LN mortice chisel - handle issue

[MarcW]

Hi all,

The 5/16 mortice chisel is a good tool. If only the handle was a tad longer. My praw grabs it with the little finger around the steel. That was not comfortable a grip. It was like holding something to thin in your hand. As I got a lathe this summer I turned a handle a bit longer. It felt fine.

Now as I made a two inch deep mortise some days ago, the handle broke off as I levered out the chips of the bottom. I thought it was due to the pearwood I used for the handle... Meanwhile I had ordered two other LN chisels amongst which the one inch bench chisel. Its handle is a tad bigger, much better fitting my hand and I stuck it into the mortice chisel. Hm, guess now! What is a major advantage if you want to change the handle, is a drawback the moment you make mortises. Imagine, the movement you make in order to put off the handle - tapping it on the bench - is in principle the same you make when levering out chips or cleaning bottoms. Levering forth and back, the handle loosens. Now if I knew Maine hornbeam would resist breaking off; I'd epoxy it to the socket, but the past experiences with pearwood warns me to do so. Did you experience this and what did you do?

Merry Christmas

 

[Paul Sellers]

Hi Marc,
A good chisel handle wood for replacement handles is hickory and pickax and sledge hammer handles are often made from this wood. It has tremendous resistance to snapping and has the kind of flex needed for tools under stress. Being a close and fairly dense-grained hardwood it turns well on the lathe and resists even heavy mallet blows with a wooden mallet. This may well be a good and fairly inexpensive source (buying a replacement handle) for more chisel handles as you can get many chisel handles from a single pickax shaft, and a pikax shaft will accommodate any size of hand.

Paul Sellers

 

[pam niedermayer]

Stop that levering with the mortise chisels, even for western chisels it's not a good idea. You chop with mortise chisels, clean out with other tools.

Pam

 

[seanybaby]

I'm only a newbie to wood, however i thought Ash was good for handles because of it's bashing properties?
I think i read that somewhere :roll: Also boxwood (how does it compare to ash though?), but where can you buy it?

Levering? Would you need something very hard?

Pam - What wood u clean out with? :lol:

 

[Joel Moskowitz]

Stop that levering with the mortise chisels, even for western chisels it's not a good idea. You chop with mortise chisels, clean out with other tools.

Pam

Western mortise chisels are designed for levering out. bash the tool in (and I mean bash) lever the material out. (with the right tools about a minute - 2 for an average sized furniture mortise)
Japanese Sash mortise chisels (and actually the LN is a sash mortise chisels also) come from a different tradition where the smaller sizes especially are used to chop shallow mortises in softwood, as deep as possible with a clean bottom for maximum depth of mortise. a different animal entirely.

 

[pam niedermayer]

Joel, I know the mythology, even have used many western mortisers; but I contend otherwise. Everything about a mortise chisel, east or west, says bash me, bash me, apply force straight down. Now with the oval handled western whatever-they're-called, you can sort of lever a bit, perhaps drive them by hand rather than mallet; but their primary reason for being is digging holes, not cleaning them out.

Pam

 

[paulm]

Hi Marc,

I have done a similar exercise for my LN dovetail chisels, most recently the 1" one which needs a bit of pounding occasionally.

For the timber I happened to use some iroko as I had some the right size to hand and it's interlocking grain should, I think, take the blows without splitting or breaking too readily.

I think the key to the exercise is obviously getting a good tight fit throughout the length of the chisel socket. I did this by turning slightly oversize and then easing with a fine flat file on the timber off the lathe, literally a light stroke or two at a time, taking off the shiny areas of wood which showed where it was binding in the socket. Also left more room above the end of the socket than you have, before the handle proper starts, to allow the handle to be tightened in use without the bottom piece of timber grounding in the bottom of the socket, or the bottom of the handle proper grounding on the top lip of the chisel socket.

So I think it is possible to get a really good tight fitting handle without epoxy and I actually have the reverse problem to yourself on my 1" chisel where no matter what I do to it I now can't get the replacement handle to come off at all !!!

So I would try again and aim for a tighter fit, no bottoming in the socket, and a slightly longer (2 to 3mm) extra length above the socket, and use a stronger, tighter grained timber also.

Hope you get it sorted !

Cheers, Paul.

 

[Joel Moskowitz]

Joel, I know the mythology, even have used many western mortisers; but I contend otherwise. Everything about a mortise chisel, east or west, says bash me, bash me, apply force straight down. Now with the oval handled western whatever-they're-called, you can sort of lever a bit, perhaps drive them by hand rather than mallet; but their primary reason for being is digging holes, not cleaning them out.

Pam

Pam,
it's more than mythology - it's in contemporary literature since Moxon. and the geometry of the chisel. Any chisel with a reasonably thick section can be driven straight down, only a true mortise chisel is tapered front to back to avoid getting stuck and has the section to resist snapping when levering and a stout tang with big bolsters to take lateral levering on the handle. It's what differs a mortise chisel from a sash mortise chisel.

 

[Paul Sellers]

Please, please don't continue with the "don't lever with the mortise chisel" theories. After forty years of levering mortises with chisels of every type including those finely made by L-N and Ashly Isles; sash, mortise and bevel edged included, I have never yet bent a chisel though of course I easily could. Surely the leverage is all about sensitivity to the tool and the wood. What kind of world would be living in if all of those thousands of woodworkers had never been allowed to lever on their chisels in the cutting of multiple millions of chisel-cut and chisel-levered mortises?

 

[Paul Sellers]

I'm only a newbie to wood, however i thought Ash was good for handles because of it's bashing properties?
I think i read that somewhere :roll: Also boxwood (how does it compare to ash though?), but where can you buy it? :lol:

Just thought I could help on the choice of wood bit. Ash does make a good chisel handle and many manufacturers past and present use it because it's a native western hardwood that is readily available and poses no threats to endangered forestlands. It's fibers are somewhat softer than other hardwoods though it is plenty hard enough for everything from chisel handles to hammer and axe shafts and mallet heads and more.
Box wood is still respected as the premier wood for chisel handles simply because of its highly dense and close grained structure which is both hard and resilient to any type of mistreatment exclusive of burning. At one time, prior to the impact resistant plastics, almost all chisels, even the mass-manufactured ones by Marples were made from solid boxwood. I have some that I acquired over forty years ago and that were old even then that are just as good today.
Well-dried and seasoned boxwood can be hard to come across. I bought some at the North Yorkshire woodworking show in rounds with the bark still on. it was one of the vendors there but I'm sorry, their name escapes me.

Sincerely,

Paul Sellers

 

[Paul Sellers]

Joel, I know the mythology, even have used many western mortisers; but I contend otherwise. Everything about a mortise chisel, east or west, says bash me, bash me, apply force straight down. Now with the oval handled western whatever-they're-called, you can sort of lever a bit, perhaps drive them by hand rather than mallet; but their primary reason for being is digging holes, not cleaning them out.

Pam

Pam,
I am trying to imagine what it would be like to drive the old western mortise chisels purely by hand rather than with a mallet in the reality of my everyday work and I cannot imagine how long it would take to cut a mortise hole even in soft pine.
Mortise chisels are massive in profile, bulk of handle and mass of steel. It wouldn't surprise me if they weigh-in at over two pounds, but I haven't weighed any recently. Anyway, I have some Ray Isles mortise chisels over in my US tools which came from Tools For Working Wood (I wish I had brought them with me here) and after I reviewed them through heavy heavy mortise chopping with a mallet and repeated levering in oak, hard maple, walnut and cherry mortises I concluded this one fact, they were the best mortising chisels I have ever used and you can really work with them without worrying too much at all. Of course in all of this I applied Newton's third law of reciprocal actions wherein:
Third Law
Whenever a particle A exerts a force on another particle B, B simultaneously exerts a force on A with the same magnitude in the opposite direction. The strong form of the law further postulates that these two forces act along the same line. This law is often simplified into the sentence "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction". In other words, using a mallet will help to get the job done quickly and efficiently.
Mortise chisels USA

 

[MarcW]

Thank you all for your input. I highly esteem all your answers to my question.

Paul (Sellers), I will try a new handle in american ash, it is the wood I have. BTW I enjoyed much the reading of your site.

Pam, I always levered out chips with a mortice chisel, except when I used my japanese bench chisels. Then I cleaned the bottom and took out the chips with a Bottom Cleaning Chisel (Sokozari Nomi). Nonetheless I like bashing and levering with one tool only. It is a time saver. But the sokozari - a very useful tool - is yet always in the bench tray.

Joel, I'd like to use an Iles mortise chisel once, but the current sizes are often out of stock. I guess this is a good sign. One day I will be lucky enough.

 

[Anonymous]

Stop that levering with the mortise chisels, even for western chisels it's not a good idea. You chop with mortise chisels, clean out with other tools.

Pam

Which other tools?

Why is it not a good idea?

Why do yo think the mortise chosel geometry is the way it is? To lever out the waste :roll:

 

[Joel Moskowitz]

Joel, I'd like to use an Iles mortise chisel once, but the current sizes are often out of stock. I guess this is a good sign. One day I will be lucky enough.

Marc,
Ray is making larger and larger batches of chisels but the chisels are getting more and more popular. I suggest you place the order and we will ship when we have your sizes in stock. (usually not that much of a wait past a month or two)
Joel

 

[pam niedermayer]

Which other tools?

Why is it not a good idea?

Why do yo think the mortise chosel geometry is the way it is? To lever out the waste

There are the swan neck tools designed for levering out chunks of wood, sculpting the bottom. There are also 3 Japanese tools that you can see at the Hida site. Go to http://www.hidatool.com/shop/shop.html and choose Woodworking Chisels, scroll down about 1/3 of the page to the Takahashi and Fujihiro cleanup chisels.

It's not a good idea, except for the oval handled bolster version, for exactly the reason for this thread. With socketed handles, they can break. Also, you put great pressure on the edge (the oval handled bolsters I've seen have sort of rounded edges that are strong). With Japanese chisels it's simply the best way to trash edges.

Which mortise chisels geometry are you talking about? The trapezoid shape is, I think, more to cleanly cut the mortise without having the sides get in the way. The arrises on Japanese chisels are very sharp, cut like a dream. I once had several square mortise chisels that did a great job of splitting the wood.

Pam

 

[pam niedermayer]

As to pushing mortise chisels rather than bashing, see the follow-up threads to Adam Cherubini's original post (for the life of me I can't find the original post): http://woodcentral.com.ldh0138.uslec.ne ... v5=lk3ty5r
http://woodcentral.com.ldh0138.uslec.ne ... 5=ly34ts5w
http://woodcentral.com.ldh0138.uslec.ne ... 5=n4bpyf9g


Pam

 

[MikeW]

No doubt Adam has done this method. I assume from lacking the referenced post, Adam has seen this method in print. I also have no doubt it is a far slower method.

From the condition of *every* vintage mortise chisel's handle I have seen or seen pictures of, I suspect their owners also didn't think highly of pushing mortise chisels.

If I have bored a series of holes to define a mortise, I use firmers and push and pare...but not in order to define and excavate a mortise sans drilling.

I have and use the oval bolstered kind mostly. I have also owned and used socket and still own tang sash mortise chisels. I cannot imagine using socketed sash mortise chisels in any wood type save softwood. Larger socketed mortise chisels that have more substantial "meat" in the socket like those Smalser uses, maybe. Never owned them, though.

Because I have never had a problem with the tanged sash mortise chisels but did with the socketed type popping off their handles, I sold them off. Wasn't worth the aggrevation. (Same goes for socketed bench chisels--but that's another story.)

I also have a couple swan necks. Fairly thin ones for lock mortises and the narrow mortises I use on the mantle clocks I use to make. But only because there isn't room to pry. On furniture-sized mortises...I pry, lever and clean using the OBM chisel that happens to be in my hand at the time.

Take care, Mike

 

[matthewwh]

Hi Marc,

A very interesting thread - thank you!

I'm in the chop with a mallet, lever and clean all with one tool camp on this one, although I would add the caveat that the size of your stitches should be proportional to the size of the chisel. Your LN is a fine sash mortice chisel designed to pop out chips no more than a couple of mm thick, which you should be able to lever out almost with the weight of the chisel alone. A tanged mortice chisel will make heftier stitches, so they are a bit faster for larger mortices and production work.

With reference to the handle problem, you might try holding the chisel at the narrowest part between thumb and forefinger. This is more than enough to steady the tool as the shoulders guide the tip once the mortice is established; it also gives you a longer visual referance to ensure that your cut remains plumb. (a tip recently picked up from David C's 'Chisel Techniques for Precision Joinery'). Using this technique the proportion of your hand to the size of the handle doesn't matter.

 

[woodbloke]

mathewwh wrote:

I'm in the chop with a mallet, lever and clean all with one tool camp on this one, although I would add the caveat that the size of your stitches should be proportional to the size of the chisel. Your LN is a fine sash mortice chisel designed to pop out chips no more than a couple of mm thick, which you should be able to lever out almost with the weight of the chisel alone. A tanged mortice chisel will make heftier stitches, so they are a bit faster for larger mortices and production work.

I'm in agreement with Mathew on this one. I've always chopped and levered 'specially with a tanged sash mortice chisel. I think that the LN mortice chisels would need to have a smaller cut (2mm probably) as the levering action is taken up by the handle which is contained within the socket...so heavier cuts may well damage the handle :? or cause it to come loose? - Rob

 

[MarcW]

Hi all,

Reading your posts, Mike and Matthew, I guess, I bought the wrong tool for my chopping and levering technique. I watched David's dvd on chisel technique for precision joinery and did not stick with it, because my bashing technique produced square and even dimensioned mortises in less time. Surely it is a matter of practice too as most techniques accelerate of their own...

So I have to sell a LN sash mortice chisel 5/16. Who wants one? Original handle and box included, sure.