Dove tail chisel

Tom Bussey

Member
Messages
145
Location
Nashua Iowa
I have wanted a set of dove tailed chisels for a long time and I love the look of the Lie-Nielsen one. But the cost kind of out weighted the amount of times I would need one. On a comment I made a long time ago One person said why don't you just take an old chisel and grind it. My return comment was it just wouldn't look right, and I like nice looking tools. Well that was vanity speaking

As some of you know we have a antique -this and that store and I have a box of old chisels I pick up at auctions out on the table. Well I swallowed my pride and went out and got a 1/2 inch chisel, went over to my disk sander and went to work. I didn't swallow my pride completely because I did pick a good wood handled one that has a leather washer to help with mallet blows. I figured that it might have better steel in it.

I watch Lie-Nielsen's video on sharpening their dove tail chisel and I must say that mine is definitely not as pretty as theirs but it fits just fine in my Tormek jig so sharpening will be very easy to sharpen compared to theirs. As I have found most of the fish tailed chisels on the market need to be done free hand.

Anyway. I read somewhere that fish tailed chisels are sharpened at 15 degrees so I tried it and man does it slice nicely. Now I know just like everyone. who is anybody, in woodworking knows that the angle is 25 degrees for soft wood and 30 degrees for hard wood. And pattern makers prefer to set their tool rest at 27 1/2 degrees because they work with both. consistently so there is no need to reply about how you always use a certain angle and so on. Anyway I thought I would try the 15 degree angle because, like a micro bevel from 25-30, the angle is easy to change. I also had to spend some time flattening the back. This old used chisel also had some chips in the cutting edge and a burr.

Anyway it isn't pretty but I had a $3 price tag on it when I picked it out of the box and I am quite happy with how it turned out to date. In use it might require some fine tuning. I am not sure how well the 15 Degree angle will hold up but it is a very specializes tool now and it won't see any rough work only the final finish work so I will see.

I final note: if someone decides to give it a try, one needs to be very careful because once steel starts to turn light straw brown one is starting to take the hardness out of the steel, and the loss of hardness goes fare deaper than just removing the color.

Anyway it isn't real pretty but then it wasn't $78.

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I have a couple of 1/2 inch crown skew chisels and I had trouble getting in tight places, That's why I wanted fishtail chisel*in the first place. I do know that I will also make a dovetail chisel out of a smaller chisel I just don't know what I have a the present.

I was*at a friends house delivering a band saw I sold him and I showed it to him and after a little use it stopped working. He said I had a burr on the cutting edge. But I didn't, it was a rolled cutting edge. That is why Butchers use a steel. Not to sharpen but to roll the cutting edge straight. That means that the 15 degree cutting edge is to thin for much use so I am going to try a 20 Degree angle, It won't take much more that a micro bevel to get there. I do know that a 22 1/2 included angle is supposed to be the perfect cutting angle, but we will see . I put included angle in just in case someone starts thinking knife which should be from both sides.*but we will see. With all the work removing the mass changing the angle doesn't take much work so I will play and go slow at changing at the angle. It is easier to steepen the angle than to go the other way.
 
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