Weird Sorby chisel, and an unknown brand.

[Corneel]

I got some mortise chisels, with the typical 19th century Dutch/German look. But one of them is an I&H. Sorby. Ever seen anything like this? It certainly isn't a pig sticker. It also hasn't the reverse taper of the Dutch chisels (wide at the edge, narrower towards the handle), but is more or less parallel fro the handle towards the business end (see picture).





There is also a Dutch type chisel in the same loot with an unknown brand for me. It doesn't seem to be Dutch or German. Is it also English? Anyone recognise this?

 

[Corneel]

I found the mark from the last chisel. It is German after all, Peter Muehler from Remscheid:

http://www.holzwerken.de/museum/hersteller/mueller_peter.phtml

 

[Racers]

The Sorby one looks like a lathe chisel by the shape of the handle.

Pete

 

[RogerP]

The Sorby looks like a wood turning parting off tool.

 

[Corneel]

The shape of the handle is the same as my other Dutch and German mortise chisels. Big, round and bulbous. It was the standard shape back then. It also has ferrules on both ends, fitting a handle for striking.

The chisel has a large bolster, just as a mortise chisel should have. It is also 10 mm wide, a bit wide for a parting tool?

All these things make me think it wasn't intended for turning, it looks much more like a massive mortise chisel. The shape though is so un-English.

 

[Corneel]

On further investigation it seems that there are more Sorby tools with a continental flavor. I saw this chisel, also I&H Sorby, for sale. The steel end is nothing special, but the handle is very un-English again. It could be a replacement of course, but the fit of handle to bolster is very good.

So, it seems that Sorby was having some export business and tried to capture foreign markets with the shapes that were popular overthere. I didn't know that Sorby worked like that. A popular English edge tool mark is J.R Dodge. They even had an agency in Amsterdam. Otherwise, many edge tools came from Germany.

Is there anything to say about the age of my chisel? When reading it seems that the mark I&H Sorby was used as early as 1827. Later the brand was bought by Lockwood, who used it for a long time. The mark was reregistered somehwere in the 1860's and it continued to be populair to at least 1891 when the factory was moved to Spital Hill. In 1927 the mark was sold to Turner, Naylor &co.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

It used to be normal practice to sell chisels unhandled. It was not unusual for craftsmen to make their own in the 19th century; later, when handled chisels could be bought, it was not unusual for a craftsman to buy the chisel and handle separately, and for sometimes no extra charge the ironmonger would fit the two together. Thus, finding a continental style handle on any chisel in Holland is maybe not surprising. What is a little more surprising is finding English-made chisels; there were excellent continental makers, and the main Sheffield export market was the countries of the former British Empire.

I suspect the I&H Sorby chisel might be a repurposed turning chisel. Oval bolstered mortice chisel bolsters were rather heavier than that, and OBM chisels are trapezoidal in cross-section - thicker at the cutting edge than the back.

 

[Corneel]

It is trapezoidal in cross section. I have not much doubt that this is a mortice chisel. I'm afraid my picture doesn't show the massiveness very well. The handle is very large with a large diameter.

But I'm not a turner, so don't know how turners chisels are made. Do they come with a large bolster?