Which skew chisel?

[Peter Tremblay]

Hello all,

I am about to get my first set of skew chisels. I was thinking that 3/8" was the best all-around width but I was wondering what your opinioins were about a brand. Mainly I am looking at either Lie-Nielsen or Blue Spruce skews. One of the things that I am wondering about is the angle of skew. The LN seems very shallow while the Blue Spruce (and others) seem much more steep. Does anyone have any thougths. Mainly I want them for cleaning up dovetails and other end-grain paring situations (like a tenon shoulder).
The main reason that I was considering these two brands is that they have a great reputation for quality but is there any other brands that I ought to be thinking about.

Thanks
Peter

[Jim Koepke]

I am about to get my first set of skew chisels. I was thinking that 3/8" was the best all-around width but I was wondering what your opinions were about a brand.

Depending on your sharpening set up, it might be easy for you to do as I did.
Finding myself with a lot of half inch firmer chisels, it was decided to make a pair of them into skew chisels. The angle is about 30 degrees. They come in handy on end grain and for dowel trimming.

Now I am thinking about doing the same to some of the spare 1/4 inch bevel edge chisels in my extras box.

Often one can get some good chisels at a good price to use in such experiments.

jim

Inside many of us is a thin person struggling to get out, fortunately, they can usually be sedated with a few pieces of chocolate cake.

[Mike Henderson]

You don't use a skew chisel very much. For dovetails, you want a small one, maybe 1/4 -> 3/8" so that you can easily get into small dovetails. Go buy two inexpensive chisels (if you don't have some you don't mind modifying) and just sharpen them to a skew. You need a left and a right - that's the reason for two. Regarding the angle, you can try different angles - start with a small angle and go steeper if you feel the need.

For cleaning tenon shoulders, I never felt the need for a skew - a standard chisel works fine.

The Irwin blue handles work fine as skews and are low cost - less than $10 each last time I checked.

Mike

[Mark Singer]

For dovetails I would suggest the Blue Spruce. Although you can just use a knife or straight chisel to pare the waste....I have a few skew chisels and never use them. A set of Blue Spruce straight chisels will do just about everything.

[Lee Hingle]

I will second Mark's recommendation of the Blue Spruce - absolutely superb. Mike Wenz turned me on to them and he uses his Blue Spruce chisels all day every day - he swears they are superb to anything else out there.
Lee

[Derek Cohen]

Peter

Skew chisels are essential to clean up corners in hand-cut dovetails. They are very easy to make, and I (like others) have made a few. Two are below (3/8" wide).

The Blue Spruce skew chisels are a joy to behold and to use. I had mine custom made for me by Dave (spoiling myself at my last birthday when I ordered the full set plus one of his dovetail chisels). They are 1/4" wide and angled at 20 degrees (the same as LN). The ones that are offered by BS are 3/8 and 30 degrees.

The greater the skew angle, the more one will need to slice with them (like a knife). A shallower angle allows one to push. The ultimate in this regard is a fishtail chisel. You can buy these ready-made from most stockists of Japanese chisels (I have a few - they make wonderful paring chisels). I made my own (below). This is a very useful chisel when cleaning out the waste in half-blind dovetails.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a262/Derek50/Chisels/Skewchiselsplus.jpg

The last aid (extreme right), is a "chisel" of sorts. It is a flat blade I made out of a steel trowel, harder than my wife's cookies, as thick as a saw kerf, which is used to hammer into the kerf on half-blind dovetails (idea from Tage Frid, who used a piece of bandsaw blade).

Hope this helps.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Geoff Irvine]

The last aid (extreme right), is a "chisel" of sorts. It is a flat blade I made out of a steel trowel, harder than my wife's cookies, as thick as a saw kerf, which is used to hammer into the kerf on half-blind dovetails (idea from Tage Frid, who used a piece of bandsaw blade).

Derek,
I read that tip years ago but I thought it was an old scrapper blade. Never used it but always wondered how it would go. If I remember correctly it was suggested to keep a square edge on the scrapper so as to compress the end grain when you place the scrapper in the kerf and hammer it. What is the edge of your tool like and how do you find it - any splitting?
Thanks, Geoff.

[Derek Cohen]

Hi Geoff

The edge of the "kerf chisel" (Gawd knows what to call it) is square. Any angle, especially a knife edge, would just split the wood.

I saw a video of Tage some years ago. In it he used an old bandsaw blade. I thought that I could improve on that.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Pam Niedermayer]

Derek, I saw the same Frid video and could swear that it was a scraper blade he used. If it was a band saw blade, it was the tallest piece of bs blade I've ever seen.

Pam

[Geoff Irvine]

Derek,
Cool tool. Seems to me to be an original idea so shouldn't you patent the thing before some mongrel does? Or is it a case of nothing new in woodworking?
Thanks, Geoff.
PS sorry for hijacking the thread a bit Peter.

[Derek Cohen]

Pam

It was definitely a bandsaw blade - about 1" wide. I just checked.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Derek Cohen]

Hi Geoff

Thanks. I really don't think that I can take credit for an idea that was Tage's, and most likely someone before him, and so on ... I am sure that there is nothing new under the sun, just our variations of it.

Out of interest - hoping this is not too much of a hijack - I will show you how this chisel developed.

A while back I had this idea of making a marking knife to mark dovetails through the kerf of sawcuts.

Here is how I made the chisel:

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a262/Derek50/Tools%20that%20I%20have%20made/Chiselmarkingknife1a.jpg

... and this is how it was used ...

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a262/Derek50/Tools%20that%20I%20have%20made/Chiselmarkingknifedemo1a.jpg

After a while I gave up on it - went back to traditional knives (or at least the pencil dovetail knives I make) - and turned it into the chisel you saw earlier on.

... a dovetail knife and awl in Banksia (which is a shrub). I love the unusual grain.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a262/Derek50/Marking%20and%20Measuring/Banksiaknifeset3.jpg

Regards from Perth

Derek