Chisels broke

Toss them and buy a good set. Hone them before use.

There are two problems:

The best way to "repair" them is to throw them out, buy better chisels, and treat the new ones properly.

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?

Buy good chisels & use a wooden mallet. I turned a chunk of Red Oak firewood into a mallet that is perfect in about 10 minutes. My chisels are used, but they are a nice set of swedish ones that were passed down. I keep a couple of small sets of Stanley & other cheap ones for beater projects. You can't do decent woodworking without a good set of chisels that are just for good work - in my opinion, anyway. - Jim

With this type of chisel I like to use a wooden mallet.

chiseled against

Chisels with plastic handles are not made for beating on with a hammer. For hammering they should have a metal core that extends to the striking surface. You should never use a steel hammer on any wood chisel. Beechwood, rawhide or nylon mallets are made to drive chisels. Save the steel hammer for driving cold chisels. Bugs

Whatever type of chisel you use, be sure to whack it with a back and froe motion.

Funny how some of us hunt the wood pile for turning wood!

Martin

Nick Huckaby asks:

I bought four sets of chisels from a used place. The kind with a light green see-thru handle and a black trim - no brand. It performed fine for a few weeks until a pearl sized chip came off in sections from the tip of the green handle which I did not notice earlier. I was chiseling against the grain of the wood, not along the grain as instructed from a book. But, I've chiseled against the grain with a 10-year old Stanley (with a non-see-thru plastic handle) without problems.

The problem is that a few of the green see-thru chisels have 10-15 percent chips gone from its plastic striking surface. Since that day I am more careful. I'm not sure whether the cause is the a 12-oz. iron hammer or the way I pound them. What's the best way to repair these tool?

First, the chisels didn't break. The handles did. Second, the chisels didn't break, you broke them.

I don't know where you got an iron hammer, but use a mallet, instead of a steel hammer. Now, you can take the handles off, turn new handles, install them and use a wooden, rawhide (my preference) or plastic mallet.

Nick Huckaby apparently said,on my timestamp of 6/03/2005 1:50 AM:

You can't easily repair them. Try grinding/sanding to shape? Or better yet, get another set. They are cheap enough.

The iron hammer would be the cause. Use a mallet. Wood is a good choice and you can make one yourself. Rawhide hammers are the best for this, IMHO. But hard to find. If all else fails, get one of those cheap hammers with one side rubber mallet, the other yellow nylon. Use the nylon side: it bounces really well.

It's important that the head of the hammer is wider than the top of the chisel handle. Otherwise it's real easy to swing slightly off-centre and end up with a chip.

HTH Cheers Nuno Souto in sunny Sydney, Australia snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com.au.nospam

Martin, you aren't kidding. I stopped by the saw mill & bought $102 worth of wood yesterday. I don't do it too often & the pile this time was depressingly small. Locally, we get nice cherry, oak, poplar & maple. Got a couple of boards of each just to put in the shop & let it sit for when I need it.

Lately, I've mostly been turning green wood - found wood. I like that price a LOT better. We have some neat local woods that never make the sawmill; osage orange, dogwood, beech & sycamore. There are also some neat exotics like the japanese sampora that a woman had cut out of her back yard last year. I'm starting to cut a few of my own boards. I don't really have the room for even a portable sawmill & drying shed, so I doubt I'll get into it too much, but besides being a lot of fun, working with these other woods is very interesting. Also keeps my wallet from hiding in a dark corner & whining.

Jim

Rawhide ? really?

I have plenty of rawhide mallets that I use for coppersmithing, but I've never heard of anyone using them to drive chisels before - always wood.

If they have plastic handles, they are not designed to be struck with a hammer. ...lew...

Your comment brought back memories of when you used to see a lot of rawhide tools, and rawhide _in_ tools. Rawhide was a staple of the life on the frontier and one of the handiest things to have around. It was used to write on, as seats and backs for chairs, as "windows", as shopping bags, as lariats and whips, as bridles, as glue when ground into a powder ... and, because of its ability to stretch when wet and seriously contract when dry, was used universally to fasten things together, much like nails today. The plains Indians often wrapped prisoners in a fresh buffalo hide and left them out in the sun for a few days ... constricted their options considerably. :) Stranded folks were even know to survive by chewing on it.

I have a collection of J. Frank Dobie works, a Texas historian, folklorist, and professor of English at the University of Texas in the early 1900's who wrote extensively about rawhide and its uses in some of his early pieces. Dobie was raised on a Texas cattle ranch and is well known for having interviewed old timers about such things.

Fascinating, useful material.

some cheap chisels have decent steel, some don't. if yours don't, treat them as disposable. if they do, make new wooden handles.

I have a few rawhide mallets. every once in a while one or another of them will be used to drive a chisel, like if the mallet happens to be out at the time or is the right weight for the cut or whatever. usually I do use a wood mallet, but I don't have a rule about it....

Get this set of chisels

Have you ever seen "oyster veneering" - an 18th century decorative technique ? Diagonal slices of laburnum are trimmed rectangular and placed together as a decorative veneer. It's plug-ugly IMHO, but certainly an interesting and impressive technique.

Andy Dingley responds:

Rawhide ? really?

I have plenty of rawhide mallets that I use for coppersmithing, but I've never heard of anyone using them to drive chisels before - always wood.

Yeah, rawhide. I've got a couple with cast iron holders that are weighty enough--ye olde basic rawhide mallet is very light, but add 16 ounces of cast iron, and bingo. I've also got one that has a copper head and a rawhide head...great for non-sparking needs, but I no longer work around such substances when striking is needed, so it is also handy for driving chisels. To me, the more compact heads are easier to control than larger wood mallets, though I also like the various deadblow Stanley hammers.