HarveyWildes
Member
- Joined
- May 3, 2016
- Messages
- 984
I've been a waterstone fan for years, but have always felt that I took far too long to flatten the backs on new chisels. Seriously, short of buying $50+ chisels like Lie Nielsen or Lee Valley that come with close to perfectly flat backs, I was spending 20-30 minutes per chisel to flatten the backs of chisels that were rough ground with a very mild concave back out of the box.
I decided to buy a set of Schaaf chisels on sale for $30 on Amazon last week, just to see if they were any good. I have a young man that I mentor in woodworking, and two granddaughters who like woodworking, so I figured the chisels would find a good home if they were decent.
The Schaaf set has 1/4", 1/2", 3/4", and 1" wide chisels. They come with a pretty rough grind, but the backs are flat to slightly concave (which I much prefer to slightly convex). I flattened the back of the 1" chisel with a 220 grit waterstone, and it was predictably painful - took ~25 minutes. I've always justified this in the past by telling myself that once it's done, you don't have to do it again.
At any rate, I left the other three chisels in the wrap until this morning, when I thought to myself, why not try flattening them on a Work Sharp 3000 wheel? So I slapped on a glass wheel with coarse sandpaper and tried it out. I was amazed. I had the other three chisels basically flat with the rough grind marks gone (on the last inch or so) in about 5 minutes. I felt a little heat, but nothing like the kind of heat that would de-temper the steel. After that, I was able to finish the job with my waterstones - 1000, 4000, 8000, and 15000 - in another ten minutes or so.
Then, just for fun, I decided to put the leather honing wheel on the WS 3000 and see if it would do better than the 15000 grit Shapton stone that I normally use for final finish. My biggest concern was that, as the chisel pressed into to leather, the edge would roll as the leather popped up after passing under the edge. If it did, I couldn't tell. And the honing compound left a smoother finish than the 15000 stone.
Just in case there was some small amount of roll that I couldn't see, I waited until after the leather wheel to hone the edge. I don't like the WS 3000 for that, so I just smoothed the bevel with waterstones and put on a secondary bevel with my 8000 and 15000 grit stones. The edges looked great.
Finally, I spent the morning paring 3/8" box joints in padouk with the chisels. They performed much better than I would have predicted for chisels that basically cost $7.50 each. The only maintenance they required while doing the job was one minor hone of about 3 swipes over my 15000 stone about 2/3 of the way through the job.
The results speak well of the Schaaf chisels. Short of a methodical, rigorous comparison, my impression was that they perform on a par with, or slightly better than, the old Record blue-handled chisels. That's huge bang for the buck. But I'm even more delighted to have improved my sharpening process. Now that I'm not intimidated by the flattening process, I ordered two more sets of Schaaf chisels to spread around. I'm not worried that it will take me a half day to prep them, and the price is right for giving decent chisels to kids.
I decided to buy a set of Schaaf chisels on sale for $30 on Amazon last week, just to see if they were any good. I have a young man that I mentor in woodworking, and two granddaughters who like woodworking, so I figured the chisels would find a good home if they were decent.
The Schaaf set has 1/4", 1/2", 3/4", and 1" wide chisels. They come with a pretty rough grind, but the backs are flat to slightly concave (which I much prefer to slightly convex). I flattened the back of the 1" chisel with a 220 grit waterstone, and it was predictably painful - took ~25 minutes. I've always justified this in the past by telling myself that once it's done, you don't have to do it again.
At any rate, I left the other three chisels in the wrap until this morning, when I thought to myself, why not try flattening them on a Work Sharp 3000 wheel? So I slapped on a glass wheel with coarse sandpaper and tried it out. I was amazed. I had the other three chisels basically flat with the rough grind marks gone (on the last inch or so) in about 5 minutes. I felt a little heat, but nothing like the kind of heat that would de-temper the steel. After that, I was able to finish the job with my waterstones - 1000, 4000, 8000, and 15000 - in another ten minutes or so.
Then, just for fun, I decided to put the leather honing wheel on the WS 3000 and see if it would do better than the 15000 grit Shapton stone that I normally use for final finish. My biggest concern was that, as the chisel pressed into to leather, the edge would roll as the leather popped up after passing under the edge. If it did, I couldn't tell. And the honing compound left a smoother finish than the 15000 stone.
Just in case there was some small amount of roll that I couldn't see, I waited until after the leather wheel to hone the edge. I don't like the WS 3000 for that, so I just smoothed the bevel with waterstones and put on a secondary bevel with my 8000 and 15000 grit stones. The edges looked great.
Finally, I spent the morning paring 3/8" box joints in padouk with the chisels. They performed much better than I would have predicted for chisels that basically cost $7.50 each. The only maintenance they required while doing the job was one minor hone of about 3 swipes over my 15000 stone about 2/3 of the way through the job.
The results speak well of the Schaaf chisels. Short of a methodical, rigorous comparison, my impression was that they perform on a par with, or slightly better than, the old Record blue-handled chisels. That's huge bang for the buck. But I'm even more delighted to have improved my sharpening process. Now that I'm not intimidated by the flattening process, I ordered two more sets of Schaaf chisels to spread around. I'm not worried that it will take me a half day to prep them, and the price is right for giving decent chisels to kids.
