Stan sez:
"You gotta remember that what they were chipping was grey cast iron for the most part or cutting keyways in wrought iron shafts. Most cast iron these days is alloyed to one degree or another, a whole different proposition, and soft wrought iron isn't a current structural material. I've worked on some old tools made out of the old grey stuff. Very soft, you could cut it with a pocket knife. So chiseling parallel grooves in a surface with a cape chisel and peeling off the lands with a wide chisel to get a surface down to size probably wasn't the ordeal it might seem at this remove in time. Grey cast iron was the pine wood of the industrial revolution."
Very good comment on the old ways and the "whys" associated with them. Excellent, Stan!
Bob (loves to see the BS cut thru) Swinney