New Stanley Sweetheart

[Jim Foster]

I picked up a 1/2in Stanley Sweetheart the other day on a lark to see what a semi-premium chisel was like and I am really happy with it. My other chisels are an 20yr old set of Marples Blue Chip, and next to the Stanley, they feel more like "clubs" than chisels. The Stanley is within .005 of the listed width, the back was very flat, only needed a few minutes with an 800 waterstone to get flat, and ergonomically it feels like a surgical instrument. I'm curious what the LN feels like compared to this, I've heard the steel is thicker, and that might change the balance a little for the better or worse. I'm not sure how the cutting edge compares, I've only sharpened mine and take a paring cut or two with it to see how it feels, but so far I am very satisfied with it. The only downside so far is the handle does not stay in, maybe when I whack it a few times it will.

[Lloyd Robins]

The handle probably won't stay in all the time, but I did see a video where Mr. Lie Nielsen lightly sprayed the socket part of the handle with hairspray and reinserted it into the chisel. After drying, it seemed to hold quite well. The Sweetheart chisels are quite nice, my son has a set. The Lie Nielsens are thinner on the edges, more refined, and I think that they hold an edge longer (might be just me justifing the LN chisel purchase),but they do cost more. I do have an 1-1/4 inch Sweetheart as my large chisel. I did allow hubris to set in and put an LN handle on it. I used the Sweetheart handle on a 720 that I gave to my son. The only real complaint that I have heard about them is that the 1/8" chisel is quite thick.

[Jim Foster]

Lloyd, I'm glad you mentioned that you replaced the handle with a LN. It spurred my memory to the fact I have an original Stanley SH 5/8 that was abused by a previous owner and was found in an old toolbox. It has no handle, and it was used this way and struck with a hammer quite a bit. I ground most of the material away that rolled around and inside the handle area from the abuse of the hammer, and the Stanley handle looks like a perfect fit. I'll order up a LN or Stanley handle if they offer them and enjoy a two-for-one chisel deal. Before you responded to my post, I completely forgot I had this old 750.

[jason thigpen]

I purchased one of the new sweethearts in the 1/8" size. I ground the shoulders down and use it for cleaning up small dovetails. It's a really well made tool. I'm very happy with it.

[Adam Cruea]

The LN's will hold an edge better; they're A2 tool steel compared to the Stanley's chrome-vanadium (I believe).

I like mine and think $200 for the full set and a tool roll was a bargain. I snapped my 3/4 inch chisel one night and they replaced it very quickly.

The only complaint I have is the handles. I snapped one. I don't really think that's craftsmanship as much as me clobbering the chisels repeatedly. I think it was my 1/2" chisel handle that snapped (and the one I've probably used the most to do the dovetails for my hickory bench and all the drawers I've made for my wife).

Oh, and once you give the chisel a few good whacks, the handles stay put quite well.

[Lloyd Robins]

Lloyd, I'm glad you mentioned that you replaced the handle with a LN. It spurred my memory to the fact I have an original Stanley SH 5/8 that was abused by a previous owner and was found in an old toolbox. It has no handle, and it was used this way and struck with a hammer quite a bit. I ground most of the material away that rolled around and inside the handle area from the abuse of the hammer, and the Stanley handle looks like a perfect fit. I'll order up a LN or Stanley handle if they offer them and enjoy a two-for-one chisel deal. Before you responded to my post, I completely forgot I had this old 750.

Jim, glad to be of help. Adam, if you cannot get Sweetheart handles - go to LN, the handles seem to fit fine.

[Adam Cruea]

Jim, glad to be of help. Adam, if you cannot get Sweetheart handles - go to LN, the handles seem to fit fine.

Yeah, someone had mentioned a while back when I asked if it was possible to make a handle with a rasp, just go to LN and see if they can give me a replacement. But since you've actually tried it. . .hey, now I know it'll work.

[David Weaver]

I'm sure they're decent chisels, I wish they would've copied the 750s outright, though, instead of coming up with a thinned design that is probably based on what the equipment where they're manufactured will do.

In the world of chisels, I prefer vintage 750s to LN's chisels. They sharpen on more, they grinder faster and they're just overall nicer to use. The same is sort of true for everything vintage unless it's been damaged. Most of what goes into chisels these days is pretty lacking when sharpenability vs. durability is considered, but it has some to do with the fact that there are no really plain steels widely available outside of japan.

Anyway, I noticed this quote on the amazon listing for the "bailey" chisels that "stanley" (whatever that is now) sells:

"Manufactured in Sheffield England, Bailey Chisels are known for unsurpassed quality."

Really? Given how new they are, and the fact that nobody in 150 years has heard of "bailey chisels", you'd wonder how they got known for anything (well, because they didn't and haven't, but they could've at least written ad copy with enough common sense to see if there was ever anything such as a bailey chisel).

At any rate, if I were buying stanley chisels, I'd probably get those instead of the socket chisels. They cost half as much and I'd imagine the difference in price has more to do with target marketing than worth of the chisels.

[Adam Cruea]

The Bailey chisels are tang chisels not sockets, so there's some ease in manufacturing there.

The Bailey chisels are made from high-carbon steel; the Stanley chisels are made from chrome-vanadium.

I would guess those two things are why the price difference.

[David Weaver]

I think they're probably all made from some sort of chrome manganese or chrome vanadium steel. It's what people use these days until you go up the ladder in cost to O1, and if the manganese or vanadium steel is done well, it's not really that different in a chisel.

We could only wish that the Bailey chisels were made of something like a W1 steel (which would be pure high carbon steel), they would dominate the chrome vanadium tools for what it means to be chisel that gets malleted (the best of the best are generally carbon steel only with as little of other things as possible, but it takes the most skill to make chisels like that and a factory process generally isn't it - ask LN - they stopped making W1 plane irons a while ago, and i know they were having warpage problems. We would be lucky ducks if they kept W1 and made a 60 hardness bench chisel out of it).

As far as the cost of the raw material, though, the chrome vanadium steel is dirt cheap. HF has a set of very large and lightweight chisels that are $8 for 6 (that's not a typo) and they are right on the borderline of being usable chisels. Chrome vanadium. Same with the chisels woodcraft sells as WR, they're actually decent. I don't know what woodcraft pays for those chisels, but I'd speculate from china, it's probably about a buck per chisel before they mark them up.

High quality plain high carbon steel, though, is no longer cheap, not even as cheap as common diemaking stuff like A2 and O1. Maybe there are mill runs of something similar to W1 for certain industries, but I don't know where to get it cheap. (I did have a client at one point who literally got large sheets of tool steel in one end and sent finished dimensioned bar stock, etc, out the other end. The sheets were like 1" thick plywood sheets of tool steel from all over the world. Really cool stuff - didn't try to pick one up).

At any rate, the difference in cost between the two chisel types probably still has a whole lot more to do with the target market for each one than it does production costs, as unless they're using expensive diemaking steels (it appears they're not), there's little of much cost in the chisels aside from actual labor, and especially, marketing.

[george wilson]

The fact is,W1 is not being offered much these days since it is not a very desirable steel for modern tool and die making. It is treacherous to heat treat since it warps,cracks,and changes dimension worse than any other steel. It is dangerous,therefore,for making dies. Even when successfully made,a die will not be as durable as one made of more sophisticated steels.

The only way I know of to get W1 in larger sizes is to buy water hardening drill rod. Indeed,Marples chisels used to start out as round bar stock,forged with progressive dies into chisels. Only,they weren't made of W1. 01 I think.

Knife makers' supply companies offer w1 flat bar stock,but they are about 1/4" thick maximum thickness. MSC sells a few sizes of cold drawn W1. I think 1/2" square is about as big as it comes,but it might be 3/8" square maximum(I haven't ordered in a while). The Japanese white and blue steels are offered by the Dick Co. in (I think) about 1/8" thick bars. I could be wrong about this as it has been years since I looked in a Dick catalog. Left it at work when I retired. Possibly Googling around will locate sources for it. David likely knows more about these Japanese steel sources.

W1 is desirable for knife blades because it will get sharper than any other steel,but doesn't hold an edge as long. It is all a trade off.

I have found that D2,a steel made to use in shear blades for cutting OTHER STEELS,will act peculiarly as a knife blade. It CAN get razor sharp IF sharpened on the super hard ceramic stones. But,in a knife,it soon dulls a little bit and stays that way for a long time. It just won't hold a razor sharp edge.

This powdered metal block plane blade I got from LV gets real sharp,though I haven't compared it to W1. I also haven't used the blade long and hard enough to see how long it will retain a truly razor sharp edge. So far,with light use,it is holding its edge very well.

[Adam Cruea]

Uh, it will take much less tooling with the tang chisels than the sockets.

Remember the thread I created a while back about my 3/4 Sweetheart breaking? Many people speculated they were friction-welded together. So there you have two different production processes; one to create the socket, one for the actual chisel. Then you have to have the equipment to be able to do the friction welding satisfactorily. I seriously doubt you can just slap a socket on a bench grinder and press the chisel up against it and create a satisfactory weld.

Whereas the Baileys can just be stamped out, ground, heat treated, then re-ground.

That's just my thinking with the manufacturing process. Not to mention, you don't have to have quality-control to make sure your friction welds are okay so you don't have a ton of replacements (like mine was). I have no doubt that targeting probably has *something* to do with it, but at the same time, the production costs have *got* to be higher on socket chisels than just tang chisels that can be stamped out.

Just a thought.

And I did *not* know LN makes W1 plane blades.

$8 for 6 chisels? Those are almost worth the cost for sheer curiosity.

Although, speaking of processes. . .has anyone seen the episode of "How It's Made" on Science channel that shows how they make Clifton planes? Kinda spliffy.

[David Weaver]

LN doesn't make W1 plane blades any longer. If you look at older LN planes that have irons that don't say anything on them (I'm pretty sure all of the A2 irons throughout the years have had "Lie-Nielsen" written on them), those were W1 irons. You'll see people wrongly refer to the old W1 irons as O1, though I'm not sure as much anymore since they started making O1 a few years ago.

Eons ago before they switched to A2 irons (and before they made any chisels), the old irons were W1, which is a lot harder to quench and temper without cracking or warpage. At the time, they only hardened an inch or so of the irons, I don't know why, but maybe because they were having trouble quenching the W1 irons straight. Nevertheless, A2 makes a much longer wearing plane iron, and for the critics of A2, they have O1 now, which is a lot easier to heat treat.

As far as the sockets go, even if they are friction welded, that's a very quick process (and I don't know if they do friction weld them or not), it would add little real cost to the price. Handles are a little simpler, though it's likely all of the handles for all of the chisels are common hardwood and at least for the socket chisels, they probably come off of a CNC lathe - as do LN's). If the entire chisel was milled out of solid, it would add some milling and material costs, but nothing to make the chisels double the price. It's likely the bulk of all of them (tang or socket) are struck in a die and other than the socket, they're similarly made.

Sockets themselves really don't provide anything useful for bench chisels, other than the ability to switch handles on the fly. I remember when I had started this hobby, I saw a post by Warren Mickley assailing socket chisels as carpenters tools, and I figured he was a fuddy duddy making waves for no reason, but I think he's probably correct. Nobody makes a chisel similar to the old beveled forged bolster chisels, though, and the cheaper modern tang chisels with a ferrule are maybe a closer approximation, but they are way off on the composition of the steel (which you can turn around and mitigate with very fine modern stones, but you could get pretty close to the same level of sharpness with a single oilstone and old forged chisels).

As far as the HF chisels, they are long and light chisels. Whatever they're selling now look similar, but aren't quite the same ones that I have (which are 6 that go from 1/4 to 1 inch). I bought them for the wife, who only uses chisels for demolition work. I would buy any chisels like that at HF and not through the mail so you can eyeball them and make sure someone didn't "help" you by rounding the underside of the edge. They are similar durability to every other toolbox chisel I've seen, but the next time you're trying to remove some unknown dried up caulk, you won't feel bad about using them and wearing the edge of them totally rounded in the grit. I properly flattened a couple of them and ground them really fine along their bevels and just out of curiosity sharpened them, and they're really not that bad (aside from being almost a foot long...and not that bad goes along with not that good, but they can actually be used).

(Here is an old test of a W1 iron - looks like it was from 2002. Not surprisingly, since it is purely plain carbon steel and not any harder than current irons are, it doesn't far that well in a plane when it comes to wear http://www3.telus.net/BrentBeach/Sharpen/LNW1test.html - there is a LN A2 iron in there, and the wear bevel length is 6 on 150 passes, vs. 10 on 100 for W1). That said, W1 or W2 would make a fantastic chisels if done right - they would sharpen like old chisels and hold in use an edge like new ones since the wear is not the same kind.

[Jim Koepke]

If there weren't already enough "beater" chisels in my accumulation that HF deal sounds like something even I might get.

It is nice to have a few tools for someone to borrow that you do not mind not coming back.

jtk

[Adam Cruea]

If there weren't already enough "beater" chisels in my accumulation that HF deal sounds like something even I might get.

It is nice to have a few tools for someone to borrow that you do not mind not coming back.

jtk

This is why I pawned my FatMax chisels off on my wife.

I should take a picture of some of the edges. I think she tried to cut nails and concrete.