On 2/8/2020 2:29 PM, Joseph Sullivan wrote:
> SNIP
> Last years scores. Also dirt cheap
> http://users.snowcrest.net/kitty/sgrandstaff/images/oldtools/chisels2018f.jpg
> END SIP
>
> Scott, hard to tell with the photo perspective, but are you using shaker pegs
as handles in those carving tools?
Those are Chinese carving chisels in the upper right, Joe
A totally different animal it took me some time to figure out.
My buddy Matthew brought them back from a street market in China when
he was teaching there.
Lots of weird blade shapes like heavily skewed incannel shallow gouges,
or radical fishtail straight chisels. Lots of big cutting edges on a
long slender lightweight tool.
Some of you will remember I'm sure? This was a few years ago.
Well, he just brought back the unhandled tools.
I tried several different handle configurations (so did Jim Thompson)
but none we made was very satisfactory. Then I finally found some pix
and got a clue to go on.
The chisels are not made to be driven forward, like a standard
western chisel.
The technique is more like rowing a boat. You park one hand, holding the
chisel blade, on the surface and place your other hand on top of the
mushroom at the end of the handle.
Then you slip a corner of the oddly shaped blade into the wood and
sweep your top hand around. Neatly slipping under the surface of the
wood and "walking" the chip out.
Its pretty weird and I am not the best at it yet. But its like cheating.
Instead of brutally driving the chisel in along the grain, you are
slipping in a corner and sweeping mostly crossgrain, and
slicing/levering the chip out.
Its nearly effortless to take a big fat chip when you get it right.
The chisels are lightweight with a wrapped but unwelded socket that is
spring tempered. Putting the handle in spreads the socket open a skosh
and then it bites down hard on the handle tenon, holding it very
tightly. The constant sideways motion would loosen a welded socket
chisel handle in no time. But the spring sockets hold very well.
Since heavy pushing or pounding the chisel is off the menu, handles
don't need to be really hard wood. I just split some old growth fir
billets as I was making kindling for the fire, and went with those.
I started by turning the whole handle at once. But the 2 1/2"
diameter mushroom atop the long handle was really a lot of waste to hog
off. So I started turning them as straight handles with a tenon on the
end and then turning the mushrooms wholesale off the same billet, gluing
them together.
Totally useless chisel handle configuration for western chisels but
completely adequate for the Chinese style.
In China they carve 75 foot long wooden bridges from giant timbers,
and carve detailed scenes a foot deep along the whole thing. And
countless other examples of giant carving like it was ordinary
practice. Nearly unfathomable wood carving.
This is how they do it.
yours Scott
--
*******************************
Scott Grandstaff
Box 409 Happy Camp, Ca 96039
scottg@s...
http://www.snowcrest.net/kitty/sgrandstaff/
http://www.snowcrest.net/kitty/hpages/index.html
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