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This has been my experience with tasks like trimming tenon cheeks. It's easier, quicker and pleasanter if the chisel is flat. I'm not talking engineering flat. But the point is if you like to keep your chisel backs flat for this reason, and you like the additional sharpness that a polished...

The best craftspeople I have met, ie the ones producing the finest work have, without exception, cared a great deal about both. I think it has probably always been that way. I'm one hundred percent sure that the best and most skilled stone age wood carvers were the ones with the shiniest...

And while I'm on the subject of childishness.... What is the point in discussing with someone who is repeatedly shown to be making factual errors, but every time this happens diverts attention by raising an unrelated point? Who seems unable to accept that different approaches and motivations...

At first I thought that arguing with Jacob was like taking candy from a baby. Then I realised it's not as interesting as that. It's like taking candy from a baby who's incapable of realising that the candy's gone.

Here's a photo of a rough test one that I had a go at this evening. The real ones need to be much better than this but it gives an idea. It's 2" long. There's not that much detail but the lines need to be very crisp and flowing.

Thanks for that xy, they look nice, have put them on the list of possibles! Gary, at the moment I am using a V gouge, which I guess means they are incised? Sorry carving is not really my thing, so I don't know the terminology....

Which way is better?

Just wondering if anyone has any specific recommendations about best tool (either bought or shop made) to use to carve very fine detail lines into a load of small, inlaid boxwood fishes (don't ask!). The lines will be filled with wax. At the moment I am using an ashley iles no 39 x 1/8"...

Not a bad idea, though I was probably being over-parnoid — I think they're stronger than they look, and driving them in was the approach suggested on the stickers....

Thanks for that :D

There was an OP? :oops: I thought that the first reply from fluffflinger pretty much covered it....

Of course. Looking at how it is turning out they may have been right to have been unsettled..... Time will tell.

Agreed, but they were not snobs.

So what? They're lovely. More lovely than anything being made now, and that was the point of them. To be wonderful things, to be the best that could be made. Wander round the British Museum or the V & A — almost everything there is ultimately a design dead end, but they are wonderful in...

Not sure who 'they' are! It was a broad movement and you're right that there was plenty of stuff made to indifferent standards (generally the normal story of people spotting a trend and cashing in). But the best stuff can stand next to pretty much anything — like this: (Ashbee and Broadwood)...

Highland woodworking in the US sell the 12" Jorgensen ones, that are bigger than the ebay ones (which are 12" overall as opposed to 12" shaft), and I think a bit nicer to wind up and down as there is no second handle to get in the way. There are also 18" ones available, or 9"...

+1

Here's my 2 cents on the vexed question of sharpening standards, ancient and modern. Jacob correctly points out that more often than not when you buy old tools they do not show evidence of the sort of back flattening and polishing that we find today. I suspect there are several reasons for...

Not vaguely at all, that's exactly how I do it. And it's much easier and more precise if the back is flat, otherwise the chisel is inclined to either dig in or skate over the high spots. You can do it with chisel that's not flat, of course, but I can't see any reason to given that it's quick...

But when you DO use them to flatten surfaces (say when trimming a tenon cheek), they work just like a plane, albeit one without a mouth. In other words the back of the chisel is flat against the workpiece, enabling the cutting edge to seek out high spots. At least that's how I use them....