Chisels, fixed angles, and fixed ideas

June 18, 2009 in Sharpening, Tools by admin | No comments

It’s interesting how we become stuck in fixed ideas. Take chisels for example.

Most of us know that we can regrind the bevel angle of a chisel to accommodate the work at hand. A steeper angle stands up to heavy work such as chopping out waste, while a shallower angle is better for light, paring cuts.

The fixed idea is that if you sharpen one chisel to a certain angle, you must then sharpen all the chisels in that set to the same angle. That makes sense so long as all the chisels will be used for much the same work all the time. That isn’t necessarily the case, however.

I have a half-dozen Japanese chisels that are used primarily for dovetailing. They are used for lots of other work, but when I pack up a small tool kit for a job that includes cutting dovetails, they’re my “go-to” chisels for most of the work.

One day I realized that the 3/8-inch chisel is used for heavy chopping about 99.5% of the time and almost never for paring. The regular ¼-inch is also used mainly for chopping; a triangular-section ¼-inch is used for finer work. So why not sharpen them to the most effective angles and never mind consistency?

My 3/8-inch chisel is now honed to an angle of 35˚, the regular ¼-inch is at 30˚, and the triangular ¼-inch is at 25˚. So these chisels are now sharpened to the angle matching the work which they most often do instead of occasionally doing work suited to their bevel angles.

Imagine that: a “set” of chisels sharpened to different angles. Pretty scary stuff.

Three chisels, three bevel angles do the work best suited to each.

– Bill Perry

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