# Bending Chisels



## Zeddedhed (25 Nov 2015)

I've just acquired a set of the cheapo but otherwise OK Lidl/Aldi chisels and originally planned to re-handle them.

I've since wondered if it's possible/practical to somehow bend them at the ferrule/tang end to create a cranked chisel for use as a paring chisel - in other words to bend them enough to lift the handle and ferrule clear of the plane of the flat bottom of the chisel (hope that makes sense)

I believe that these chisels are labelled as simply Chrome Steel.

Is this something that could be achieved by heating the steel with a blow torch and bending gently in a vice or do I need some kind of chuffing, bellowing great forge generating gazillions of degrees of thermonuclear heat?


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## Phil Pascoe (25 Nov 2015)

Difficult, I'd have thought - you'd need to bend the actual chisel to get the bolster clear, not the tang - then you've the hassle of re tempering.


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## Zeddedhed (25 Nov 2015)

Also, whilst we're on the subject, what's the easiest way of getting the handles of these chisels without doing too much damage?


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## Phil Pascoe (25 Nov 2015)

Put the blade in a vice, something hard and blunt between the edge of the ferrule and the side of the bolster and tap. I did mine with very little damage.


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## Cheshirechappie (25 Nov 2015)

To save a bit of hassle (if not wonga) Henry Taylor still make them, both long-bladed and short-bladed.

https://www.classichandtools.com/acatal ... isels.html

(Other retailers are available!)

Cranked paring chisels do crop up on internet auction sites fairly regularly, but by the time postage is taken into account, prices are often not far off the new ones.

One of the best ways to get 'concentrated' heat into a piece of metal is to use an oxy-acetylene welding or cutting torch. However, the amount of heat needed to bend a chisel blade successfully will certainly be enough to migrate down the blade to the cutting edge and adversly affect the temper. I'd suggest that without a full anneal, reshape and re-heat treat, hot-bending chisels is unlikely to be very successful.


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## chipmunk (25 Nov 2015)

I think that it depends what the tangs look like as well though. 

I rehandled some plastic handled Stanleys and the tangs were stubby thick blighters and the plastic moulded handles required hack-sawing down the spine to the tang and then chipping/splitting off.

Cheshirechappie's comments are spot on but if you're determined to up-cycle your chisels then another possibility would be to create a "false" cranked MS tang and bolster that could be loctited onto the end of the existing tang once it's been ground down to fit into the end. Pairing chisels are not likely to be highly stressed and stud grade loctite (red) is pretty good stuff. So it could be worth a go.

A final possibility would be to grind the tang off completely, drill the end of the blade and to rivet on a cranked tang like on a bricklaying or pointing trowel - flattening the countersunk rivets away on the underside. For drilling the blade, HSS-E (Cobalt 8%) may work but failing that a TCT tile drill or end-mill, depending upon your tools, will get through almost anything.

Don't give up.
HTH
Jon


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## Droogs (25 Nov 2015)

If you have an acetylene torch, you could put a small vice gripping the chisel (tang sticking out of the water) in a container filled with water up to the start of the tang. Heat the point you want to bend and bend without changing the temper too much. As such a cheap chisel could be worth a try. But think the Lidl chisels are a bit thick as pairing chisels though


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## Sheffield Tony (25 Nov 2015)

I have seen a set of old chisels on a Tools for Self Reliance stall which were clearly modified in this way. These were in-cannel paring gouges, which showed clear signs of having been heated and bent. The crank was not so large as a proper cranked gouge, but useable. So given the right starting point, it can be done. But aren't the cheap Aldi chisels a bit short to start with ?


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## finish_that (25 Nov 2015)

The Aldi/Lidl cheap chisels are definitely on the long side .
i do not know the legth/shape of the tang but if I was doing something similar I would
be thinking about cutting the tang off with a grinder and then using a gas mig to weld it back on at an angle,
The grinder heat will not reach the business end of the chisel , and a decent shot with a gas mig should 
keep the real heat away from the sharp end.


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## No skills (29 Nov 2015)

I'd do similar to the above.

Cut the tang end off with weapon of choice, we have a coolant fed bandsaw at work so easy life..
I'll add to the welding part tho, get the new steel attached with a couple of tacks (gas mig, not sure I'd use flux wired) and dunk 3/4's of the sharp end in cold water to keep cool (just in case) - once cold again have a good look and make sure its all as straight as you can get it and your happy with the placement.
Make sure its dry and do your final welds, get it back in cold water as it will have a good bit of heat this time. Grind/clean up to suit and re-handle.

I welded a new 'tang' onto a broken gouge I brought off ebay, people here said it wont work - too much heat - ruin the temper - blah blah blah.. what a load of balls.. with the initial tacks there was barely any heat in the blade (no gloves) as I put it in the water. Final welding put some heat into it (fairly warm to touch, no gloves again) but it went straight into cold water a second or too after I stopped welding.
I made sure I was setup so that final welding took only seconds and I could move the chisel into the cold water pronto.

One mistake I made was not checking that the new tang was dead nuts straight on the chisel, I was rushing cos it was home time - lesson learned!

For the tang I used the end of an old spade bit.

FWIW


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## Cheshirechappie (30 Nov 2015)

No skills":10u8tftq said:


> I welded a new 'tang' onto a broken gouge I brought off ebay, people here said it wont work - too much heat - ruin the temper - blah blah blah.. what a load of balls.. with the initial tacks there was barely any heat in the blade (no gloves) as I put it in the water. Final welding put some heat into it (fairly warm to touch, no gloves again) but it went straight into cold water a second or too after I stopped welding.
> I made sure I was setup so that final welding took only seconds and I could move the chisel into the cold water pronto.



One small word of warning - welding high-carbon steels is always a bit fraught because you can never be entirely sure what the metal's heat-treatment condition is after welding; you're putting in enough heat to melt steel, albeit locally. You can end up with one of (or a combination of)softening, hardening, differential expansion and subsequent contraction causing internal cracks, and if you dunk the whole thing in cold water immediately after welding, possibly hardening it right out locally causing a brittle area. You may not notice those immediately, but they may become apparent when the tool is used, and possibly not immediately. Industrially, when high-carbon steels have to be joined by welding, post-weld heat treatments are usually specified to ensure that the weld area finishes up in a known heat-treatment condition. (Things can be even more complex for some alloy steels.)

If anybody has a go and gets away with it, all well and good. However, it's worth bearing in mind that a good result isn't necessarily guaranteed. The rivetting or engineering adhesive ideas may be a bit more long-winded, but they're more likely to give a guaranteed sound result.

Not trying to be a damp squib or pour cold water on anybody's best efforts, just trying to make people aware of the possibilities; by all means have a go, but go to it with 'eyes open' as it were.


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