I’ve posted a permanent page of hardness test results here:
These results are accessible from the home page ribbon as well as with this link, and as I test additional tools (old, new, and my own), I will add entries.
- Comment
- Reblog
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Of Making by Hand with Wood and Steel 
Okay, this is interesting and makes me want my chisels hardness tested. You have combined HF chisels with Aldi chisels, is HF chisels is the Windsor brand or some other brand? The ones you’ve been playing around recently seem harder than Aldi’s, which are totally too soft and believing they’re 58HRC isn’t that hard. Btw they’re marked as discontinued, but still can be had at HF, I’ve seen some in the store this weekend.
LikeLike
Actually, these are not the chisels you’re thinking of. they’re probably discontinued a dozen years ago or more. here is a picture of the chisel that I tested – off of the same tooling as the aldi chisels (and many other private labels).
There’s a wildcard with these – cr60v (0.6 carbon) is probably the most widely used steel for them because it’s cheap and it doesn’t really have anything in the matrix (no carbides to be concerned with – everything stays in solution). The same chisels can be sold made out of 1% drill rod and if they run through the same factory process and induction heating, they’ll be 62 hardness instead of 58.5.
Here’s the picture of the actual chisel, though: https://ofhandmaking.files.wordpress.com/2023/03/wp-1679591465332.jpg
LikeLike
Yeah, definitely not the current ones. There are rumors on forums that Aldi chisels were originally conformant to one of DIN standards, implying that a particular batch from a particular run was hardened differently. I don’t think this can be proven though, most probably they are the same chisels with typical variability of a mass manufactured tool. Maybe some people got lucky and grabbed a harder set, but most of them don’t even need a hardness tester to know they’re soft. Mine were so soft and the angle was so ridiculously high that I just designated them to guinea pigs, maybe I should try re-hardening them.
LikeLike
I just hardness tested one of the ones with the weird root beer barrel handles – i’m guessing they’re still being sold. it tested 59.5, so slightly harder.
LikeLike
Also, do you have any of the Buck bros chisels, the ones that were sold at HD with a steel capped yellow plastic handles, the butt type? They’re pretty nice chisels, I wonder how hard are they. They seem to be discontinued too, while some are still sold at Amazon. I grabbed a full set some years ago for ~8$ on average per chisel.
LikeLike
I think I sold the ones I had on ebay, probably for the princely sum of $15. Based on what I could feel with them, I would guess 57/58 and similar comments about the steel – something of the 0.6% carbon variety so that nobody can break them easily when prying.
LikeLike
I’ll combine responses to the above.
I like the yellow Buck bros because I could just dig the aisle and get chisels with low landings – again, manufacturing variation, so they’re pretty handy for cleanup jobs in tight corners. Also even with a steel cap they are not top heavy, maybe their wooden version had even better balance. They’re reasonable good holding an edge, I mortise with a 1/4″ (‘cos it’s square in section) and I can get 4-6 mortises in oak before edge fails completely. It’s just it has to be ground quite high, but that chisel can’t do fine paring jobs anyway because it’s square and doesn’t fit anywhere. In general they far way better than Aldis, so maybe they’re a tad above 59, just like the bench planes.
It looks you’re spot on about prying. I have some more or less modern chisels from about the same time and they’re all soft like these. Footprint, Irwin, Marples, Stanley, nonames – I guess somebody was struck with a lawsuit or something. Or maybe it was around time brand chisels were seen as tools for construction site where it can catch something hard and shatter with flying shards. I’ve bent one trying to reproduce that Seller’s mortising video, probably tried to lever too much at one point and bent it, lol. Not the tang, the blade itself. There’s also those “German” chisels – TwoCherries, MHG, Hirsch, Dictum brand, etc., also seems to be the same chisel with different branding. It would be interesting to know their hardness. Too bad you’ve sold Sorby’s the “Sheaf river” chisels – they had hardness test indentations, but the Sorby’s website removed the hardness statement it seems? This is just curiosity though. Oh by the way, what about some Japanese chisels, how much harder a they?
So my observation from these results is that what I perceived as soft and would put in 57-58 range is harder and probably is at 60. The distance on the scale from perceived “soft” to “okay”/”hard” is actually less than I would expect, as well as the distance between “okay” and “hard”, does this mean the scale is not linear? Also looking at the “soft” group: even though they’re close in a sense of steel type and hardness, they give different feeling while sharpening. Some feel slidey on a stone, others kinda bite in. It feels like their edge retention is also different, but it could be because of angle variability in freehand honing. Maybe the variability of manufacturing explains it, I guess we could have a better idea what they were aiming for by testing a 20-30 chisels of each brand. That’s probably too deep the rabbit hole though.
LikeLike
oh, no worries. I’ve tested about 6 ward irons so far. There is information not just in the individual tests, but the groups of each. Each type of chisel or iron, and each brand, and whatever combination there may be.
There’s probably a whole bunch of reasons for the stanley 60 and marples blue chips and the acetate handled buck brothers chisels, but I think two are definitely the case. First, they don’t have enough carbon and other alloying elements in combination to create any toughness issues due to disparate carbides. And second, beyond the toughness issue, if everything stays in solution, and perhaps add a little vanadium to prevent grain growth, you can have the ultra simplified process that is common now – one induction heat for forging to shape, two induction heats for heat treatment – one quench, one temper.
A notch up from that is stuff like 80crv2, which has more potential than I had success-wise with it. I thought it was a push to temper it to 60 without undertempering, but now have two samples that are securely in the “somewhat unpleasant to sharpen” territory. The first is 63.
japanese chisels – hard to find a regular surface to strike. the back side needs to be flat and supported for the test and lateral forces both give an inaccurate reading as well as the risk for damage to the diamond (no replacement that I know of at this point other than purchasing another entire unit!! There are cones for the big machines for $20 but I’m happy at this point that I didn’t splurge a few hundred bucks more and buy a stationary machine.
As for the old aldi chisels, I used to joke that with some of them “there is a good chisel inside of the outer wrapper”. This, too, can be an artifact of induction heating, which works opposite at some frequencies vs. thermal heating – thin cross sections don’t get as hot as thick no matter how long they’re in the heat.
the “how it’s made” video for chisels is buck brothers chisels and is sort of a class in lower cost chisel manufacturing for the last 60+ years.
LikeLike
Right. Missed the low carbon part, so I guess mine are just a grinder meat. Which is okay, I can practice re-hardening on something else.
Re: Japanese chisels – alright, I didn’t realize a tester has to be set at a normal, indeed it would be hard with a hand held one. But given the results with other steels where would you put it, ballpark? A number often cited is 64HRC, I just wonder how they compare to stuff from LN\LV, older chisels are definitely quite a bit softer.
Btw you have tested molding planes irons it close to an edge, right? My suspicion that molding planes tempered soft seems to be confirmed, a step lower and they would be sharpenable with needle files.
LikeLike
I will test close to the edge if I can. if there is a long bevel, I’ll test at the top of the bevel and then maybe if something has an odd result, another spot further up the iron. from the perspective of someone who has now hardened and tempered a couple of hundred things, to spot harden only the edge of a moulding plane iron would be warp city and without any good reason – so it’s pretty safe to find hardness at the center of a low use iron.
this data, so to speak, can be matched based on edge performance. I always noticed moulding plane irons on older hollows and rounds to be good, but they aren’t chipping hard. To seem them 55-59 so far is no big surprise. Job one with a moulding plane is no chipping because chipping creates a line that casts a shadow – it’s garish. the typical 55 degree plane for hardwoods gives plenty of room to increase the angle at the edge, or sometimes you will see the back of an iron has been rounded over a little.
Aside from that, the job is to do most of the work with other planes and then the H&R is over in a sniff – a bit of a disappointment for someone gearing up to take a few hundred feet of shavings.
The reason that I test bevel and further up is the cone has 150kg of pressure, even on the little hand held devices (the chinese version comes with a heavy cast base so you can affix the tester in a heavy base – very handy). At that level of pressure, it’s totally intolerant of anything but a firm base under the cone.
of course, I tested irons I’ve reheated. a reheated so far untempered later (round bolster) boxwood handled marples chisel is 65 out of the quench. A bit of a surprise. I have a set of 10 of those and no fewer than 7 were completely unhardened. push them into wood and the edge rolls. Not like 55, like they air hardened only and are probably 30 hardness.
Buck brothers blade gets a whopping 1 point harder, and the HF chisels wouldn’t tolerate a lower tempering temperature, so by the time I got them to the point of not chipping, when I find one, it’ll probably be half a point or a point harder than as delivered. Without the carbon, there isn’t enough there. you can practice rehardening them, but it’s probably better to just start with O1 and do different temperature heats and then judge how the tools work, and if you find something you like, you can start heating offcuts and snapping them.
(three japanese chisels so far – 63, 64, 64. I can temper 26c3 to about 65/66 at 350F and it has hard tempered behavior. I think the myth of the tough edged japanese chisel at 66 hardness is just that.
two of those chisels are kiyotadas. If shimamura (the better of the two kiyotada smiths) hardens to 64, it sends a message – that message is that what I found with 63/64 being the sweet spot for 26c3 is no less by chance than thinking my lazy sharpening method was probably done in the past – only to find out that not only was it, it’s prescribed in texts).
and lastly – 46 on the complex moulding planes is a real surprise. Both identical, different makers. if I had a few others, I would dent them all because there is something we don’t know about why they’re set up like that – I’d love to solve that and document it. Wiley and I have discussed briefly 0 they’re soft, but they are very rarely not perfectly set up geometrically. my two are very neatly sharpened – they’re not cast offs.
LikeLike
Unhardened Marples is really weird, maybe somebody just forgot to harden them? Mine has hardness test dots a couple of inches from an edge, so they were hardened or it would show. But if they’re hardened to 58 – that’s on purpose. I have no idea how hard mine are, ‘cos I’ve bought them new, read about hardness issue and didn’t use them assuming I’ll sell them. Couldn’t make myself sell them though, it would have been just bad thing to do to list them on ebay like that. So idk, they just sit and age.
The Japanese chisels hardness kinda makes sense, what would be the point for high hardness for a method assuming predominantly low density woods? Yeah, there are Japanese chisels that work US hardwoods and even exotics no problems, but why bother and risk a bunch of other stuff when it can be addressed with the geometry? Btw Japanese sources also imply that average bevel angle is 30˚, not 25˚ or whatever ridiculously low angle people on Internet come up with.
LikeLike
It’s common to find Japanese chisels that were in use that have coarse work on the upper part of the bevel and some small rounded bevel below, but I’ve also had one (only one) well used set with perfectly flat bevels. They were probably in the 30 degree range. Sometimes, you’ll find “enthusiasts” talking about their favorite set of chisels that were tempered at 100ºC and describing angles like 35 degrees flat. They have no clue that they’re burdening themselves with protecting an undertempered edge and the chisels if they are that hard would be far better tempered a little.
There is, though, some reward if you’re polishing the brightest surface possible with a plane. A reward for hardness because it marginalizes the cutting ability of a slurrying stone and leaves a more crisp edge. if that’s the case for some folks using cedar and paulownia, it’s not very good when applied to cherry, oak, maple, etc.
As far as the marples being unhardened, I’ve seen types where the chisels run through something (get dipped) and some where they are splashed. Imagine driving into tunnel, staying at depth a bit and coming back out. The dip quenches are like that – chisel is in motion, dips into the liquid and then comes back out. that may explain why I found yesterday that stanley sheffield tools (fatmax stuff before it went overseas) doesn’t have much length fully hardened. It doesn’t explain my marples chisels that well, though – they didn’t get dipped or splashed at all or if they were splashed
they are of this style:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/334802618128?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=iaZ8ScLfSLi&sssrc=2047675&ssuid=w_ki5-0rRYK&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
that one isn’t mine, but you can tell it was done completely in grinding machines and not ground by a person. The rotary marks and the little step at the tang give it away. I guess anything could go wrong and a bunch of chisels would come out duds. They are soft enough that you could just take one good chisel and see if you can push it into the edge of the others, and easily find out the unhardened ones without doing much damage to the good ones.
First two sets of blue chips I got, and then dumped (the kind of thing where you find a set for $25 and you get it just because it’s $25 – those days are gone), all but one chisel was just kind of mediocre hard and then one would be unhardened or almost completely unhardened. I wondered if they had some religious practice at marples whey they screwed one up just to appease their gods “look…you are perfect and we are not. We offer you this unhardened chisel marked as first quality!”
Same thing with stanley 5000 sets – nice shape – mediocre cihsels. One in a set that I bought was bent. I figured out why – it wasn’t hardened and someone bent the steel in a nice curve doing something dumb with it. I tapped it with a hammer and it was straight again and sold it with the defect mentioned (the whole set). Nobody seemed to care.
I’ve got few new boutique-type chisels, but someone asked a question yesterday about whether or not chisels are hardened along their full length, and the answer to that is to some extent and some types, yes. Others, no. the fine ward parer in my list is 63 for more than half of it’s length and only drops to 53 at the maker’s mark. Stanley sheffied fatmax drops more than 4 points just to the middle of the chisel – I guess they figure nobody will care and that’s probably true.
An old stanley 750 is the same hardness in the middle as it is at the end of the bevel, and then too corroded further up for me to be able to guess.
LikeLike
Yeah, okay, I see now. I think the situation with Marples and Stanleys are a lot like the Aldi\HF: it’s basically a lottery, the question really is how many winning tickets there was, probably not many. E.g. I have Stanley 5500, and my particular set is different from another set of 5500, mine are better polished, small lands, but exactly the same type next to them was all milling marks, fat lands, asymmetrical handles, etc – basically Buck Bros story, where process variation can produce results to our advantage. Stanley shape is nice indeed and mine are tempered well – just got lucky. Can’t explain why quality variation would be this wild, obviously they can’t be recommended for purchase to anyone. The Marples set I’ve mentioned are different though, it’s the latest iteration from idk, maybe 2012? 2015? No idea, just snagged a set of 5 for 100$ delivered, and haven’t even tried them. They were never sharpened. Now that you explained it I think that maybe hardness issue was addressed by Marples by that time, I mean, why would they hardness test them otherwise? The dimple is very obvious, just need to try them. My other Marples are older than the one you have listed, I know that type. Mine are incomplete set with ash handles and machined conical bolster, I’ve bought them one by one (‘cos again, the price was good and I generally can’t control myself). They’re definitely not hardened all the way, since one came bent and I straightened it in vises by just bending a handle. So the tang is soft, this means adjacent length is soft too. This doesn’t really bother me because I will never get to that point ever, but it’s a tell tale about the overall quality of manufacturing. They can hold low angle though. These days I have way less troubles with edge retention because mortising is done with mortising chisels (who would have thought, right?), so it’s light tapping and paring mostly, yet they’re chisels I wouldn’t miss were anything happen to them.
People that say those things about Japanese chisels or buy tools for name only or just because YT mentioned them – I decided I’ll just ignore them, lol, it’s just too much at this point.
LikeLike
I think this stuff is probably figured out by the time you get into the aldi and “windsor” chisels at harbor freight. I’m not sure what was going on at Marples when the chisels I linked to were made, but it wasn’t good. I remember Chris S. doing his “buy boutique” gimmick talking about record marples plane irons or something like that in a plow plane where the irons weren’t hardened.
I could literally quench the entire set in less than five minutes and then temper them. Anyone could learn that, but it’s not the way we do things, I guess. Part of his job was to do that, and the other part, in my opinion, is the “these are my friends, and you’re a customer”. Friends do things for other friends. Goes sideways when you’re the customer. But his mention if he’s telling the truth about things being totally unhardened is just the worst of sloth or “getting quick” as my PA dutch relatives would say.
I found my other HF chisels today that match the aldi set. I’ll just dent all of them – they only got saved from a life of scraping grout out of curiosity to see how far the unicorn would go.
I have a sinful number of those “windsor” sets, too, not sure what I was thinking – reprofiling a bunch of them as a favor for folks – lost interest. They aren’t ground from the factory cleanly enough to hardness test, though – the surface needs to be reasonably fine to give a true reading.
Around the 50s/60s/70s, the marples and stanleys of the world were starting to realize their chisels could maybe do some woodworking, but would also find use wedging electrical boxes and opening cans. They switched over to automatic grinding and what you got in each generation depended on the equipment. It would make a few english folks upset, but they aren’t made with the same consistency as the aldi types. The variable in the aldi chisels is more down to the bar stock chosen that month when the chisels are being made, or who aldi is buying from.
There are probably ISO controls now that prevent stuff like what happened at marples, too.
LikeLike
well, i found three more of that HF set. Two are 59.5 and one 60.5, believe it or not. Perhaps I should change my entry! they average 59.5, but all have been used a bit and are missing the outer skin and the first several mm of length.
induction heating can be simple like my forge, or it can become complex. The frequency determines where the magnetic currents eddy themselves and apply heat. I was thinking that chisels will be softer on bevels if the bevels are pre-cut, but the industrial setups could be multi frequency to try to even everything out.
At some point, marples plastic handled chisels went up, and I sold the ones I had. Including one that was made with a footprint label, unused, but clearly fat sided later marples. never figured that one out.
I have a shameful number of chisels, but shameful again how few aren’t old. that makes my hardness data not very useful for most people who just want to know what to buy now.
(back to the HF chisels, though – if someone spends a couple of pennies more per chisel – literally – to get 1% barstock in stead of 0.6, the range we see would be more like 61.5-63.
And further yet, someone selling chisels made on different equipment may not get that hardness, either).
LikeLike