Hi, I was in Aldi today and I
bought some chisels, I bought these Aldi chisels which I've used for 4 or 5
years now maybe, maybe not that long but I've used
them for a while we use them in the school they're very inexpensive the amazing
thing about them is that they cost just under eight pounds including your taxes
and everything so you walk out of the store with a set of four chisels typically these are eight millimeter 12
millimeter 18 millimeter and 24 mm which puts them close to the
approximation of just under about 5/16 so it's not quite a quarter inch and
then you have a half inch three-quarter inch and 1 inch chisel and what I
liked about these chisels was while I did like the prize is pretty inexpensive
but the other was the fact that they had ash wooden handles, a hardwood handle and that
they were a good long chisel, they have a nice bolster on here they hit against
the wood I don't care for the metal
ferrules, they don't really do anything especially at this and you don't really
need it but that's fine and I don't care for guards because I think I've cut
myself more putting guards on than I ever have leaving the chisels without guards, one
of the nice thing is generally they don't roll on the floor but I like the
the flat point in here so there's a lot of things that I like about these chisels but the reason I like them in particular
is that if you don't have a whole lot of money and you just starting out in
woodworking these chisels will actually last you a lifetime and they are fine enough here on the thickness
not to be over thick, not too heavy, the sizing is
good these are practical sizes - that's a fraction under three quarters
of an inch it's that was 5 16 7 inch that was just
under half and this one is just under 1 so they're close enough to the size that
we need alright, so what we're going to do first
of all we've got to find out a couple of things about the chisel the general
overall appearance and feel of the chisel is fine, I would probably
knock off the the signage on it and take the plastic coating off the handle and
maybe sand them down and put some shellac or some boiled linseed oil on it and I
probably would work on these, the back faces in the bevels a little bit with
some Emery paper but what we are really going to look at now is the flatness of this
face and we're going to sharpen it so this has a single bevel on here which
is perfect for what we want we're going to slightly alter this to
put a camber on it but what we want to do is check this face for flatness and I
don't know but this is exactly what I would want this has a slight camber, I mean concave on this face which makes it very easy to flatten, this one has a
slight hollow, this one has quite a big hollow but we'll see when we get them on
the sharpening plates and that one has a hollow which is perfect for what I want
in a chisel so that really helps me to get the chisel
where I need it to be so this is the procedure, what we need first of all is
we want this back face to be fairly flat if it is belied it
takes a lot to get that flat and that's going to take you 20 minutes if it's
bellied and that's probably not too long if it's not bellied, if it's hollow like
this one is then I don't have a whole lot of work to do on it I'll show you
why because it doesn't have to be dead flat just needs to be close to, to get
that flat we need something that's flat and I've got some plate glass here that I got out of the skip, out of a dumpster in America, skip
here in the UK and it's half inch plate didn't cost me
anything and I've got some abrasive paper on this this could be any kind of
abrasive paper I just use wet and dry and this works fine so I've got 250 400 and 800 and you
don't have to go with these you can go with anything close to and on this side
I got 1,200 1,500 2,000 2,500 these are smaller than the other side
because these are not so much for flattening but polishing out so I
don't spend a lot of time after I've got them flat this is what's going to take
the bulk of the work these three are going to take most of the work I also
have a granite block here that is guaranteed flat and you can buy one of
these you need one ultimately I like to have one around the
shop this certifies that this is flat with it with plus or minus half a
thousandth of an inch so this is you know this is one that I bought for that
purpose if you can't get the plate glass if you
stuck for the plate glass glass then going to B&Q and take a straightedge, go to their tool dept, take a square and get the straightedge and offer it
to the the tile and go through the tiles until you find one that's flat and that
would be the next stage for for me and one more piece of equipment we need is a
block of wood like this one and I'll show you what we need that for in a
minute we don't need it right now so let's get
rid of what we don't need, we don't need the granite block because we're going to
be using the plate glass and I've stuck these to the glass you can spray
adhesive these to the glass you can use use a film of water people keep telling me that the paper
doesn't slip when you just use a film of water I have not found that to be true, I use it sometimes because I'm lazy or I don't want to use a spray adhesive
because of the smell or whatever but most often they do slip, I found that
they generally do slip so what I do is I just put a single dab
of double-sided tape like this along one end of each piece of the paper the abrasive paper like this on the underside,
peel it off and stick it down so it's not actually stuck down in the middle
because it doesn't need to be and that is very easy to remove with a razor
blade if it contaminates your glass after but this will get you started so
I'm using glass cleaner this is the most inexpensive lapping
fluid that I've come across I like it it has a pleasant smell and is
not an oil-based product so I kind of like it, it's perfect for this, so squirt on some
fluid here, we'll call it lapping fluid but it's not lapping fluid is just
glass cleaner, and you know water will do exactly the same I haven't found much difference between
any of these fluids and I certainly have not found lapping fluid works that
effectively or more effectively, so here I've got some shelf liner this is that
silicon non-slip stuff plop it on there and that gives it
fairly rigid hold, I'm going to take the back face of the chisel here offer it to
this emery paper here, this abrasive paper and
I'm just going to make a couple of passes like this just to see how flat we already are and I think that we're
very close because already we have a hollow in here the abrasive is hitting here and the
abrasive is hitting here so it's exposing the hollow here so I'm going to
go with a little more fluid and then let's just concentrate on this, so I'm using most of the back of the chisel here, so
elongate so you get in the full length of your paper this does not have to be a complicated
procedure now then this is actually enough hollow in here where we are
already at the cutting edge we've got this whole area here and we're back here
as well this doesn't affect the chisel we're
getting exactly where we want you could go a little bit more if you want to and
we will but you can see already this is flat enough for us to move on to a more
aggressive less aggressive grit and to remove the marks left by this first
level of abrading and I'm telling you this is all you need so this chisel now we've got about a
quarter of an inch six millimeters from the end let's go on
the next level now it's gripping a little bit more here my fingers are not gripping quite, polish
out that face just keep going until the pain is
shooting up your arm and then you know you're ready, okay you see what's happening here we're
getting back here you can already see I can already see the light up above even
though we're only 400 grit 400 grit will give you a good sharp chisel it will be
sharp enough for just about everything you're doing but we're going to go
further so I can see my pencil now is reflecting in the face of this chisel
already at 400 let's go on here all, I'm trying to do is demystify this process because you'll see where we are in a minute now we're on the 600 grit and with every
level we've moved a little bit further from this edge so now we're around here this hollow here doesn't matter in fact
it's going to help our woodworking so it's just fine so go ahead and take off
the damp and those are not finished with those abrasive papers I can continue
using those now we're going to go to the 1200 grit here and polish this facing it's looking good can you see that now
reflecting the wall 1500 yeah ok keep polishing the more of the striation
marks you get out from the abrasive the better and then two thousand so this is very
polished at this is way more than any woodworker needs and people are going
to tell you things like you have to go to 20,000 30,000 that's cards wall up
and I'm just polishing polishing polishing now this is an upper body
workout I've got all the pressure from my upper body going down into this face now if you like this hollow to be out
there is nothing wrong with getting it out but it's not necessary you'll see in a minute this chisel is
going to do everything we wanted to do so my last grip for this level and this
type of the abrading is going to be 2400 here, see this paper this is where
this method is only to get you going and get you started because these papers do
rip and if people tell you they don't they do the films rip that's what makes it expensive it's an expensive method compared to
diamond plates but when you're starting out is perfect for starting out
is perfect for this you get fresh grit every time so there I have a mirror finish that is
perfect can you see that yeah we've got that
mirror finish now this is already fairly sharp but the
bevel comes from manufacturer they say it's sharp in the all the blurbs it's
going to tell you that they are sharp they're not sharp and this is where I
would go to my diamond plates but you can do this you can sharpen the bevels
on these plates here I probably should do a little bit to
show you how, these are ground probably to around the two and two and a half 250 here so if you pull this bevel on
here like this just keep it dead flat, flat as you can what that's going to do is take out the
abrasion from the manufacturer so when you've gone through that one go
to this one here trail the edge you can't really push it into it so this works fine but you can see the
downside of using the abrasive paper but if you glue the whole back down it's
less likely to do that, this works the same on this one but I would normally do
this on diamond plates so I don't have to just trail this edge but this works
just fine so we're getting this macro camber now,
can you see this camber on here on the cutting edge so this is carpentry sharp now most carpenters use a belt sander,
not the best way 1200 or many carpenters do so this is just a natural action, I'm not
trying to do this is just a natural action that puts this camber and
polishes the edge now we're closed in this is coming close to sharp, same on
this one now don't feel a burr on that and I think it's
because it gets so small last one now we're not done yet we're going to go to a much higher level
but you take a look at that and I'll show you what we're going to do next you see that so how sharp is sharp? that still doesn't
feel sharp to me so I'm going to show you what I do it's got the bevel polished typically I
use diamond plates so I'm going to show you the system I use there's my 250 there's
my 600 and there's my 1200 when I'm sharpening normally I start on 30 and I
push here until I feel a burr on this back edge and I'm doing the whole of the
bevel not just the edge and I go to the 1200 so 600 then 1,200 now then here's
the thing once you've established this flat face
on this back of the chisel you never polish this you never grind this face
again you flip over on this 12 and you just
pull like that so you put that push the burr from this
face onto this top edge now then here is the next stage we're going to go to what we're going to
do is we're going to continue on the flat face just a little bit more this is
just a block of wood actually this is all pallet would and I've charged this with chromium oxide
or alumina oxide aluminium oxide whichever oxide they are and I just
charged the surface here like this on the surface of the wood and wood seems
to work best for me and then I polish this face can you see it turning black
there that's the steel coming off and
polishing it out like that and that has given me a super
mirror finish so then I go on this side now I could go
on this just a block of wood but I like a strop I use a flat strop and the reason I do is
because I like the way the leather mushrooms up around my macro camber,
my convex bevel I love the way that looks and feels so
this is just a piece of leather you can get a piece of leather anywhere any
craft store and you need something that's not hard too hard not too soft
and then you pull this trail edge you can't go in both directions so you trail
the edge here like this and this is super polishing the already polished
bevel so all your upper body weight goes right down onto the back of the bevel so you get in the hole of the bevel and
just keep going about 30 to 40 times then flip over here keep it flat you will not regret buying
a set of these chisels and you can do this it's not just all it is all you can
do this to any chisel you've got and look what we've got now we've got a Paul
Sellers that's out of breath no, we've got polished face here and
we've got super super polished bevel now this is sharp this is super sharp
and this will give me anything and everything I want here, the chisel should go in off the
off the edge like this, see this and that is a sharp edge this is a chisel that will do anything you
demand of it now like for instance you've got this macro
camber let's see what we do this so watch this
here now cheapest chisels in Britain I think, but look and these chisels have good edge
retention they will do everything you want it to do ok this is so pristine this this surface is so so smooth if you'd ever use sandpaper on it, you'd have to use 15,000 I didn't tell you when I was using this
chromium oxide, this abrasive on this the wax one that's about 15,000 grit and
that's plenty I don't imagine even in my fine
furniture imagine this and I know some of you are
cynical people out there saying yeah that's pine and not oak well you
give me the oak can you pay for my oak I'll show you what it will do in oak too, but look at this what this camber does when you want to do a scallop That's it, we are done really I
just love what we can achieve with an inexpensive set of chisels, beautiful.
Paul Sellers videos are awesome. A bit long winded at times, but awesome.
Not just any man.. Paul Sellers.. A legend. Our friends over at /r/woodworking are quite fond of his skill in traditional woodworking!
I love his videos! I sometimes wish he would dumb them down a little - I have trouble keeping a consistent bevel when I'm sharpening, when he just goes to town on a chisel freehand. He has a pretty rad method for sharpening knives I think would work (that also contains my favorite moment from his videos, linked )