Forging chisels by drawing out round rod poses a problem. I can’t use 26c3, and the steels that I can use are 1% carbon or less. They make a decent chisel, but I’m not trying to come up with a routinely make able decent chisel. I’m trying to come up with something demonstrably better. 26c3 is better than any production chisel and it sharpens easier than hard 01. Yes, I’m mourning the lack of it as well as the inability to get defectless 115crv3.
I don’t care for 52100. It makes for a very tough chisel at 61. People talk about a tough edge, but mean strong. Toughness leads to a persistent foil at the edge of a chisel, and a deflection with a foil is a bung to push through wood.
However, I’ve had luck pushing up the hardness of 52100 to make gravers, and the tables suggest it should be no tougher than 26c3 assuming 52100 is pushed up into the upper ranges. Double tempered gravers were landing around 64 hardness with no sign of grain bloated and the tips would chip off, which sounds bad but it’s better than seeing them bend, because they would bend long before they break from chipping. Or said differently, there’s more potential to resist edge distortion, a higher point of abuse where things finally fail, if they fail due to chipping and not folding. Why didn’t I do this before? Simple – I wasn’t able to get hardness out of the quench high enough to do it, and most other folks never will, either. 52100’s behavior is a bit of an odd duck and the heat treatment routine needs to be just a little different.
Because I’ve learned this just by experimenting – which is like getting something for free – it seems worth reexamining now that I’m comfortable with brine quenching. 64 hardness after a 400f temper should be attainable. More than that is unpublished more or less, but here we are. I am pushing method experiments to see what is possible, not just what’s possible with a furnace schedule and cryo.
This is the above chisel after a long double temper at 400. You can see the chisel between the anvil and cone at the left. 400 in a .9%+ carbon steel is usually an area of sweetness. In case you can’t see the dial, it reads a strong 65 hardness. Further up the chisel where you may be working with it in 2054, it’s still 63.
I’m pleased with this, the chisel is miles better than the 61 hardness 52100 steel chisel I have on my rack, but even though the alloy is pretty plain, it does start to resist some sharpening stones at this hardness.
I have to test it more. And see if bar 26c3 will also easily reach 65 after a brine quench. I’m fairly sure it will. And I think 26c3 will have a dry razor like bite and still be a little better than 52100 – certainly more agreeable on natural stones at the same hardness.
Who knew that making gravers would lead to improving some of the chisels? That’s the free part – I made gravers, they worked, done, right? No, don’t miss opportunities like this and just write things off without proving they won’t work. it would’ve been easy to say, well, you can do that with gravers because they’re little square stubs, but a chisel will break or crack or warp with the same routine.
It’s very nice to finally have a bolster that’s formed from the same piece of steel and have a tang thicker than a quarter inch. I’ve not yet had a forge welded bolster break loose – I don’t think more than 1 in 100 would ever let go, but all one piece of steel is even better.
Amber varnish on the handle again, of course. No metal driers, so uv light is needed unless a cure time of weeks is allowed. No thanks. Curing I’m the sun is fast, but Steve Voigt motivated me to make a black light box and the cure may be a bit slower, but weather matters not and there are no bugs stuck to the handle.
Oh, and I’ve already tested the edge malleting hard maple. It doesn’t chip, so more evaluation is needed. Even at 65, there is persistence to holding a little bit of a burr when sharpening, which is a surprise.
The heat treat process is not complicated and does not require a furnace, though it has become easier to really manipulate the steel with an induction forge vs. propane. If you want to normalize the steel with a heat all the way to the point that there is scale forming and then let it air cool, it’s 20 seconds with an induction forge, and follow up thermal cycles to shrink grain are a fraction of that.
Of Making by Hand with Wood and Steel 
Hi David,
Once again, a beautiful chisel and great post! I’ve lost interest in 52100 since reading your older posts on the steel, yet this one makes it interesting again.
Since you mentioned you were going to do more tests on the chisel, would you please include a comparison between 52100 and other steels in your follow up post?
Thank you and keep up the good work!
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Will do. I’ve kept so few chisels that I don’t have many and will have to make some though. I’ve got hitachi white #1 on hand now and am going to make a set of chisels from it and prove that it’s not the “super difficult to heat treat” steel that it’s described as. I’ll compare at least W1, 26c3, 52100 and hitachi white #1. And O1 forged from round bar, I guess.
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That would be great! Thank you!
Since this time you pushed it to 64 hardness, how do you sharpen it? I guess the Arkansas/Washita stones are out of the picture, right?
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So, I’ll try to avoid going full resolution because the short answer is the stone prior to the finish stone needs to be fast enough to cut the steel. Above 62 hardness or so, arkansas stones need to be slurried to have much effect and something like an india stone or anything with alumina is more sensible. However, you can still sharpen the very apex with an arkansas stone. So what I would do is fine india (broken in – they are brash cutting at first, but settle down), hard arkansas (step off of finest) and light buffing or if you don’t have a buffer, very little time with a honing compound on wood or something is just dandy.
The chromium amount in 52100 is < 1/3rd of that in A2, but when the matrix is hard, it's enough to stun and sort of grade a natural arkansas stone. Just the switch to synthetic (india in this case) on the first step takes care of things and the final buff or compound is alumina or diamond and you get a nice uniform edge. I really like to hone the apex of almost all tools after the india with an arkansas stone, even if following it with a very fine compound or buff. it will remove scratches to some extent but then kind of stop cutting once they're gone.
The fine india is sort of the feel stone for a freehand sharpener, showing you in more resolution how hard a tool is because it isn't constantly flushing off grit and going quickly out of flat. I am partial to that somewhat as a toolmaker, but as a matter of feedback for anything that's just too much for a natural stone to really give you much information.
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By the way, if a decent washita was the last step before compound or buff, that would be fine. The washita will not be able to handle the next to last honing, though – it’ll be too slow. The only exception to this is hard plain steels (like japanese chisels) with a lamination layer – wrought or plain iron will strip the surface of a washita a little bit and keep it aggressive. This 52100 at 65 hardness grades it instead, just like A2 or V11 does, sort of burnishing the surface without having enough grip to pull anything loose.
The washita is a very interesting stone with japanese chisels as long as there are no nicks to remove.
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Hi David,
Thank you again for your prompt reply!
Do you think it is a good idea to replace the India stone with a 1200 grit diamond hone? For example, diamond hone -> Washita -> buffer?
I am not a big fan of flattening the stones(too lazy), and knowing the stone is out of flat makes me constantly questioning the result of the sharpening, I know a little dish doesn’t hurt, but I just can’t help it… That’s why I bought a Ruby stone after reading your post and it is still in the mail. Btw, you are right about not all Ruby stones are the same, the retailer I bought from has two grades Ruby stones, I am sure there are more variance on the market.
And by hard arkansas, do you mean Dan’s Hard or Dan’s Black? I have been trying to find one locally without much luck, so I guess I’ll buy one from leevalley, the price difference is big though, 48 vs 126 in CAD.
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The diamond hone will be fine. There’s a little more control with an india stone, but I think maybe most people wouldn’t love it (I do). The diamond hone will get tired pretty quick and then be a good setup stone for the washita.
The dans stone that I have in my tri hone is one of the less expensive “hard” grade stones, and not the true hard, translucent or black stone. The reason for that is that the tri hone has mineral oil in it in droves, and the finest of stones just don’t work with that much oil all over everything. The india and crystolon stones prefer the oil over something thinner. the black and trans stones are wonderful, but it’s hard to make a cost justification for them when compounds will work much finer than they can and be more indifferent to chromium carbide.
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Thank you again for your detailed reply!
I guess I’ll hold on to the idea of getting a hard arkansas for now. Somehow I’ve managed to find two washitas locally(I believe they are washitas), and they look exactly the same, even though I bought them 6 months apart.
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