So your chisel is too soft or too hard, now what?

[Corneel]

You really have to cock up a grinding job very badly if it needs new heat treating! The normal way to deal with a blued corner is to shrug up your shoulders and continue using the chisel. The damage is gone after a few sharpenings anyway.

 

[Trafalgar]

...not to mention the 3rd-degree burns on the fingers holding the chisel.....

 

[D_W]

You really have to cock up a grinding job very badly if it needs new heat treating! The normal way to deal with a blued corner is to shrug up your shoulders and continue using the chisel. The damage is gone after a few sharpenings anyway.

Every once in a while, you find a dandy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKzZ6-dQ2C0

This guy's video used to be titled as an instructional, but I see that he's changed the title (water taking or not, I don't know) to reflect that he's really burning up the chisel.

Of course, he doesn't burn his fingers because he retrieves a pair of gloves. A shame, as the english marples with the nice grinds (before they got fat and bulky on the sides) are nice chisels.

 

[Corneel]

Yes that one could use a rehardening job!

What a morron.

 

[Jelly]

Have a slight concern though about using cooking oil, wouldn't the flash point of some oils be lower than the temperature of the steel you plunge into it?

I learned through experience that it is not wise to use a plastic pot to hold your quenching oil. Not sure why it wasn't obvious from the outset . Also worth having a damp cloth to hand.

I once watched a friend put a plastic cooking oil bottle down on an (very much on) electric hob... The result was rapid, dramatic and messy.

Self-same hob was more than hot enough to light a cigarette or ignite a spill on, due to a failure in the temperature control rheostat.

 

[Sheffield Tony]

On Sunday I was carving out a small bowl from green laburnum using a 1" firmer gouge bought on ebay. Ok, I was using a mallet and removing quite a bit of material, but to my surprise dints started appearing quite quickly in the edge. These were not chips, but where the cutting edge had bent. Looking more closely at my gouge, despite looking quite old, it had no maker's mark, and a pressed steel ferrule. The beech handle also appeared to have a split in it.

Rather than bin it and get a new one, I got out my MAPP gas torch and had a go at redoing the heat treatment. Laid it in the frog of a (very dry) housebrick, and heated to red heat and left to cool slowly. Tested with a file - soft enough to re-shape easily. Then heated to red once more and quenched in an old tin can of cooking oil. Tested with the file it would just polish the surface but no more. Then polished up reheated to a light brownish sort of colour and quenched again.

After sharpening, it took an edge good enough to carve with hand pressure. I tried some heavy mallet blows into a nasty, hard, dry bit of turkey oak and it still had an edge free from dings and chips. Looks to be an improvement at least. Just need to turn a new handle with a nice brass ferrule now !

 

[ED65]

Good to hear it worked so well for you Tony.

Looking more closely at my gouge, despite looking quite old, it had no maker's mark, and a pressed steel ferrule.

I have a chisel a little like that, bought at the end of last year's car-boot season. It was the only thing there that I had any interest in so I didn't look at the details as closely as I might have, although in my defence it was manky. Once I got it home and cleaned it up you could see it was of much more recent vintage than at first glance, taking a stab perhaps 50s if they still made chisels in that form then.

What wood will you go with for your new handle?

 

[Sheffield Tony]

I have ash and beech to hand, but I quite fancy trying one of the offcuts of hornbeam I have.

Or, should I try a double hooped ash one with a leather washer, mortice chisel style, to allow for heavier use ?