#142. How should you sharpen a chisel

hello everyone welcome back for another video my name is David and today I'm going to be talking about the angles on chisels how should you sharpen a chisel should you sharpen it at a flat angle just like a Japanese style chisel or should you sharpen it in a convex way which was quite common in England about a hundred years ago might have been even a little bit longer a couple hundred years ago or should you sharpen it in a concave way which is quite common in england and in america today which is primarily done on a grinding wheel of some sort about a year and a half ago i did go out and i purchased some antique japanese chisels so straight away i did make some observations and the first observation i made was that these things were really sharp in fact they were sharper than my western style chisels the second observation i made unfortunately was the fact that the edge was damaging it was damaging so easy and i was scratching my head with this because to me knowledge Japanese chisels or the steel the laminated so you've got a tougher steel on the bottom and you've got lighter steel on the top so this is to aid in sharpening and it's also to aid in keeping a sharper edge So I thought to myself, what's going on with these? Has there been some issue when the blacksmith has been making these chisels? I kind of put these chisels away, put them back on the wall.

And I didn't use them for a long time.

And I looked at them and I thought, it's such a shame.

They're such beautiful chisels in the super sharp.

I'm going to investigate and try and kind of find out what's going on.

So the next logical step for me... was to sharpen a western style chisel in the same fashion and try to get the same angle as one of these and i did that and straight away i found out that the chisel itself seemed a lot sharper and that again i was damaging the edges so obviously that was a bit of a revelation for me and when you think about it it is actually common sense so The light bulb moment that went off in my brain was that the way I generally sharpen a chisel, my western style chisel, is in a convex.

So when you're sharpening in a convex, the... edge has more meat behind it so it's going to be less prone to breaking and i have to say that when i sharpen like this with my western style chisels i don't ever and i can't ever recall getting any damage to the edge of the blade so the japanese chisel this was sold to us as a finishing chisel so it has got quite an acute angle I want to say it's a little bit less than 25 degrees and with this it's super sharp but obviously it's damaging I find the edge to be very brittle and again it's very logical when you think about it because the cutting edge has very little meat supporting the edge So when I try to use this chisel, which I shouldn't really do, in the same way I use my western style chisels with the convex edge, there's going to be issues.

So one of the things I could do with the Japanese chisel is actually change the angle and make the angle different.

a little bit more higher so that there's a bit more meat behind the cutting edge which would help a lot obviously and i might do that in the future but as it is i find these extremely sharp and these are really good for kind of finer work you know if i'm say cutting a mortise and tenon joint and i want to square the shoulders up this is absolutely perfect for doing that bearing in mind i do have to be careful with these chisels and i can't use and abuse these chisels as well as i can use and abuse my western style chisels with the convex edge so i mean other than that i don't really think they've got any more pros i mean obviously i was to change the angle and such you know i could kind of start using them a bit more how i use these ones although i could see them again i'm not going to like abuse these ones so with the convex i think in a general sense in a general general purpose use these are more superior and what i mean by more superior is the fact that you can get a general use out of these where i can't get a general use out of this japanese chisel because of the angle and the way it's sharpened so with these would say my personal observation personal use and my personal opinion is that these are going to be the best for most woodworkers unless you have a dedicated set of let's just say mortise chisels and you know a few other styles of chisels because you can mortise with these and i have done and i will continue to mortise with these without any issues i don't damage the edge so on and so forth so this in itself or the roller the way it's sharpened the convex i think this is a lot better also with the sharpening personally find at least for me this is one of the quickest ways to sharpen a chisel now I have done videos I'm not going to get into how I sharpen it but obviously I sharpen it in a convex way and for me this is one of the quickest ways I can have this sharpened taking hairs off my arms within about five minutes if that and I can get straight back to work And that's what I like to do.

I like to do that with my plain irons.

And I like to do that obviously with my chisels.

So for me personally I would have to say that the convex cutting edge is superior.

And it's what I would recommend to people.

Is it the be all end all? It's definitely not.

Definitely not at all.

But I think for a general purpose when you're making this chisel... go across the board should we say for different tasks i think this hands down this way this con convex is a winner that's not to disclude the flat angle or even the concave but for speed especially if you're sharpening freehand which i do and if you're using let's just say diamond stones i i personally feel hands down this is the best way i'd like to hear how you sharpen in the comments so do leave a comment and let everyone know how you sharpen and if you want to see a bit more of how i sharpen you might like this video here until the next time i'll see you guys later