practical cap-irons - a question

[ED65]

...Bill Carter's idea of using old chisels, ground to a square edge.

Just to try to get the record straight, this is not actually Mr. Carter's idea. Credit to him for passing on the knowledge but it's far older than he is.

The basic principle is that used in metal scraping. In a woodworking context using chisels in like manner goes way back, it's just not well covered in texts.

 

[D_W]

...Bill Carter's idea of using old chisels, ground to a square edge.

Just to try to get the record straight, this is not actually Mr. Carter's idea. Credit to him for passing on the knowledge but it's far older than he is.

The basic principle is that used in metal scraping. In a woodworking context using chisels in like manner goes way back, it's just not well covered in texts.

I'm sure it has been done as long as someone's been making a living working difficult wood. Thousands of years. It's just known as the carter trick because just about everyone doing it now learned it from one of his picture DVDs ten years ago, or from his newer videos or blogs or articles about him. We give him credit because he made a pretty big deal about it instead of just making a passing comment.

It has made my planemaking (and japanese plane iron fitting) experience far more enjoyable, especially if you're employing something that doesn't pare well (end grain cocobolo is quite difficult to pare unless you go up the ladder and get the hardest chisels that you can find. It may be one of the few examples that I can think of where a 64 hardness japanese chisel is functionally superior to a 58 hardness english chisel).