Lowell Holmes wrote:

Another point of view. . . .

When I made the rocking chair at Homestead Heritage, The class used nothing
but blue handled Marples chisels. The chair has 42 M&T joints, all hand
made. :-)
I wonder how we managed that. There were 10 chairs made in that class.

You have my utmost respect. :-)

Having said that, I have purchased some mortise chisels. I tend not to use
them because the bench chisels are always out and always scalpel sharp. I
learned to keep the stones out on the bench when working, and it is easy to
touch up the edge when required. We learned to sharpen chisels and plane
irons without grinders or honing jigs at Homestead Heritage.
I've started using files to clean up the edges on damaged chisels ala The
Furniture Doctor (George Grotz).
I really think it is more a matter of technique than some realize.

Your technique is probably better than mine. I find that I need the
thick cross-section and square sides to make my mortises come out
halfway decent.

If I were chopping mortises in mesquite though like you do, I'm sure my
attitude would change. Has anybody here tried Jim Cummings instructions for
tempering chisels with propane torches. I think I will try it on one of my
really soft chisels (old Stanley Defiance) and report back.

Please do. While I don't know that I'll experiment much with the
metallurgical side of things, it might be interesting to see the results
and compare that back to the chisels we buy and see if we can draw
conclusions on how they were tempered. (Or why we report such wildly
different results with some of the same brands of chisels.)

Woodworking is largely a matter of personal preferences. I'll spend $140 for
a dovetail saw, and $200 for a hand plane, but I've never purchased a $100
chisel.

Funny you should mention that. I guess I've figured mine are "good
enough", because I'm like you. I don't think I've spent more than $40
for a chisel, and that was for a big old 1-1/2" honker I bought when
building my bench.

But they still seem to do what I need them to do. Go figure. :-)


Chuck Vance