18th Century Chisel Making
My friend Dean Jansa has wanted some 18th century style chisels for his Seaton tool chest for sometime now. Having exhausted efforts to have others make them we decided to make them ourselves. We were able to borrow a couple of 18th century P. Law chisels for examples from our friend John Walkowiak. Our choice for material was O-1 tool steel. We purchased various sized blanks from McMaster Carr to match the 12 chisel sizes, 1/16th through 2" and a 1 1/4" #3 sweep gouge. Since we were able to get four chisels from a blank we invited two other guys to join us, Tom Howard and Steve Schwabacher. We decided to meet on Tuesday nights which we have dubbed “Tool Tuesday”. We have sawed, ground, filed, hardened and tempered the steel,flattened the backs and fitted them with handles. We used the 2" wide chisel in a demo we did for the M-WTCA tool meet in Hastings, MN. It was great fun to use and it worked great!
18th Century chisel samples
P.Law makers mark
An apparently New Old Stock 18th century chisel
Here are the chisel blades
The finished chisels mounted to a display board ready to go to the Northern Woods Show.
Comments
We will be making a couple
We will be making a couple more chisels in the coming weeks and photographing the process so check back later and see.
Shannon, one of the reasons we made the chisels was to find out how they work, so far so good, but we need to work with them more to give a good account.
Mike
Features of the 18th C chisels
Mike,
Would you mind sharing some of the features and differences of these period chisels? I have heard from a few difference sources about this style but no one has really explained what makes them desirable or different from our modern incarnations. I'll be curious to hear your thoughts.
Wow awsome
Those look absolutely awesome. I look forward to hearing how you made them. I am getting inspired here.
Jerome
I will post more about the
I will post more about the details of making the chisels later.The bolsters are fabricated from another piece of steel and are press fit against a shoulder. There was very little waste in the process.
Mike
Awsome!
You guys did a fantastic job! Would you mind sharing a few more details on how you made them (specifically the bloster, tang & taper). I have been pondering myself for a long time how I could make up some chisels in this style, however, not being a blacksmith, I've struggled with a method. I considered sawing and filing from stock thick enough for the bloster, but to me that seemed like way too much work and a waste of money and steel. My second idea was to make some thinner paring chisels from stock carving chisel blades like those from Henry Taylor, but I wonder if they might be too thin. I'd definitely like to know more about how you guys went about this.
Those chisels look sweet. I
Those chisels look sweet. I like how the thickness of the blade is tapered. I assume the blanks came that way? What wood did you use?
I'll have to check these out at the show. I'm stealing my windsor chair from our kitchen to put in the show for the weekend. It will be missed. It's much more comfortable than the faux-windsors that also sit around our table.
See you this weekend at the show!
Can you describe how you made
Can you describe how you made the bolster? Was it integral to the steel and you just filed away the metal leaving the bolster? Was it welded on or fabricated from another piece of steel.
They look awesome by the way.
Best Regards, Josh
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