Hand Forging a Chisel from Round Bar – #2

After the prior post, I had a chisel that needed a tang. Admittedly, I am not quite to the point where I want to hammer that tang out immediately – a little break is nice. However, I’ve done it and can do it. Which brings something to mind for me in terms of hand work. There is a version of tired or fatigued where you can take a break or set up a rhythm that I refer to in definitions on this site as “the count”. Work happens neatly and is pleasant when you can do that.

Then, there is a level of work where you push yourself and perhaps it only accomplishes a little bit more, but it ruins you for the day, or in the case of my arm and elbow, may lead to problems in the long term.

Hand work doesn’t involve that kind of thing. Hand work involves the former, as it allows you to assess what you’re doing and not be distracted by pain which leads to errors of stupidity or contemplative neglect.

Don’t do it.

I will be comfortably hammering one of these chisels out entirely in one stop soon enough – it may be chisel #12 instead of 6. That happens not just from brute strength, but neural development, efficiency and control. That combined with your brain understanding what’s easier is part of what I like to refer to as craftsman’s magic. You get better at things just by doing them, they get easier, you don’t have to become a strong back weak mind version of yourself.

On to the chisel.

Here’s where it stands after guillotine and hammering

Kind of ugly. I would prefer grain direction fan out from back to front but the tip of this chisel sort of has the grain flowing in like the toe of a shoe. I’ll grind that off. I’m sure this steel still has directional favoring as far as toughness or resistance to breaking goes.

there’s a lot left here and in time I may get close to the finished product above the shoulder, but the penalty in this case is about ten minutes of heavy grinding.

After a total of perhaps 15 minutes of grinding, I’ve arrived to this point.

this probably seems quite a leap, but I can’t really give you much advice on grinding other than making sure the general direction or flow in the roughed piece is the same as the ground part. you just have to grind and file things to learn to do it. Unless you make 100 of the same thing, you are not going to establish a mindless routine. Not that getting to that level would be bad if still doing this by hand, but I would say grind just shy of where you want to go and file or then light grind to finish. That’s what i did here.

There’s nothing special about my mark here, by the way. It’s a piece of old file that I heated, then when it was cool (unhardened), imprinted some reverse letters and put on mock serifs, and then used a checkering file to crate a postage stamp border. you can make your own if you can find the reverse stamps, and then just mutilate something to make those little serifs on the ends and bottoms of letters.

My grinder for this is a combination belt and wheel – it’s a strong jet 8″ grinder. They make at least two. This one draws 11.5 amps and it’s nice to have it on tap. You can grind something this size without ever slowing the machine down.

This area is a mess. there’s another one of the same thing with a larger narrower wheel back right, my OSS, which is typically a light use tool for guitars and obviously gets cleaned off if making them, and on the left is a 4×36 direct drive bench sander.

Dust collection or fanning metal dust is an absolute must. Wood dust is annoying. Metal dust is that squared and probably a much greater long term health threat. I have a bucket below the belt both to dip tools and to catch most of the dust so I can throw it away later in a big rusty brick. The vacuum is hooked to the dust port on this grinder and it doesn’t catch everything, but it catches a lot and throws it into a bin.

The fan sitting on the top of the heap sends all of the remaining fines and smoke out of the garage in a gentle breeze. I don’t grind with the door closed. In winter, whatever is being ground is hot enough that just having it in your hands will keep you warm. I thought that was odd until I read that it’s more effective to warm someone by warming hands than full body warming if the input energy is the same. That was something from a doctor discussing hypothermia, not something from bro science.

After some more filing I’m here, starting to file the bolster:

width doesn’t matter to me on tools, and I like a slight taper in width with the bevel edge being widest. This chisel is probably between 5/8th and 3/4ths. It’s a mule, anyway. If accurate width is important, you can leave yourself a hundredth or two of fatness and belt grind it off after heat treatment. If heat treatment distorts more than that, you’ve got bigger problems. Whatever the case, hitting something within a couple of thousandths in finished width is not difficult.

Filing the bolster is done with chisels that have been made safe edge and also had some of the corner transition to the cutting side ground off. You’ll figure out what’s right if you file a few of these.

Files are consumables, and there’s no need for anything expensive here. The round filing at the shoulder is done with cheap files, the heavier filing is done with mill files and a cheap double cut half round file, and taper saw files and chainsaw files do a good job of cleaning up the rougher work.

Just like grinding, filing the bolsters on is better learned by doing it, and not by memorizing a 14 step process. That’s nonsense you will pretty quickly realize you’re filing flat facets on work like this and that dragging the file backwards is a good idea because it prevents pinning. Again, files are consumables. Don’t trade a dollar of file wear for an hour of wasted time or ugly results.

Something important does come up here:

You can overcut things or file into the tang. You don’t want to do that. When filing the bolster, I file five strokes and look, five more and look. This happens in rhythm. It both keeps fatigue away and also allows to see things that are occurring and adjust without having to think about it. And importantly, it builds in rhythm an assessment that prevents overcutting. This is something worthwhile in all hand work that looks good if it’s done just right and terrible of done a little more than just right.

Heat treatment is next, where we could find out the whole thing has been a waste of time of we get serious warping. This will be the first thing I’ve ever heat treated out of 115crv3, but the heat treat schedule and the composition suggest that warping should be my only problem if there is any. Water hardening steels like a fast quench, though, and the potential for warping is already there. Go too gentle on the quench and the chisel won’t be full hardness- that’s even worse.

The most common thing with chisels for me is vertical movement or bow. For example, the flat back of a chisel ends up not close to that and grinding it out leaves the tip thin.

it’s once in a while, not every other, and the skill to do these water hardening skills right – especially with manual heat treatment by judgement as I’m doing – is why you don’t see alloys like this used by the tool making companies who sponsor manbun parties.