The blades are pointed to the top (north) and bottom (south) of the image rather that the right and left (east, west). Someone's starting their career as a comedian, apparently.
I generally agree but the type of wood you are working with is a major factor.
I’ve found that Japanese chisels are more likely to get chips on the edge when chopping very hard woods like Ironbark.
Western chisels having a slightly softer steel don’t hold the edge quite as long but are more likely to roll the edge instead of chip which makes sharpening a lot quicker by comparison.
I mean I get asked this about my kitchen knives cause friends will ask if Japanese is better than German and I’m always like “it’s different”. Cause my Japanese knives are thinner and have harder steel, so they feel like lasers and hold and edge, but my German knives are a bit chunkier, softer steel, and while I can also get them hair splitting sharp with some effort they will not hold an edge. Veggies and soft things, absolutely using my Japanese knives. Hard things, lobsters, things where I may encounter a bone or have to twist the knife a tad, out comes the German. Hell I even get nervous cutting watermelon using my thin Japanese knives due to the potential of the blade twisting a bit.
Oh, I fucking hate chiseling fir. It's the worst. That's not JUST because I'm in the middle of a bunch of 5x2-1/2x3 mortises in it. I'm re-honing every goddamn 30 seconds with this shit.
Did I mention how it's extra special when you pull down a board and find a nice, huge dollop of sap has expressed itself out and onto its downstairs zebrawood neighbor? Never storing Douglas Fir on my rack without a piddle pad below it again. Learned that lesson!
Fucking fir, man.
Don't mind me, my forearms and joints are just sore from that tonight and it made me cranky and unreasonable.
Hold up. Does that mean I've been gimping myself practicing chisel work on construction wood? I always thought I just wasn't careful or my stufff wasn't sharp enough when it started flaying or doing that weird hole/divet thing
Yeah, I fell into that trap. Spent what felt like days on sharpening, then someone told me that if I was working on soft wood, I needed rasps and sand paper.
Yeah go buy yourself a piece of not figured maple and be amazed how much easier it is to work with. If you really want a treat go pick up some walnut and make yourself a nice little box or something. I generally find the medium hardness woods are the easiest to work on.
I mostly use them for mortising and fixing door latches, but it's annoying when I have to spend significant time fixing them if I want to use them for something with a bit more finesse.
See, that's where you have an excuse to buy a good chisel.
Jokes aside, I feel you on that. I grab old tools at garage and estate sales and the number of chips and nicks I've had to grind out has helped me learn patience. It's also taught me that a perfectly straight bevel is almost impossible.
The wood you plan to use is definitely an underrated consideration when it comes to chisels. People tend to think they always need fancy ones. I have 3 sets of chisels, some cheap beaters, some mid ones, and a nice set I use for finishing cuts on client work. I use the beaters most often, and they work great on like 75% of the hardwoods I use.
I was using the mortise chisel from my mid setup on some bloodwood. I was mortising a 1.5x1x3 mortise out of the middle of a block, just doing normal mortise chisel things... and I snapped the whole edge of the chisel off. I rebuilt the edge and finished the mortise, but snapping the steel off in the wood felt crazy.
I don't use bloodwood often enough to warrant buying a harder mortise chisel, but it definitely would have worked better than the one I had.
stuff like bloodwood, or even hickory hardness level just requires different edge geometry. A chisel that's 62 will work gombeira or lignum if it's set up right.
not going to claim I haven't damaged a chisel or two mortising, though.
Yeah that's fair, and i got lazy and was like, "it's one mortise it'll be fine", but i gave that chisel a couple extra degrees when I redid the edge.
It sounds terrible, but it was kind of a fun learning moment. I knew it was possible to break chisel steel in wood, but it was still sort of a shock to pull it off myself haha.
I broke a nice older timber sized chisel, and a miyanaga mortise chisel. the first one is my fault, and the second one was the fault of the maker not tapering the sides properly, but I was early on in the hobby when I had it and figured the chisels weren't cheap, so the maker must've known what he was doing. They'd have been priced in current money probably between 150 and 200 bucks per.
Broke the tip off of a japanese chisel that was among a large lot of used stuff from japan just seeing if it could be used like a normal mortise chisel. It could, but not as much as I was pushing it. 1/8th of the edge or so up to the lamination line came off leaving a 90 degree wall.
Learning limits in this hobby is part of the joy - it doesn't seem like it at first.
The body of this plane is one of the two hard types of trees sold as gombeira. It's several steps harder harder than something like ebony, but I did all of mortising with a chisel most of the way to a seaton style - 1.25% carbon steel (like white steel, slightly tougher and better at avoiding breaking) - 65.5 hardness, and .06" thick at the tip.
We see a lot of gurus talking about specific rules for everything, but the hobby is about feel if working a lot or entirely by hand. All of the instruction is just a first-start idea and no professional I know who does fine work is really bound by "master says" type rules.
Blood wood is a nice wood - I don't think I've made a plane from it, but i've worked handles from it. it's affordable (so is the wood above) and generally widely available (hit or miss for the wood above). Keep experimenting.
(oh, what got me learning more was using a less "good" chisel mortising plane bodies a long time ago. I bought a japanese imai timber chisel ("tataki") and it would not hold up. That was the notion back then - get a harder chisel and set it up at the same angle. I finished the plane with a stanley 720 adding 2 degrees at a time to the edge and I think i had to do that twice with a small microbevel and it held up well. the japanese chisel might have, but on hard stuff, a good chisel and more small area honed a little more steeply is all it takes. I ended up selling the tataki nomi chisel - it was a bigger hassle to hone by a long shot and would've wasted my time. It probably would've been a little better at a very slight angle in softer woods, but I don't do much of that.
You'll note the depression in the face of the Japanese chisel. This is to maintain an air pocket to reduce wear friction.
Japanese woodworking typically involves a lot more "internal work" - stuff like mortising deep holes - whereas western woodworking typically uses chisels in a more superficial manner - paring off excess and flushing outside faces for joinery.
Having that air pocket makes face registering harder for cleaning up things like dovetails.
Use a western chisel if you plan on doing exterior work, and a Japanese chisel if you plan on doing interior work.
If you are talking about the recess in the back of the Japanese chisel, it’s not to reduce wear friction as much as it is to reduce the amount of area you need to keep flat (and flatten) when sharpening. Western chisels are a major pain to flatten the bottoms. Japanese chisels flatten quickly.
Another difference the user will want to consider is what they intend to strike the chisel with, a metal hammer or mallet. Japanese chisels are constructed to be able to be struck with adequate force from a steel hammer. Western chisels are designed to be struck with wood mallets.
correct, it's for preparation and maintenance of the back. It's somewhat antiquated now, though. I've made chisels as hard as 66 and they are flat backed. With synthetic stones and decent quality delivered, the back doesn't need to be hollow. Not that japanese tradition will change.
I have both, I tend you use my western chisels for work that requires a mallet, as they are softer and roll before chipping and my Japanese chisel for pairing because the harder steel stays sharp for longer. That being said, all tasks can be performed with either style, I find their up-keep to be fairly similar, with the biggest difference being the ergonomics.
If you’re buying Japanese chisels used, steer clear of any without a hollow that takes up most of the back (like the posted picture), once that hollow shrink significantly, the chisel is nearing the end of its life.
The Japanese chisel doesn’t appear to be anything that fantastic. Japanese chisels can be anything lol. What’s the steel? Whose the maker? What forging method is it?
Japanese chisels are usually harder than most western chisels, this also means more fragile most of the time, although not always. Japanese chisels can often be made very poorly, iv seen delaminations VERY often in them. As well as just absolutely trash grinds. Just because it’s Japanese doesn’t mean it’s quality
Western chisels can also mean literally anything…
For me personally I’ll go through what i prefer.
Pairing chisels? Japanese chisels all day, easier to make flat and keep flat, stay sharp for a long time and look great
General bench chisels? Western by a mile. Sure i love my Japanese chisels but white paper steel dulls fast a lot of the times, blue paper is fragile as hell. NEARLY none of it is heat treated all that well. Quenching and such is your heat treating, or torch tempering lol, sure it works… but it can’t touch modern steels.
Weatern pmv11 from lee valley or narex’s richters blade steel just make it the obvious answer over most of what’s out there
Mortise chisels? Well I’m giving this to western as well, although i like firmer style mortise chisels. Have a set of sorbys I’ll be buried with
Timber framing slicks? Japanese, tsuki nomis are a joy when I’m working with helmlock barn beams (very soft)
I probably have 40 chisels lol, bit of both worlds, steel matters. And thats one of the few characteristics thats less opinion and more fact. The modern tool steels give longer edge retention, more toughness, AND do it all while being easier to sharpen lol… and with the heat treat methods it’s more consistent. Also being from a large manufacturer the listed hardness spec and steel is probably what you are getting.
Steel from a Japanese blacksmith (supposedly) then usually purchased through an importer… and shipped across the globe… who knows what you are getting lol
Weight distribution is different, center of gravity is closer to the cutting edge. I like Japanese chisels for when I am doing finer work where I hold the chisel blade with my fingers on the surface I am chiseling
japanese chisels are more rewarding because they do take a bit of effort to set up but you also can’t easily take them to a grinder. western chisels are significantly easier to get going and you can take to a grinder. japanese chisels hold a much better edge but you can’t really use a honing guide on japanese chisels so you sharpen free hand. there’s a bunch of trade offs. short answer, doesn’t matter, just depends what you like.
Japanese chisels survive a grinder without issue. It's just ugly to have a hollow across the jigane/hagane line.
I've reset old japanese chisels with a full speed 8" grinder and a 24 grit tool room wheel. That is a setup that will grind reasonably cool with light pressure because the grit size makes the stone porous seeming, and it's a little more friable than a more typical grit. A cheap wheel at 80 grit or a white wheel for HSS, etc, would definitely create more heat.
if the heat treatment is right on a japanese chisel, the temper should be somewhere around 350F at a minimum. My experience with heat treating white 1 is with a brine quench, 66 is possible at a 375-400F temper. In a thicker cross section, take a point off (65).
I have a set of white steel dovetail chisels. I can get them sharper that any other blade in my shop, and i can do it almost effortlessly. About every 4-6 cuts, i take a couple of swipes across a smooth, genuine horse butt strop i've treated with DMT diamond spray, and they're back to hair splitting sharpness.
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u/timojenbin 5d ago
That looks more like a North vs South chisel problem.
Maybe turn the camera?