The Rise of the Plain Chisels

[D_W]

I haven't been buying anything in a while because I've kind of gotten worn out of it. But I still observe things on ebay from time to time.

Over the last decade or so, one of the things I noticed is that relatively pedestrian chisels (here in the states) have gone through the roof. Out of curiosity, I bought a set of unused Marples english blue chip chisels quite some time ago. They were $40 at the time on ebay. I don't think you could get them for double that now.

What I remember of the set that I got was that they were relatively soft, but one of them was *really* soft (defective, more or less). Of course, no problem to use them as long as you can sharpen. If i'd have kept that set, I'd have rehardened the one that was defective, but the open market doesn't appreciate a corrected too so much so I left it alone.

I've been watching marples chisels again lately out of curiosity, and this is more typical of what I've seen:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/vintage-Mar...%2B4dfGW9gHBFeFqSm0oU%3D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc (these are sold, which is why I linked them - I do think they're quite nice, their grind is superior to almost anything made these days, and nobody felt the need to polish the corners off with a buffer).

They look like nice chisels, but probably modern enough that they're substantially inferior to the older more well finished marples chisels with boxwood handles (I have some of those, too, they're quite nice - but I've only got parers). A good friend of mine has had a very long career with a set of marples chisels that he says are about 60 hardness (older than these).

After shipping, they're somewhere around 30 bucks each. I'm kind of stunned - they could be *made* in sheffield and sold for that these days, but when they were made in sheffield - or at the last of their being made, nobody wanted to pay much of anything for them.

If this hasn't happened on UK ebay yet (and it probably has), sales that open themselves to the states will drive the prices up there, too.

Also, I noticed that the red acetate handled footprint chisels that are old enough to be sheffield made have also gone through the roof.

I am glad I'm not buying this stuff these days!

 

[bugbear]

I love the double-think when a forum/guru/blogger praises a tool for being
not super high quality, but excellent value, and loads of people seek it out,
driving the price up.

This ought to invalidate the original recommendation, but it
appears (empirically) not to.

So people are then buying a tool whose main merit was
low price at a high price. :?

Stanley 5001 chisels are a recent(ish) example of this.

BugBear

 

[D_W]

I haven't been paying enough attention (to what's been recommended by this or that person lately), I did when I was a beginner, and tried some Lie Nielsen chisels and pretty much everything since. I like the old English stuff, best, but the ones I linked above are not old enough to qualify for that category. As a group of beginners (which is about 12 years ago for me), we were told that old tools were false economy and usually couldn't be easily recovered to use.

I remember constant droning about how soft marples chisels were, and Tommy Mac at the time was just starting up a video set trying to get picked up as a TV show. He was affiliated with nobody at the time and he advocated older planes and marples chisels, and at one point, he said something about LN chisels and how they were pretty but a nuisance in the middle of work because you couldn't use a typical medium stone on them for a quick stint and get back to work.

I get that now.

I hope 5001s aren't as expensive as marples. I got a set of them as a novelty last year, because they have the same geometry. The ones I got are fairly inconsistent and soft, but a couple of additional degrees of angle and they hold up fine.

It's amazing to me that general use chisels could have such good geometry 40 years ago, and nobody can manage anything other than fat sided chisels these days.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

It's basic economics - supply and demand. Or, in woodspeak, the Sellers Effect. One beardie guru praises 071 routers, and now you can't buy a grotty second hand one for less than £100. He did the same for Stanley and Record smoothing planes, to a lesser extent. He hasn't managed it with Aldi chisels yet - but he's still trying!

 

[D_W]

Oh, he's the guru on the marples?

Over here, it's "wranglerstar", a jeep parts salesman who really doesn't know anything about woodworking (sellers at least knows lots about it) and who makes recommendations to several hundred thousand video watchers at once and then includes an amazon link so that he can make money on the purchases of his viewers.

I have somehow turned his fanboys off by suggesting on his videos (some dangerous chainsaw related videos) that he stick to things he knows about, which are making youtube videos and selling things.

At any rate, he can wipe out amazon stock in something he recommends pretty quickly. Luckily, he'll never get a cut of used tools, so he's not likely to bump goods I'd buy except maybe utility sharpening stones like a norton india.

Chris Schwarz has obvious effect over here, too, but he's usually pushing stuff that I'm not likely to buy, too.

I wish people would start trashing vintage carving tools, I could use a break on the price of those.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I just watched a little of one of them. One of the first comments was that he had the jig (sharpener) on back to front. Not exactly inspiring.

 

[AndyT]

I don't know of much material describing how chisels have been made over the years.

I think it's true to say that they used to be hand forged, where a billet of steel was heated, then shaped by hammering on an anvil. Lots of hard muscle work and skill, followed by freehand grinding.

As soon as mechanical hammers were available, they would have been used, in preference to the anvil. Grinding was still by eye, on big natural stone wheels.
I think this is how pretty much all of the 19th and early 20th century chisels were made, though I'd be grateful for correction or confirmation of this. I've read somewhere that thee repeated blows organise and align the crystals in the steel, making it tough, with good edge retention. (Like Clifton plane irons until the recent change of ownership.)

Modern chisels are drop forged. A few very heavy blows shape a billet between a pair of hollow dies. Excess metal is trimmed off in the last pair of dies. Chisels are loaded into slots in a big rotary platter where a couple of dozen all get machine ground at once.

I have a catalogue from an exhibition arranged by Ken Hawley in 1992. One of the exhibits listed was a Stanley 5001. The catalogue says that this was the first Sheffield chisel made by drop forging rather than hammer forging, in 1963.

The process is clearly quicker and cheaper, but (maybe because the steel had become more consistent) it seems to have been a success all round with the vast majority of users.

I think the Marples chisels D_W found on eBay are late enough to have been drop forged.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I assume the round bolster came with the drop forging? or was it earlier?

 

[AndyT]

Phil, I think you're right. There are illustrations in another Ken Hawley book showing drop forged chisels with round bolsters and short tangs, like the 5001s and similar chisels all have. I think the old octagonal bolster was hand filed.

 

[D_W]

As far as drop forged vs. hammer forged, if they are both done right, I wonder if there is any difference. I suspect that the average user wouldn't know the difference in use if someone didn't tell them - as long as the base metal was good quality in both and heat treated and tempered well.

I say that because I have long shaved with straight razors that are made by forging in dies, then trimming and light grinding. They are the finest steel I have used. I don't think that razors were actually very well done until they figured out two things: how to forge them in dies and grind them lightly, and how to heat treat the forged dies properly. I don't think that both of those occurred until around 1900.

There have only been a few chisels that I've had that I didn't like, but they were literally defective.

I even like the chisels that they sell at harbor freight for a dollar each. They're a little soft, but ideal for modification - nothing to lose, and they aren't heavy and clunky.

 

[thetyreman]

if you look at old handplanes, they have gone up a lot in the last year or so in value, I've been observing this and it's quite annoying. I need to get down to some car boots.

 

[gwr]

I've been looking for an old Stanley or Record #7 for some time but the prices are far too rich for me and getting worse. Grrrrrrrr

 

[nabs]

I think those of us lucky enough to be buying old tools in the UK are still getting exceptional value for money compared to the cost of similar quality modern alternatives.

A case in point being the oft-lamented increase in prices of bench planes on ebay, but these are still surely a bargain, no matter how galling it is to know they couldn't be given away at some point in the past.

Since the popular hand-tool bloggers - who clearly do add considerably to the price inflation - are helping to get these old tools in to the hands of people who will enjoy them (and possibly helping them avoid spending a fortune on posh alternatives), it is hard to grumble I say.

And actually, even when particular items become trendy (e.g plastic handled chisel sets, no 71s) and reach high prices, the situation is often temporary, and the people buying at the peak are still getting decent tools nonetheless.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I have just cleaned up a nice set of 5002s and given them to a 15 year old neighbour whom I owed a favour. He knows that they are as good if not better than most run of the mill chisels on the market today - he is not the average 15 year old, though. My 15 year old would laugh his socks off at the very suggestion he should pick up a tool. He's grown up with "ask your dad to fix this", "tell your father I need this mended for tonight", "ask your father if there are any parts in this worth saving" and so on. He's going to find reality difficult when he gets older - he'll definitely need an income three or four times mine. (according to his physics master he could well end up a physicist, so he might get it ... although not as much as if he were a plumber.)

Nice No.6s and No.7s are going for £60 in our local second hand tool place - if anyone is SERIOUSLY interested I could always watch for them. His prices went up when he was told the local college was telling students to go there to buy second hand, and not to buy new.

 

[bugbear]

Phil, I think you're right. There are illustrations in another Ken Hawley book showing drop forged chisels with round bolsters and short tangs, like the 5001s and similar chisels all have. I think the old octagonal bolster was hand filed.

I would expect the octagonal bolsters to be made by hammering/forging. It's quicker!

BugBear (who uses octagonal bolsters as a fast proxy for "old" when skimming chisels in boxes)

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Yeah ... me too.

 

[AndyT]

I think the old octagonal bolster was hand filed.

I would expect the octagonal bolsters to be made by hammering/forging. It's quicker!

BugBear (who uses octagonal bolsters as a fast proxy for "old" when skimming chisels in boxes)

Sorry, my bad. I should have written that they were finished by hand filing.

As seen here, "Tools, Working Wood in Eighteenth Century America"

 

[Sheffield Tony]

You could also look at the videos here:

http://www.ashleyiles.co.uk/tool_production.html

I would have thought that this is as near to the traditional process as you'll witness these days.

 

[AndyT]

Thanks Tony, I should have thought of that. Those little video snippets are a bit brief, and may not work at all in some browsers, so I'll add a link to Tools for Working Wood, which features some longer, higher resolution video of the Iles family at work.

https://www.toolsforworkingwood.com/sto ... 12.php?v=v

No evidence of filing though. Maybe it was just an American thing?

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I've just looked at a large Greaves gouge and chisels by I. Sorby, Marples and some W&Ps and none of them show marks I would put any money on as being filed. Any small marks that look as if they might be file marks are dead straight and parallel to sides of the octagon - which I would think precludes their being file marks.