Month: September 2019

Chisel Handles – The Right Wood

Japanese White Oak acorns

The Right Wood for the Right Place 適所適材

Old Japanese Saying

Our customers outside of Japan frequently need some information to help them select the best wood for their chisel handles. In this article your most humble and obedient servant will describe the woods available and the advantages and disadvantages of each to help you make an informed decision.

The chisels we sell all have wooden handles in several varieties of wood, the two most common being Japanese White Oak and Japanese Red Oak. We can also provide usunomi paring chisels with Rosewood handles, but let’s look at White Oak first.

Japanese White Oak

巨樹　シラカシ
Japanese White Oak tree

Japanese White Oak (JWO) is very similar to American White Oak in that it is closed grain, dense, and has medullary rays. The color is a little whiter than the American or European varieties, and in fact, it’s a little denser and stronger than either. It holds up well to being struck with steel hammers.

JWO is not a slick wood when dry and does not become slippery when wet, important characteristics in a tool handle where staying attached to the blade and staying secure in a sweaty hand while being pounded on are part of the job.

Like White Oak everywhere, it contains tannic acid. In fact, bark and chips from this wood have been used since before written history to tan leather because this chemical converts animal skins that would otherwise rot into durable leather. Tannin, which is the base word of both tanning and tannic acid, comes from the medieval Latin word tannāre, a derivative of tannum (oak bark), from which the tannic acid compound is derived.

Tannic acid can react with some people’s sweat causing the wood to turn a dirty grey color. This tendency is not strong among the Japanese people, but it is among many Caucasians, including me.

This discoloration in no way weakens or harms the wood, it just makes it look dirty.

JWO generally has a bland, indistinct grain with few flecks, not a problem for a tool handle or plane block, but less than ideal for furniture.

Usunomi paring chisel with Japanese White Oak handle

Japanese Red Oak

赤樫,どんぐり
Japanese Red Oak acorns

Japanese Red Oak (JRO) is as different from American Red Oak as the “the moon and a mud turtle,” as they say over here. It is a much more useful wood.

Similar to JWO, Japanese Red Oak is closed grain and also has medullary rays. It contains much less tannic acid, and ranges in color from a dark red (difficult to obtain nowadays) to a pinkish red.

JRO has been prized in Japan for tool and weapon handles since forever. Indeed, JRO is the preferred wood for the bokken wooden swords used in the martial arts. The better grades are denser than White Oak with a more interesting grain. Unfortunately, this grade of Red Oak has become difficult to obtain.

Japanese Red Oak tree

As with Japanese White Oak, Red Oak is not a slick wood when dry and does not become slippery when wet.

There are unscrupulous people that dye less colorful pieces of Red Oak a dark red color to jack up the price. We don’t deal with such slimy people and our JRO handles are all authentic. Caveat emptor, baby.

JRO has the advantage of discoloring less than JWO over time and tends to look cleaner longer. It makes a more attractive handle.

赤樫　大木
Japanese Red Oak tree

The downside to the JRO generally available nowadays is that it is a little less dense than White Oak. I consider Japanese Red Oak to be the perfect wood for paring chisels, and Japanese White Oak the perfect wood for atsunomi chisels. Either wood works fine for the smaller oiirenomi bench chisels.

Kotenomi paring chisel with Japanese Red Oak handle

Gumi

Gumi (Elaeagnus multiflora or cherry silverberry) is more a hedgewood or bush than tree. It has historically been cultivated primarily for the fruit it bears. It is stronger than Japanese White Oak, but lighter in weight. It has a distinctive yellow color that some people find attractive. I don’t get the attraction, but must admit it has a striking appearance.

Gumi makes a fine, durable handle. It is a more expensive material. My handlemaker is no longer able to procure this wood so we don’t offer Gumi handles.

Hammer handles of Gumi wood

Ebony and Rosewood

Ebony and Rosewood make elegant, durable, well-balanced handles for paring chisels, which are never struck with hammers and therefore unlikely to crack. But material costs are quite high. They are also custom order items that take some time to fabricate.

Oirenomi and atsunomi and other types of tatakinomi with ebony or rosewood handles look great. And in the case of amateurs that buy such chisels (from other sources) just to collect and/or admire, I have nothing to say. But we sell professional-grade tools to be used on real-world jobsites and in workshops by serious craftsmen for serious cutting, not to become safe queens. Using ebony or rosewood handled oirenomi or other varieties of tatakinomi to do real work is like wearing Jimmy Choo stilletto heels to a construction site.

Yes, Jimbo makes elegant shoes. And if your ensemble is well thought-out, a pair of his heels will make your legs look mahvelous dahling, simply mahvelous. Sadly, they will neither last long nor get the job done. Other workers will mock you behind your back. And embarrassing stuff will happen at the worst possible time.

Women. simply do not belong on construction sites... This is a scene from a TV show called Parks and Recreation. This woman is an actor. This woman was paid to fall like that. That woman is not actually that dumb.
Well…. that was embarrassing!

For warranty reasons, we do not sell tatakinomi of any kind with handles of ebony or rosewood. They are too easily and irreparably cracked/damaged if struck with a steel hammer. Professionals will not purchase, and we will not sell, such silly tools.

Customs Duties

While it has not been a problem so far, importation of some exotic hardwoods such as Brazilian rosewood into the United States can be a problem, according to the guitar makers I know and information on the infallible internet (ツ). If you order handles made from these woods, please be aware that you become the responsible importer once such materials cross into the jurisdiction of your local Customs Office. They may confiscate your tools or levy fines. The risk is all yours. That said, it has not been a problem so far.

Not encouraging, I know, but customs services worldwide are in the business of making literally tons of money every hour by taxing the entire world using their absolute authority within their bailiwick, backed up by lots of scary guns. The most profitable income source for governments, as you know, is not taxes but making and circulating money (literally manufacturing money), followed by customs fees. Thus it has always been; Thus it will always be.

On the other hand, we have experienced difficulties with customs in only two countries, namely Spain, which is notorious for once charging confiscatory import duties on the gunpowder and cannonballs brought into Spain by Great Britain to free that country from Napolean’s armies during the French occupation. Spanish customs is famous as a criminal racket.

Australia was brutally difficult on one occasion, but that incident may have been driven more by dazzling public employee incompetence rather than proper enforcement of the country’s importation laws.

Conclusion

For standard oirenomi and other tatakinomi intended to be struck with a steel hammer, either White Oak or Red Oak are entirely adequate and cost-effective. White Oak is a little stronger, but its appearance does not improve with use or age. Red Oak is not quite as dense and strong, but it is sufficient for these chisels and looks better over time.

For wider Atsunomi and Mukomachinomi (mortise chisels) which will see heavy use, White Oak is the best choice due to its higher density and superior strength.

For usunomi and other paring chisels not intended to be struck with a steel hammer, Red Oak is the best choice, IMO, but White Oak will perform just as well. Gumi is not an option with C&S Tools. Rosewood looks beautiful and feels nice (if you don’t have allergies to Rosewood), but are expensive and require lead time.

YMHOS

If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please use the

If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please click the “Pricelist” link here or at the top of the page and use the “Contact Us” form located immediately below.

Please share your insights and comments with everyone in the form located further below labeled “Leave a Reply.” We aren’t evil Google, fascist facebook, or thuggish Twitter and so won’t sell, share, or profitably “misplace” your information. May my square become a triangle if I lie.

Sharpening Part 9 – Hard Steel & Soft Iron 鍛接

A piece of hot high-carbon steel, which will become the cutting edge, has been placed on the orange-hot low-carbon steel body of a knife as part of the “forge-welding” process. An acidic flux powder has been placed in-between and on the metals in preparation for laminating them together into a single blade.

Men are like steel. When they lose their temper, they lose their worth.

Chuck Norris

While Beloved Customers are of course familiar with the features of the high-quality woodworking blades we purvey, some Gentle Readers may have little knowledge of the important details essential to Japanese woodworking tools. So in this article we will try to remedy that by examining some simple historical points common to woodworking blades around the world, as well as some details that make Japanese blades unique.

Your humble servant believes an understanding of these basic facts will aid Beloved Customer’s sharpening efforts, or will at least tickle Gentle Reader’s interest in Japanese blades. Please comment and let me know your thoughts.

Laminated Bi-Metal Construction

As discussed in previous articles in this series, before technological advances in the 1850’s, steel was difficult to make and expensive. Consequently, it was standard practice not only in Japan but everywhere, including Europe and the United States, to reduce production costs by minimizing the amount of precious steel used in producing all types of edged tools including axes, scythes, handplanes and chisels etc.. This was achieved by laminating smallish pieces of high-carbon steel to softer and much cheaper wrought-iron bodies through a process called “forge welding.” The photo at the top of this article shows the blacksmith placing the piece of high-carbon steel on the softer iron body of a blade prior to beating the hell out of it as part of the forge-welding process.

Most chisel and plane blade blacksmiths in Japan continue to employ this lamination technique even today, not because of some navel-gazing infatuation with the archaic, but because it has serious advantages.

The best Japanese plane and chisel blades are generally comprised of a layer of very hard high-carbon steel called “hagane” (鋼) in Japanese, forge-welded to a softer low-carbon/no-carbon iron body called “jigane” (地金). We discussed both of these metals in the previous two articles in the series here and here.

Here is the key point to understand: When a blade made from a lamination of high-carbon and low/carbon steel is quenched, the sudden temperature change causes the high-carbon steel layer to become hard, even brittle, while the softer low/no carbon layer is unaffected and remains soft.

A 30mm Hidarino Ichihiro Atsunomi, approximately 12″ OAL.

Why go to so much trouble? One advantage of this construction is that it allows the cutting edge to be made much harder than is possible in the case of an non-laminated blade therefore staying sharper longer in use than softer blade. But why does lamination make this possible? Consider the absolute fact that a chisel blade made of uniform material heat-treated to a uniform hardness of, say, HRC65 might cut very well, and stay sharp a long time, but it will always break in use. Not just chip, but actually break in half. The softer low/no carbon jigane layer supports and protects the hard high-carbon layer preventing it from rupturing. Such durability is a huge advantage.

Another benefit of laminated construction is ease of sharpening. Remember, the harder a piece of steel is, and the larger its area, the more work it takes to abrade it. But in the case of a laminated blade, the amount of hard-steel exposed at the bevel the user must abrade is just the relatively thin strip of shiny metal seen in the chisel photos above and below. Please also recall that the darker low/no carbon layer jigane is dead soft and melts away on the sharpening stones without much effort.

So the laminated construction of hard hagane to soft jigane produces a blade that is tough but at the same time hard, one that will become very sharp and stay sharp a relatively long time thereby improving work quality and productivity while at the same time reducing the time spent sharpening.

BTW, this is not a technique that was invented in Japan, it’s just the Japanese blacksmiths that continue to employ this ancient and clearly superior technique, at least, that is, for a little while longer. A word to the wise.

A 42mm Hidarino Ichihiro Oiirenomi

Laminated Blades in the West

If you have examined antique plane blades with wooden bodies you may have noticed many have blades stamped ” Warranted Cast Steel”

Despite being designated “cast steel” in England and America in past centuries, unlike Conan’s Daddy’s sword, or the orc blades made in the bowels of Isengard, plane, chisel and saw blades with this mark were not “cast” by pouring molten metal into a mold to form a blade. Rather the process to make the steel involved melting iron ore in a crucible and pouring it into molds “casting” a strip, bar, or ingot of high-carbon steel which is then forged to make the blade, hence the name.

This became possible only when the technology required to reliably and fully melt steel to a more-or-less liquid state on an industrial scale was developed. Such steel was also called “Crucible Steel” after the crucible container used to melt iron ore.

This technology was widely used in the United States and Europe through the 1870’s. In fact, one steel mill is said to have been producing crucible steel until the 1960’s. Toolmanblog has an interesting summary on cast steel.

With few exceptions, these plane blades have a thin piece of high-carbon steel forge-welded to a soft wrought iron body, very similar to Japanese plane blades. I have reused a couple of these antique blades to make Krenovian-style planes and testify of their excellent cutting ability.

Chisels were also once made in Europe using this same lamination technique, although fewer examples remain extant.

Axes, hatchets, and many farming implements were also mass-produced up until the 1920’s in the US using a variation of this same technique with a “bit” of steel forming the cutting edge laminated to or sandwiched inside a body of low-carbon steel or wrought iron. Axes are still made this way in Japan. It’s a proven technique with a lot of advantages, but it does require a skilled blacksmith to pull off successfully.

The point I am trying to make is that blades made using forge-welded laminated technology were the very best available in Europe and the United States for many centuries.

Here is a link to a blog post by Paul Sellers where he praises the old chisels and laments the new.

U-Channel Construction

A closeup of the 42mm Hidarino Ichihiro Oiirenomi showing the lamination line between the steel cutting layer and low-carbon steel body of the blade
The same 42mm Hidarino Ichihiro Oiirenomi. Notice the hard-steel lamination wrapped up the blade’s sides to add rigidity.
A 30mm Hidarino Ichihiro Atsunomi, approximately 12″ OAL. Notice the hard steel lamination forming the cutting edge at the bevel. This is a beautiful lamination.
A beautiful hand-filed shoulder detail typical of Yamazaki-san’s work

The shape of the hard steel cutting layer laminated to the softer low-carbon steel (or wrought iron) body of chisels was historically a simple flat plate in Western blades. This is still the case for Japanese plane blades, axes, and farming implements. But if you imagine Japanese blacksmiths would be satisfied with such a simple design for all applications, you don’t know them well.

If Beloved Customer will carefully consider the blades pictured in the four photographs above, you will notice the lighter-colored hard steel lamination wrapped up the chisel’s sides forming a “U channel” of hardened steel adding necessary rigidity and strength. This is a critical detail for Japanese chisels intended to be struck with a hammer. Interestingly, Japanese carving chisels are not typically made this way, and are consequently structurally weaker.

Plane blades are not subjected to the high loads chisels experience and so would not benefit from this structural detail.

The Ura

A view of the ura face of an atsunomi chisel. Just to be clear, the entire surface, including the full width of the blade from the cutting edge to where the neck begins, is called the “ura.” The black area in the center is made of hard, high-carbon steel, but is hollow-ground forming a depressed area called the “uratsuki.” The four shiny areas at the perimeter form a single plane. I call these “lands.” The longish lands to each side of the uratsuki (located at top and bottom in this photo) are called “ashi,” meaning legs, but I will call them “side lands.” The land right up against the cutting edge is the most important of the four because it forms one-half of the cutting edge. It’s called the “itoura,” meaning “thread-land.”

Japanese chisel and plane blades, among others, typically have a hollow-ground depression called the “Ura” (pronounced “ooh/rah”) which translates to “ocean” or “bay,” located at what is called the “flat” on Western blades. Notice the polished hard steel lamination extending from the cutting edge to several millimeters up the neck. The black area encompassed by these shiny lands is the same hard metal, but it has been hollow-ground to form the swamped “uratsuki.”

This clever and effective design detail is unique to Japanese tools to the best of your humble servant’s knowledge. We will look at this design detail more in the next article in this series.

The Point

What does any of this have to do with sharpening? These design details cleverly turn potential disadvantages into distinct advantages you need to understand when sharpening Japanese woodworking blades.

For instance, the layer of high-carbon steel laminated into our chisels and planes is usually 65~66 HRc in hardness. Western blades are made of a single uniform piece of steel heat-treated to approximately 50~55 HRc to make the tool softer/tougher thereby limiting breakage while sacrificing the longevity of a blade’s sharp edge, the most important performance criteria in a quality cutting tool, IMHO. The extra hardness of the Japanese blade helps it stay sharper longer, an important benefit if your time is worth anything. This is good.

But if the entire blade were made of a solid piece of this extra-hard steel, it would a royal pain in the tukus to sharpen, I guarantee you. It would also break. Oh my, that would be bad.

The softer low-carbon/no-carbon steel or iron jigane body, however, is much softer and easily abraded making it possible to keep the hard steel layer thin, and therefore easily abraded, while protecting it from breaking. This is good.

Unlike the blade’s bevel, however, the ura (or “flat” as it is called in Western chisels) is all one-piece of hard steel. Without the hollow-ground uratsuki depression, you would need to abrade all that hard steel at one time to initially flatten and regularly sharpen the blade, a necessity I guarantee would ruin your mellow mood even if you consumed massive quantities of controlled substances with the fervor Beldar and Prymaat exhibit when sucking down triple-ply toilet tissue. But with the addition of the ura detail, we only need to abrade the perimeter planar lands (the shiny areas in the photos above) surrounding the ura. This is exceedingly good.

The ura with its lands surrounding the “uratsuki” depression makes it easier and quicker to not only sharpen the blade, but also to keep the “flat” planar (in a single plane). Without the ura, such a hard blade would be difficult to maintain planar and frustrating to sharpen. With the addition of the ura, however, the blade is genius.

An important skill to learn when sharpening Japanese blades is how to maintain the lamination and ura effectively. We will discuss this subject more in future posts, including the final article in this series.

Conclusion

If you didn’t learn at least three new things from this post then you are either very smart or weren’t paying attention. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In the next installment in this bodice-ripping tale of romance and derring-do we will examine the hollow-ground “Ura” in more detail. It’s important enough to deserve a special post.

YMHOS

It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull.”
― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles

If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please click the “Pricelist” link here or at the top of the page and use the “Contact Us” form located immediately below.

Please share your insights and comments with everyone in the form located further below labeled “Leave a Reply.” We aren’t evil Google, fascist facebook, or thuggish Twitter and so won’t sell, share, or profitably “misplace” your information. If I lie may I cough up a hairball during every meal.

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Sharpening Part 8 – Soft Iron 地金

The fissured and cracked jigane of a 70mm plane blade forged by Usui Kengo, another Niigata blacksmith (RIP). Notice the rod which retains the chipbreaker is non-existent, replaced by two short stubs. An elegant detail in this plane body by Ito-san (Soh 宗).

If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.

Albert Einstein

In the previous article about sharpening Japanese woodworking tool blades we looked primarily at the nature of the hard high-carbon steel used in making woodworking blades. In this post your humble servant will try to dispel some of the confusion that surrounds the other metal used in making most Japanese knives, axes and woodworking blades, namely the soft low-carbon/no-carbon steel called “Jigane” (地金). I hope this brief explanation will improve Beloved Customer’s understanding of some Japanese tools and aid your sharpening efforts.

Sources of Jigane

Most Japanese woodworking blades, and many knives, are comprised of a thin piece of hard high-carbon steel, discussed in your humble servant’s previous article in this series, forge-weld laminated to a larger and thicker piece of softer low-carbon steel or wrought iron called “Jigane” (jee/gah/neh 地金) in Japanese, which translates directly to “ground metal.”

We will discuss this bi-metal lamination more in the next post in this series, but for now take my word that it is essential to the performance of many types of Japanese cutting tools nowadays, and for many centuries was also critical to manufacturing cutting tools in America and Europe as well.

The best jigane material for plane blades is said to be scrap iron salvaged from the boilers of old trains, boats, and factories, etc. having been subjected to thousands of heating and cooling cycles during their decades of service driving out most of the carbon, indeed making the iron very soft to the point of weakness.

The most desirable jigane for plane blades is therefore called “tired” iron, named so because it is not only soft, but because it looks weak and exhibits a visible grain along with cracks and imperfections which those well-versed in Japanese plane blades covet.

A pile of jigane, probably old salvaged structural steel. Looks like boards of old wood, but it ain’t.

Wrought Iron Production

Nowadays, this very low-carbon steel, also known as “ wrought iron,” is not produced in any volume for several reasons. First, demand is just too low to make it worthwhile to manufacture. Hand-forged ornamental iron is the only commercial usage besides Japanese tools of which your humble servant is aware, relatively microscopic markets. In fact, a constant complaint from ornamental iron producers is the difficulty of working the relatively hard material available to them nowadays.

The second reason is that steel production processes have changed drastically in the last 150 years. For instance, it used to be that steel began as iron ore, basically rocks, which were crushed, melted and refined into wrought iron, an intermediate product of steel production. Indeed, at the time this low-carbon product was much less expensive to produce than high-carbon steel and so was used for everything from the boilers, bridges, trains, ships and anchor chains mentioned above to axes, chisels, farming implements, machinery, what’s called “miscellaneous metals” in the construction industry, and of course plane blades. There are still a few surviving structures around that were made using this weaker material.

Nowadays, things are different. With high temperatures more easily attainable than they were prior to the 1850’s, manufacturing techniques have advanced to the point that carbon is incorporated into the steel automatically entirely eliminating the low-carbon wrought iron intermediate product.

Also, scrap metal has become critical to steel manufacturing processes nowadays. Remember what happened to steel prices worldwide when bloody-handed China was buying up huge volumes of scrap metal worldwide for its Olympic infrastructure building projects?

I think we can agree that this energy-efficient cost-reducing recycling of natural materials is a very good thing. But it does have a tiny downside, namely that most commercial scrap metal available in any useful volume today has been cycled through the modern steel-manufacturing process many times and already contains not only high levels of carbon, relatively speaking, but alloys such as chrome, molybdenum, and nickel from previous melting pots. Indeed, undesirable chemicals such as phosphorus, sulfur and silica tend to be high in typical scrap metal, not much of a problem for use in the construction, automotive, and shipping industries but a serious problem for tool steels.

In summary, wrought iron simply isn’t made anymore because it is neither an intermediate product nor a profitable one.

Japanese blacksmiths making high-quality plane blades nowadays mostly use wrought iron recycled from old anchor chains, old iron bridges, or other recycled structural components. If you see a hole in a plane blade, like the extra-wide plane blade pictured below, it once housed a rivet. Yes, structural steel was once connected with hot rivets instead of bolts. Hi-tensile modern bolts are decidedly better if less romantic.

A plane blade with an old rivet hole in its face, probably from an old iron bridge that once stood in Yokohama and which was recycled many years ago.

Plane Blades

A plane blade by Ogata-san in his “Nami no Hana” series using a special version of Swedish Asaab K-120 steel. Notice not only the fissures and defects, but also the striations and grain typical of soft, tired “wrought iron.”

Mr. Takeo Nakano (see his photo below) makes our plane blades. He is a kind, unassuming man in the best tradition of Japanese craftsmen with the outward appearance of a sedentary grandfather, but when using hammer and tongs at his forge within his dark and smoky smithy, his posture and visage resemble that of an intense Vulcan reinforcing the steel gates barricading the world of light against a demon onslaught. Oh my!

Like nearly all the plane blacksmiths in Niigata, he uses scrap iron obtained in a single lot many years ago from an iron bridge that was dismantled in Yokohama Japan.

Mr. Nakano at home

I am told that most of the jigane used for plane blades in Hyogo Prefecture is old recycled anchor chains from a ship knacker.

The back of the same Usui plane blade. Notice the cracks and voids visible in this excellent jigane exposed at the polished bevel. Very wabi-sabi. This jigane was once part of an iron bridge in the city of Yokohama, Japan.

In the case of plane blades, structural strength is not critical, so laminating a thin layer of high-carbon steel forming the cutting edge to a soft iron body is adequate. Indeed, the thicker the hard steel layer, the more time and effort it takes to sharpen the blade, so in a high-quality blade the thicknesses of the high-carbon steel layer and the soft jigane body will be carefully balanced to ensure the blade’s bevel rides the sharpening stones nicely and can be quickly abraded.

More inexpensive plane blades are forged using the same strip jigane used for chisels, a material harder than the ideal for plane blades.

Chisel Blades

In the case of chisels, while ease of sharpening is still important, the body and neck must be harder/stiffer to prevent them from bending, so a different, stiffer variety of jigane with a higher carbon content and fewer defects is used, and the steel layer is typically made thicker.

The jigane used by our chisel blacksmiths is a commercial product not produced anymore (thank goodness they have stockpiles) called “gokunantetsu” 極軟鉄 which translates directly to “extremely soft iron.” With a carbon content of 0.04~0.07%, a better description would be “very low carbon steel.” When heated and quenched, it doesn’t harden significantly.

The adventure will continue in the next exciting episode where we will bring it all together into a blade. Don’t forget to have popcorn and jujubes on-hand!

YMHOS

If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please click the “Pricelist” link here or at the top of the page and use the “Contact Us” form located immediately below.

Please share your insights and comments with everyone in the form located further below labeled “Leave a Reply.” We aren’t evil Google, fascist facebook, or thuggish Twitter and so won’t sell, share, or profitably “misplace” your information. If I lie may the fleas of a thousand camels infest my crotch.

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The Varieties of Japanese Chisels Part 13 – The Shinogi Usunomi 鎬薄鑿 Paring Chisel

Kiyotada Shinogi usunomi

“All times are good for those who know how to work and have the tools to do so.”

Carlos Slim

The shinogi usunomi is another variety of paring chisel in the tsukinomi family.

We examined the word ” shinogi” in a previous post.

It means ”ridge” as in the ridge of a mountain, or a building’s roof, or the back of some Japanese swords. Shinogi-style chisels have two wide bevels on their face that meet at the bade’s centerline creating a ridge. Sometimes there is a narrow flat at the top of the ridge, depending on the blacksmith’s style and customer request.

If the atsunomi is the draught horse, the oiirenomis are the quarter horse, and the usunomi is the falcon of the chisel world (the one in my slightly addled head, that is), then the shinogi usunomi is a Goshawk, severe in appearance, fierce, strong, fast, and skilled at maneuvering nimbly in tight situations.

Shinogi usunomi have these same two bevels and center ridge as the shinogi oiirenomi. The side edges tend to be thinner than standard usunomi, and with less material in the way, they are often just the ticket for paring into right corners. And because the ridge is higher than the standard usunomi is thick, they tend to be a bit more rigid.

And of course, since it is an usunomi (meaning “thin chisel”) it has a relatively longer and more slender neck and handle, and no crown.

A pox on anyone that would strike one of these beauties with a mallet or hammer.

One downside to this design is that the ridge down the face, which increases the overall thickness of this chisel, may make it difficult to pare down into skinny mortises. Another potential downside, but not one that bothers me, is that the ridge is not as comfortable to press on with your fingers when paring. I find this ridge gives my fingers a better sense of the blade’s precise location in my hand and in the cut. This is all personal preference that can only be evaluated through experience using both varieties of usunomi.

You may be able to tell from my choice of words that I am fond of shinogi usunomi. Indeed, I admit to prefering them. I like how they look. I like how they feel. I like sharpening them. I like how they cut. I like how the extra clearance on the side lets me see what I am paring. Subjective? Of course. And I admit they can’t do all jobs. The standard usunomi is probably a better general-use paring chisel.

The shinogi usunomi is a serious tool for serious work that looks good while doing it.

YMHOS

If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please click the “Pricelist” link here or at the top of the page and use the “Contact Us” form located immediately below.

Please share your insights and comments with everyone in the form located further below labeled “Leave a Reply.” We aren’t evil Google, fascist facebook, or thuggish Twitter and so won’t sell, share, or profitably “misplace” your information. May my square always lie to me if I lie to you.