting on my bench that I am make plans for.

Well, enough of my life's history! will close for now--thanks again for the input.

Jeff

[Brian Kent]

I used ash for the whole base of my bench. If it is resilient enough for baseball bats it's good enough for bench legs. I would gladly use oak in this part. I made a Frank Klaus adaptaion with a metal end vise instead of a tail vise. Maybe I would make the tail vise now, but I couldn't handle the complexity at that stage. I bought the maple just for the top and some of my favorite wood - purpleheart - for trim. I would get one of the best kinds of wood for that surface, but that part of my bench was only 16", plus 8/4 trim in front, and 4/4 trim right in front of the tool tray.

In short, I would use any strong wood for the base, get one of the best kinds for the top, and trim it to your pleasure.

Including all the wood, 2 vises, hardware, specialty tool accessories along the way, it was about $600. I loved making it and I love what I learned. It cost more than I expected but less than an outright purchase.

[Matthew Platt]

1: What angle should mortise chisels be ground at?

Jeff

When you are re-establishing the secondary bevels on your reground mortice chisels, there is a simple technique that naturally finds the optimum angle for each individual piece of steel under your working conditions.

This is so much easier to do with a freshly reground chisel (as described above) because the secondary bevels are very much smaller and easier to adjust. The objective is to find the most acute angle the steel will take; making for sharper edges and therefore faster work.

Start off with very little (if any) microbevel and examine how the edge wears after chopping out a few mortices in the same timber that you typically work with. If the steel is merely worn (rounded through abrasion) leave the angle as it is, you're done. If there is evidence of steel failure - rolling over or chipping, hone a microbevel at 8 degrees steeper than the primary bevel.

If the 8 degree microbevel holds up well, go to 4 degrees the next time you sharpen, then either 2 or 6 depending on how that holds up and so on. By bracketing the optimum angle and then closing down the brackets you will find it with the minimum number of changes.

This technique allows you to tune the secondary bevel angle of each tool so that it is working just ahead of the point of failure, and as long as you do it when the secodary bevel is small, it doesn't take a whole lot of time to change the angles.

Cheers,

M

[Robert Rozaieski]

a couple questions and didn't want to waste multiple posts;

1: What angle should mortise chisels be ground at? I just got an old antiuqe set off the bay and will need to be cleaning them up.

I think it was said in previous posts but my Isles are ground at a 20 degree primary bevel (for DEEP penetration) with a 35 degree micro/secondary bevel (for strength). I'm not a fan of microbevels for bench chisels since I hollow grind, but for mortise chisels they are great. If the whole bevel were 35 degrees, you wouldn't get that chisel very deep with each blow. However, with the shallow 20 degree primary bevel, it just glides into the wood. I chopped a mortise in some mahogany the other night with the ¼" chisel and in one blow, it went a little over ¼" deep. This makes for very fast hand mortising.


2: I am strongly considering building a work bench. Is oak a reasonable wood to use for that project? If not what wood would be cheaper than maple but adeq2uate? Also, are kits available for tablebuilding?

Is it just smarter to buy a bench already completed? Was hoping to save some money, but if building is about as much could just buy. What starter benches are recommended?

Jeff
Oak will work fine. I would suggest using whatever you can get that is stiff, stable and cheap. It's a workbench not a piece of furniture. Mine's birch because I got about 110 bd. ft. a couple years ago for less than $100. My previous one was construction grade 2x4s. But anything strong and stable will work. I would suggest staying away from darker woods though. While they look pretty, lighter colored woods refelct light better and make it easier to see what you are doing.

If you are going to build it, I strongly suggest waiting for Chris's new book. He's done a lot of work on workbenches the last few years and most of it has centered around actually using the benches, unlike other books on benches that don't have much in the way of using a bench for different operations.

It's very important to think about all of the things you will want to do on that bench and figure out how you will do them before you build a bench. For example, how will you hold small boards for dovetailing (like drawer sides); how will you hold wide panels for dovetailing (like case sides); how will you hold long boards to work on the edges and the faces; how will you hold boards for mortising, etc. Will you be working with hand tools only or a combination of hand and power tools. Do you use metal planes, wooden planes or both. There's a lot to think about. In my opinion, most benches out there that you can buy put no thought into this so it's worth it to build your own for how you will work.

Also, keep in mind that there is no "perfect" bench design. I'm still changing mine as others are still changing theirs as you will change yours as you learn how you work and how you use the bench. Make it fit you and your work. Don't just copy from someone else who may be a different size than you and work differently from you. And finally keep it simple. The more I work on my bench, the less I find I need things like a tail vise. They are complicated for a first time bench builder to build and there are much simpler ways of holding boards for planing the faces (basically 99% of what a tail vise is used for anyway).