Ron Harper wrote:


"several times in the last few years I have read in a blog or article or
some other account, of folks using thin paring chisels honed to 20 degrees.
They are often mentioned in the very final paring of dovetail base lines.
If I recall,  these are almost always old tools of Sheffield origins.
Anybody set up like this? Anybody have any to sell.  Are they really
significantly thinner? Does that, in fact, matter?"

Length as well as delicacy is the essence of a paring chisel. In the 1890 Buck
Bros. catalogue they offered 1" tanged firmers at 5-1/2" long from bolster to
tip, and long firmers at 6-1/2" long. A 1" wide tanged paring would be 8-1/2"
bolster to tip. But they also offered millwrights' firmer chisels that were
8-1/2" long; these would have been sturdy but heavy, difficult to control for
delicate work. In 1890 Buck didn't offer butt chisels, probably on the
assumption that you would wear down longer chisels to butt length (and indeed I
have the nucleus of a Buck cast steel set with blades 3-1/2" tang to point, of
which only 2" is blade.)

If you're trying, say, to clean up a long, narrow groove or dado, the delicacy
of the chisel definitely does matter. All my narrow chisels (1/4" and under) are
thick at the butt end, often thicker than they are wide, and this makes them
useless for some tasks. And, of course, the main use for a paring chisel
properly so called isn't just paring, its paring a long way away from the edge
of the workpiece, using the long flat back for self-jigging (which is why you
can't just turn a short chisel upside-down). Lie-Nielson's claim that they can
change their stock heavy butt chisel into a paring by putting a long handle onto
it is laughable, right up there with the transmutation of the elements.


Buck and, I presume, others made paring chisels in socket, bevel-edged, and BE
socket forms as well as square-sided tanged, but I have almost never seen a
paring chisel in other than tanged square-sided. I foolishly passed up a number
of them over the years, since I was trying to stick to bevel-edged socket
chisels. The closest I have to a paring chisel is a 1/4" L. & I.J. White  B.E.
socket which has 8" of blade below the socket. This is just scant of 1/8" thick
just behind the bevel, call it 7/64", but is 3/16" thick halfway along, and
11/32" thick at the butt end of the tip. This one has almost no flex to it,
doubtless due to its thickness in its rear half.

All this is beside the point of dovetail-cleaning chisels. These are very
definitely useful, and the lighter, shorter, and thinner the better. About five
years ago I made a skew pair 3-1/4" tip-to-bolster and 3/8" wide from short
blades my ex-boss had thrown in my direction (with lots of others) as "trash."
One is a Butcher's; the other is marked just "cast steel." No need to use
Sheffield, considering that no Sheffield blade was better than L.&I.J. White,
Swan, Charles Buck, Witherby, or a dozen other American makers. These are
definitely my go-to set for dovetailing, but I have often considered grinding
them from square-edged to bevel-edged (I could do it and they would be better
for it, but for my taste it would be too much interference with the historical
artifact.) And I have often wished that I had a set of 1/4" B.E. skews to go
with them, since even 3/8" is often too narrow for dovetails in half-inch stock.
My 3/8" set is about 8-1/2" long overall, but when I make my 1/4" set I think I
may reduce the blade length to 2-1/2" and the handles to 3-1/2." Length is
definitely not an advantage in cleaning out dovetails--- in consequence, this is
not a task for true paring chisels.

Tom Conroy
whose advice is worth what you pay for it, and sometimes a bit less.