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John Ruth wrote: "As a sort of BTW, I'd include L & IJ White among the old time
makers of good chisels. What say?"
Absolutely; White is probably my favorite maker among the great ones. Bartons
are hens teeth out here (Northern California); I feel sick being told about
Barton chisels being reground into SCA spears, they are rare and expensive
enough that I only have one, a shortish 7/8" bench chisel that may be the very
best I have, and when I was buying actively a year or two ago they were starting
to top $80.00 on eBay--- and worth it, I'd say, but I can't afford them.
Anything marked "cast steel," in fact; I have some made by the mystery toolmaker
Robert Duke that I haven't had a chance to use yet, but if sharpening tells you
anything they aretight up there in the top league. Witherbys are only
occasionally marked "cast steel" but clearly are cast steel, apart from a small
number of what I judge to be post-WWII examples in HSS or chrome-vanadium (I
believe they had a factory fire around 1950, and didn't last for long after
that).
There is a gradient of hardness from Buck Cast Steel to Swan/Douglass. I prefer
the easily-sharpened end of the spectrum (Buck CS) to the horrible-to-sharpen
end (Swan), since I believe that too hard a chisel leads you to put up with a
half-dull chisel for longer than you should (this is, to my mind, the big
fallacy with the modern taste for ultra-hard blades up around 611 9r 62 Rc).
Lucky for me that I like Buck CS, since they are by far the commonest chisels
worth buying on eBay. With Buck you just have to avoid the post-1940 crap, and
that is basically a matter of getting only the ones marked "cast steel." In the
early post-war years Buck did make a few first rate chisels that weren't marked
"cast steel," but there is no way to identify them short of buying, sharpening,
and using them. Life is too short. Charles Buck, before he died in 1905, had a
reputation as good as his brothers; but I've had a series of disappointment with
Charles Buck, and I'm rather off of him (in fairness, I have other Charles Buck
chisels as good as any).
And there are slightly later makers whose work is no disgrace, and hardware-
store brands made by the best makers. Pexto (marked variously) chisels are for
some reason fairly common in my neck of the woods. Greenlee are common on eBay
but not here; I suspect that Greenlee was the last old maker of chisels worth
buying, maybe into the 1960s or even 1970s. I have a number of chisels and
braces marked "Worth," a brand used by one of the big hardware retailers; these
were clearly (from shape and steel) made by Pexto, and are as good as their
uncloseted siblings. Personally I like Pexto better than Greenlee, since their
shapes are a bit less high-regulation anal-retentive machine-aesthetics rigid;
but that is aesthetic taste. "Everlastings", both original and Stanley, are
first-rate if you can adjust to the heavy handles and the short lengths of the
ones that bubble up in the wild. Even 720s and 750s are worth having and using,
if you get theme cheap, which you no longer can. My first good chisel was a
1-1/2" unmarked 750, and after four decades it is still one of the few go-to
chisiels racked on my bench top.
I agree in bewilderment over the choice of the 750 to be copied by Lie-Nielson,
and the consequent fad for them among other makers and users. They aren't that
good; no disgrace on the bench, but not that good. Even more, the Lie-Nielson
copy puzzles me because of its weird balance and excessive weight. They copied
the profile of the 750, but exaggerated the taper in thickness in a way that
increases the weight substantially and throws it all back toward the hand.nMy
instinct is that this would be hard to control and tiring if used all day, but I
have no real evidence about that. I wonder what the neo-StanleySW did about
balance. And about flatness of the back, one of the main things you should be
getting when you pay for a premium chisel.
Running out of steam---and I don't even have a tree growing through my engine
Tom ConroyBerkeley
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