Category: Tool Maintenance

Sharpening Japanese Tools Part 30 : Uradashi & Uraoshi

And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!

J. R. R. Tolkien

This article is a continuation of, and probably the conclusion to, our “Sharpening Japanese Tools” series. The last post was one year ago and gave an example of how to employ the lessons taught in the previous 28 posts. At that time, your humble servant promised to discuss the subjects of this post at a later date. It’s later.

Why the delay? Simply because I am an excessively compassionate sumbitch who wanted Beloved Customers who hadn’t already figured out plane blade sharpening on their own to become proficient at regular sharpening operations before worrying about something as bizarre as wacking hard steel blades with hard steel hammers. After all, in the words of Miss Benatar, it’s sometimes a heartbreaker.

But now with the blog teetering on the loose and crumbly edge of the rabbit hole that is the Japanese handplane, we have the choice of either gliding gracefully into its depths or clumsily tumbling down ass over tea kettle (oh my!). Alas, we can tarry no longer.

With his article we will begin our swan-like journey by studying a matched set of operations Beloved Customers need to master to become proficient at maintaining Japanese woodworking blades, one called “Uradashi,” and a related operation called “Uraoshi. If you already have these skills, accept my highest praise. The target audience for this post, however, is those that don’t have experience with uradashi and uraoshi as well as those that want to review and improve the skills they already have.

So spread your wings and fly, my brave cygnets!

Definitions

Beloved Customers should already be aware of the the hollow-ground “uratsuki,” typical to Japanese chisel and plane blades. If not, please review the article at this link.

Uradashi is pronounced oo/rah/dah/she and written 浦出し in the Chinese characters as they are used in Japan. These characters translate directly to “push-out the ura.”

Uraoshi is pronounced oo/rah/oh/she and written 浦押しwhich translates directly to “press the ura.”

These two maintenance operations are performed to restore the blade’s cutting edge to useful condition when the thin land at the cutting edge is almost worn out. We will discuss the why and how below.

Long-term Strategy

Before we start pecking on steel, let’s consider our sharpening strategy.

Professional-grade blades are not only expensive, they are difficult to make, hard to find, and require an investment of time and effort from the user if they are to deliver high-performance results over many years. To minimize the required expenditure of time and effort, and to maximize the results delivered, we need more than just technique, we need a maintenance strategy.

In previous posts in this series we have discussed multiple strategies, some physical, some psychological, and even a few supernatural ones. The following is one I strongly urge Beloved Customers to adopt:

  1. Get the ura in good fettle, and then;
  2. Avoid working the ura on anything but one’s finest-grit sharpening stone thereafter, (with the exception of uraoshi following uradashi, of course).

Simple, no?

The ura is formed by hollow-grinding a lamination of extra-hard high-carbon steel (at least in the case of C&S Tool’s chisels, planes and knives). Because it is hard layer of steel is time-consuming to abrade, a wise craftsman will work to keep the ura as deep as possible, and the flat lands surrounding the hollow-ground ura as narrow as possible, as long as possible, thereby minimizing the area of hard steel that must be abraded with each sharpening.

But no matter how careful we are to preserve the ura, sharpening the bevel makes the blade incrementally shorter, so the day will come, at least in the case of plane blades, when the land at the ura immediately behind the cutting edge, called the “itoura,” (pronounced ee/toh/oo/rah, meaning “ thread ura” ) becomes as thin as a thread. Once it disappears, the blade will no longer function. This is the only drawback to the Japanese ura feature, and can only be solved by bending brittle steel.

Bending Hard Steel

The goal of uradashi is to cause the lamination of hard steel at the ura at the cutting edge to bend towards the ura so that when we subsequently abrade the bent ura the itoura land will be restored.

Now if you think about this for a second you will realize that trying to bend a thin plate of steel hardened to Rc65~66 without snapping it is a fool’s errand. In the case of Japanese blades it is possible to accomplish but only because of the thicker, cushioning layer of soft low-carbon/no-carbon iron, called the “jigane,” to which the hard steel layer is laminated.

Your humble servant struggled at first with uradashi, in part because every explanation I read about the process in both English and Japanese was written by people who either didn’t really know what they were talking about, or were too lazy to explain it well. Some years, several broken blades, and much heartbreak later I finally figured it out. Better information is available nowadays, but there is still plenty of BS out there to shovel.

The first key point to understand and always remember is that uradashi is not about using a hammer to bend the hard steel layer; Never ever ever never touch this steel with your hammer.

Instead, the goal is to peck on the soft iron jigane layer of the laminated blade, as described below, expanding it so the hard steel layer laminated to it will curve in the direction of the ura without snapping or cracking. Please read the previous three sentences again, offer a prayer of remembrance to the gods of handsaws, and click your heels three times (ruby slippers are not mandatory(ツ)).

The second key point you need to grasp around the neck with both hands and dig your Jimmy Choos deep into is that it is indeed a fool’s errand to try to bend the soft iron lamination by the power of your mighty arm, Oh Lord of Thunder. No, we must be as clever as Loki.

So, how do we cleverly do this job, and what tools should we use?

The 60mm blade used in this example forged by Mr. Uchihashi Keisuke from Swedish K-120 steel. The brand name is “Keisaburo.” An excellent blade and still functional, but the itoura is getting a little skinny.

Tools

You will need the following tools to properly perform uradashi and uraoshi on a blade:

  1. A small hammer. Great force is neither necessary nor useful, but you must be able to control this hammer very precisely, so the lighter the better. One with a pointy end like a funate or a Yamakichi or the corner of the thin end of a Warrington hammer is ideal because it focuses maximum pressure on a small area, deforming the jigane efficiently, and it is also easy to see where the hammer will impact providing better control. And control matters a lot because if you miss and strike the hard steel at the cutting edge it will be damaged and bitter tears will flow. Consider yourself duly warned, Oh Might Thor;
  2. An anvil of sorts. This can be any piece of steel with some mass and with a rounded-over corner. A piece of railroad track is great. I use the face of a small sledge-hammer clamped in my vise. A sharp corner is not good, so grind or file one and then smooth it. A piece of thin postcard material glued to this rounded corner help keeps the blade from slipping;
  3. A small square or straightedge;
  4. A marking pen or scribe to mark the “target area” on the bevel;
  5. A rough diamond plate or a mild-steel kanaban plate + carborundum powder;
  6. Parking pen or Dykem for coloring the ura’s lands;
  7. Regular sharpening tools (stones, etc.);
  8. Water.
A small sledge hammer used as an anvil by clamping it in a vise with another clamp as a stabilizer.

Target Area Layout

Let’s begin by laying out the target area on the soft iron jigane at the blade’s bevel with a marking pen. Or you can scratch lines into the jigane with a metal scribe. This target area will indicate the area you will peck with your little hammer producing many small dents. You must not strike outside this target area even if tempted with donuts.

The striking area marked with marking pen.

The dents you will make with your little hammer need to be limited to a band on the jigane parallel to the cutting edge and beginning 2~3mm from where the jigane lamination begins extending to the end of the jigane lamination at the blade’s back, in the case of plane blades, or the face where the brandname is engraved in the case of chisel blades. Make a line with your scribe or marking pen the full width of the bevel at this distance from and parallel to the cutting edge. Everything above this line in the direction of the blade’s back, in the case of plane blades, or the face where the brandname is engraved in the case of chisels and knives, is the primary target area. Make sure you get this right.

The dents need to extend across the full width of the jigane layer, except where the corners (ears) have been ground to a bevel at the right and left end of the blade, so the right and left limits of the target area are delineated by the ears.

Although we need to tap the full width of the blade to avoid stress concentrations, there is nothing to be gained by trying to bend the far right and left corners of the blade, so we want to focus approximately 2/3rds of our hammer impacts and the resulting dents near the center 1/3 of the blade’s width. Mark the right and left limits of this central area on your blade with a marking pen or scribe.

The Grip

If you are right handed, hold the blade in your left hand with your index finger extended and pressed against the ura parallel with the cutting edge, and about 5~10mm away from it. Press down with your thumb on the blade’s back clamping the blade between your thumb and the side of your index finger. Your other fingers should support the blade from the ura side.

This shows how to hold the blade on the anvil.

Your index finger will be the fence that keeps the blade in proper alignment during the tapping-out process.

Next, we need to figure out how to align and move the blade on the anvil, as well as where to place hammer blows in relation to the blade and anvil.

This photo shows the grip without the blade in the way. Notice how the index finger is touching the anvil. The blade is shifted right and left using the index finger as a fence to keep blade and hammer under tight control.

Manipulating the Blade on the Anvil

Place the blade’s ura on the rounded corner of your anvil. You may want to tape or glue a piece of thin cardboard, postcard, or manila file folder to the anvil’s corner not so much as a cushion but to help prevent the blade from slipping, but this is not mandatory.

Adjust the distance between your extended index finger and the cutting edge as necessary so your finger is touching the anvil stabilizing its position, and so you can slide the blade to the left and right indexing off your finger to keep the target area in proper alignment.

Next, while still in position facing your anvil and with hammer in hand, move the blade aside and tap the rounded corner of your anvil with your hammer lightly. Memorize this location and your position because every tap from now on must be aimed at this same exact spot on the anvil.

The Tap Dance

The time has come to begin the dance.

Reposition the blade on the anvil and use your little hammer to tap the soft jigane layer at the bevel (only the jigane!) in the target area you marked earlier making a row of small dents in it.

These small dents don’t need to be pretty or uniform. Be patient because you may need to make hundreds of pecks, each one quite precisely.

Here is the key point to understand: You want each little dent to cause the jigane to deform and expand in length and width a tiny bit, gradually, until a significant degree of deformation accumulates. The hard steel layer, however, will constrain the jigane layer from expanding, causing the blade to bend, and causing the hard steel layer to deflect and curve towards the ura, bending it without breaking it. It doesn’t seem possible at first, but I promise it will happen, so please be patient.

The trick then is to use the grip described above and use your forefinger to index the blade against the anvil while moving your hand, along with the blade, a tiny bit right or left with each strike, with the each point of impact firmly supported on the anvil, in-line with the hammer blow, thereby squishing the jigane between hammer and anvil. In this way, since the hammer is always aimed at the same exact point on the anvil, you don’t need to worry about realigning it with each blow, removing several difficult-to-control variables from the tap dance at once.

Remember, keep the hammer and anvil precisely aligned, and move the blade left and right, not the hammer. It helps to touch the inside of the elbow of the arm using the hammer against your side in a fixed location to help maintain a consistent hammer swing and distance. Until you have mastered consistency, speed is risky.

Another key point to understand is that, unless the point of your little hammer’s impact is not directly in-line with the point where the ura on the opposite side of the blade is touching the anvil, the force of the hammer’s impact will tend to cause the unstable blade to jump and wiggle around instead of deforming the jigane. This wastes time and energy and makes it difficult to make precise taps.

Here’s a video of Eleanor Powell tapping away with great control, and with the aid of her faithful Fido. I don’t recommend including a benchdog in your tapping-out routine other than as a deterrent to any pernicious pixies lurking in your workshop eager to cause you to miss with your hammer and chip your blade. Evil pixies!

Here’s a video of Sarah Reich tap dancing with every strike landing precisely in the target area. I need to get a pair of shiny red lycra pants like her to go with my most excellent aluminum foil hat with the curly copper wires and red fringe. Do you think they would make my butt look huge?

Remember, force is neither necessary nor useful. The goals is to make many precisely aligned tiny taps producing many small deformations in the target area, with no impacts on the hard steel layer.

Dent Removal

We talked about “dents” above. If you are using a round-faced hammer, those dents will be little crescents. If you use a hammer with a tiny striking face on one end like a Yamakichi or Funate, that tiny face will dig into the metal making ugly little peck marks instead of pretty little crescents. I have used all varieties of hammers but prefer the ones with pointy ends because they impact face is small and, it seems to me, easier to control. Six of one half-dozen of the other.

But remember that we will abrade away all those dents/craters after a few sharpening sessions, so appearance is of zero importance.

The Goldilocks Itoura

The goal, of course, is to bend the blade at the ura land just behind the cutting edge enough to create a useful, flat ura. But how wide should the itoura be when the process is complete? Among plane connoisseurs a narrow itoura is, like a willowy super model, considered a thing of beauty. By narrow I mean some where around 0.50~1.0mm.

A narrow itoura does indeed look sexy, so much so that fashion-conscious plane blade blacksmiths make a skinny ura a point of pride. And, in fact, a bulimic itoura makes it easier and quicker to sharpen the blade because the square millimeters of hard steel one must abrade/polish is minimal compared to a wider itoura.

The downside to the super-model itoura is that it wears out sooner, making it high maintenance. Now, I’m not suggesting that if your plane blade has a super-skinny itoura it will demand weekly spa visits, twice monthly trips on a G700 jet to the Vienna Opera, annual ski holidays in Verbier, and bi-annual boob jobs, but there is no doubt you will need to do the uradashi tap-dance more often. Shiny lycra pants are optional, but ooh sooo sexy.

On the other hand, a wider itoura of 3~4mm has some advantages too. It’s easier to fit the chipbreaker (uragane), and you don’t need to do uradashi/uraoshi as often. Much wider than this, however, and I find it can be difficult to get a screaming-sharp edge at times. Moderation in all things, I guess.

I don’t know how to describe when to stop tapping-out the ura to obtain a good width for your itorura because every blade is a little different, but after doing it a few times you will develop a sense of when enough is enough. However, to develop that sense you should make frequent checks on your tapping-out progress by placing your handy dandy straightedge or square right on the itoura parallel to the cutting edge and sighting between the blade and the straightedge/square with a strong light shining at the gap. You will be able to see the itoura gradually bulge upwards at the center. Even a little bit of a bulge will give you a useful itoura, so don’t get carried away.

Uraoishi

Once the tap dance is done, we need to grind down the ura to form a new itoura.

The traditional method is to use the mild steel kanaban lapping plate mentioned above, although any true lapping plate will work. One sprinkles a small amount of carborundum powder on the plate along with a little water, and works the ura side to side grinding down the bulged area to make a flat.

The problem with lapping plates and carborundum powder is that not only is it a messy process, but unless you are careful to keep the right amount of wet grit on the plate, the results tend to be a tad irregular. I recommend using diamond plates because they produce more consistent results quicker.

Whether you use a kanaban lapping plate or a diamond plate, it is important to focus pressure on the thin area where you need the itoura to develop. Pressure anywhere else is not helpful, but only wears out the itoura prematurely.

Here is wisdom: When they first attempt uraoshi most people try to stabilize the blade by applying uniform pressure across the back of the blade. This seems to makes perfect sense, but it always results in grinding a nasty little trench in the ura where it touches the extreme edge of the kanaban or diamond plate. Remember, the uraoshi process tapped out a bit of metal right at the cutting edge, and mostly at its center. This is what you need to abrade, NOT the right and left lands of the ura, and certainly no more than 3~4mm from the cutting edge. So carefully focus the pressure you apply during uraoshi only on the thin area where you need to restore the uraoshi.

Some people like to apply a thin strip of paste wax, perhaps 3~4mm wide, on the edge of their kanaban or diamond plate to prevent it from digging ugly trenches in their beautiful and delicate side lands. Others like to apply a thin strip of mylar tape at the same place for the same reason. These techniques all work, but professional sharpeners don’t use them because they know how to apply pressure correctly.

A quick touch of the blade on the diamond plate shows where the black marking pen ink has been removed, and the highest spots on the bent itoura.

After the itoura has been restored (perfection is not necessary), polish the blade using your normal sharpening routine.

The restored itoura.

The bevel after working it on the diamond plate and stones. The remaining peck marks will disappear entirely after a few sharpening sessions.

Chisel Blades Versus Plane Blades

Uraoshi and uradashi are operations typically, but not exclusively, performed on plane blades. About the only time chisels need to have uradashi performed is to restore the itoura after the blade receives major damage, like a big chip. A sad event all users of Japanese tools experience from time to time

There is a structural difference between plane blades and chisel blades one must understand when considering performing uradashi on a chisel blade.

Plane blades have a steel lamination that is more-or-less uniform in thickness because that’s all that’s necessary. Chisel blades, on the other hand, are subject to much higher bending stresses than plane blades, so to prevent yielding and failure, traditional chisels are forge-laminated with the steel lamination wrapped up the right and left sides of the blade, forming something akin to a structural steel U-channel, producing a higher moment of inertia, and therefore greater strength and rigidity,

Because of this additional strength, chisel blades are more difficult to bend at the right and left sides using uradashi techniques compared to plane blades. Indeed, they may break if you try.

Since you can only hope to safely bend the steel lamination in areas away from the more rigid sides, uradashi operations on narrow chisel blades will go as smoothly as throwing a cat through a screen door. I wouldn’t even try it on any chisel narrower than 24mm. Beloved Customers have been warned.

If you feel compelled to attempt uradashi on a chisel blade, my only advice is don’t peck within 3mm of the right and left sides.

With this article, our Sharpening Japanese Tools Series is complete (probably). I hope it has been helpful. If you’ve had the patience to read it all, and the clairvoyant ability needed to understand most of it, then you know a heck of a lot more on the subject of sharpening than I did when I started the journey. At least you have received some great ideas for sexy new additions to your simply mahvelous woodworking wardrobe!

YMHOS

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Links to Other Posts in the “Sharpening” Series

Japanese Handplanes Part 2 : Blade Adjustment

I warn you, if you bore me, I shall take my revenge.

J.R.R. Tolkein

Your most humble and obedient servant has received many requests over the years for explanations about how to setup, adjust, maintain and use Japanese planes. It’s a big subject, enough to fill volumes and volumes, and an important one to woodworkers, but I will try to explain in enough generality that new guys can follow, and in enough detail that professionals may glean something useful.

In this series we will discuss how to adjust a Japanese plane so it works well, how to tune it to increase performance, how to treat the body to reduce warpage and keep it looking good, how to deal with normal wear and tear, how to periodically tap out and dress the ura during sharpening, and of course how to use a Japanese plane.

This last subject is extremely simple but one many amateur users of Japanese planes and most users overseas get wrong. It happens so frequently that I am confident the improvement in Beloved Customer’s personal performance with Japanese planes will improve dramatically from this last subject alone.

The problem with Japanese planes is that, while they are simple tools, they are at the same time more sophisticated than appearances suggests. Dealing with these subtle details without properly understanding them leaves many as confused as a ball of yarn among a dozen big-eyed kittens, so to avoid having too many strands running all over the place, let’s start with the basics, namely how to adjust them. For purposes of this discussion, we will assume our plane is in good fettle to begin with.

Terminology

Your humble servant will not attempt to teach Gentle Readers all the Japanese terms for every part of the hiraganna plane but will try to use standard English language terms wherever possible instead. Indeed, since the plane is a relatively recent tool in the Japanese woodworker’s toolbox, and has a much longer archeological history in the West, it seems silly to use more Japanese words than absolutely necessary to describe something that did not originate in Japan, and can easily be described in English.

I am not a government employee or a legal expert, and so see no need to make things more confusing than necessary. I humbly apologize in advance if this approach offends any purists or employees of the IRS.

The standard handplane in Japan, the one intended to create and/or smooth flat surfaces versus rabbet, chamfer or molding planes, just to name a few, is called the Hiraganna. This word is written 平鉋 in Chinese ideograms and pronounced hee/rah/gahn/nah, without emphasis on any part of the word.

The first character 平 means “flat.”

The second character 鉋 is comprised of two standalone characters combined to make a single character, a common practice in the Japanese language. The one on the left side, 金, means gold or metal, while the one on the right, 包 means “to wrap.”

The character for kanna was not invented in Japan but is said to have been used since the Táng period AD618 – 907 in China, although the tool it represented at the time was a scraper of sorts and not a handplane.

Preparing the Body

Although this is not an issue in the case of the planes C&S Tools purveys, Gentle Readers will want to inspect their plane, and perhaps make a few modifications to the body before playing with the blade too much.

Striking Chamfer

When removing the blade or reducing the cutting edge’s projection through the mouth, we need to strike the body on the corner between the flat end of the plane’s body and its top surface, so we need a chamfer at an approximately 90˚ angle to prevent damage to the body. How wide? 3~5mm is a good range. While you are at it, cut off the corners formed at the right and left sides of this chamfer.

This is a one-time operation.

Sole Chamfers

You need a chamfer on the right and left sides (long direction) of your plane’s sole.

These chamfers have two purposes. First, to prevent the edges of the sole from chipping. Second, to make a gap for your fingers to grip when lifting up the plane.

As the sole wears, Beloved Customers and Gentle Readers will need to be refresh these chamfers from time to time, so further explanation is necessary.

Some people promote big, wide 45˚ chamfers at these locations. Your humble servant has even seen country bumpkins cut these wide chamfers and then cut grooves leading from the sides of the mouth to these chamfers for shavings to escape into. Codswallop!

The thinnest, weakest portion of any wooden plane’s body is sidewalls at the mouth. This is also where most warpage originates, so please don’t weaken it more than is absolutely necessary. In addition, wood removed from the sole by cutting overly-large chamfers reduces the bearing area of wood on the surface being planed accelerating wear on the sole. Keep these chamfers narrow at 3~5mm and a max angle measured from the sole of 25~29˚ More than this is unnecessary and possibly harmful.

A chamfer is not necessary at the trailing end of the sole so long as you have the self control to not strike the sole with your mallet.

Do not cut a chamfer at the leading edge of the sole as it will guide sawdust and shavings between the sole and the surface you are planing.

Top Chamfers

Apply a small chamfer on the front and side edges of the top surface, just enough to prevent chipping. 45˚ chamfers are fine, but a roundover (bozumen 坊主面 which translates to “Priest’s edge,” probably in reference to the bald head of Buddhist priests in Japan) is a friendlier, more elegant edge treatment, IMHO. Your choice.

Hammer or Mallet

In order to use a plane of any kind, one must remove the blade to sharpen it, and then re-install the blade and adjust its projection from the body’s mouth to produce a wood shaving of the desired thickness.

Like most wooden-bodied planes, one adjusts a Japanese plane by striking it with a hammer or mallet. To drive the blade further into the wooden body (called a “dai” 台 in Japanese) when installing the blade or when increasing the depth of cut, one taps the head of the blade down into the wooden body. Pretty straightforward. But like most things in life, there are both clever and stupid ways to get even simple jobs done. Let’s consider some of the clever ones, shall we?

The wacky ones can be very entertaining, I know, but I think I’ll leave those for the tool abusers on GooberTube.

You can use either a metallic hammer or a mallet made of wood, plastic or even rawhide to tap the blade or dai during these operations. They all work just fine, but there are long-term consequences to this selection you need to be aware of.

In Japan a steel hammer is traditionally used by carpenters to adjust planes. Without a doubt it’s convenient and effective, but there are some serious downsides to using a steel hammer you may not realize. Those include:

  1. A steel hammer always mushrooms the blade’s head;
  2. A steel hammer always dings the blade’s pretty face, and most critically;
  3. After many strikes, steel hammers will often crack and even split the wooden body (dai).

A deformed and ugly blade may not be a tragedy, but a split body is an expensive and time-wasting catastrophe, especially if you are a professional that needs his planes to keep cutting.

What did this brightly-polished plane blade do to deserve such barbaric abuse?
All the worst consequences of using a steel hammer on a plane are condensed in this one photo. Notice the mushroomed head of the plane which the owner has probably already ground down several times. We can’t see the blade’s face, but notice how the chipbreaker’s face is all dinged up. And I guarantee you the blade is even more damaged. And of course, the split dai. Tragic! What did this poor innocent little plane do to deserve such barbaric treatment?! And how much of this plane’s useful life did the owner waste?

There may be Gentle Readers who will say: “But I’ve seen Japanese craftsmen using steel hammers to adjust their planes, so it can’t be wrong.” The first part of this observation may be true, but the last bit isn’t. The undeniable truth is that steel hammers have created many ugly, dinged, bent, and mushroomed blades, as well cracked and splintered dai, mostly unnecessarily. Some carpenters are especially abusive of their poor planes, sorry to say, but not all Japanese craftsmen are so inured to the suffering of their tools.

C&S Tool’s planes don’t deserve such violent abuse, so we recommend Beloved Customers use a wooden mallet to adjust them. Without exception. A plastic or rawhide mallet with a wooden handle will work just as well.

Removing the Blade and Chipbreaker

Both the blade and chipbreaker are removed by tapping the chamfered corner of the block behind the blade with a mallet. We discussed this chamfer above.

It is of course possible to loosen the blades by tapping the flat tail end of the block, but there is a risk of striking the bottom edge and deforming the sole. Best avoided altogether.

The physics work best when the mallet impacts are applied in a direction more or less parallel with the blade.

Your humble servant prefers to make this striking chamfer wide to minimize deformation of the body, but this is a personal preference. If your plane’s body is not chamfered, creating it is is an important first step.

The chipbreaker (uragane) must be removed before the blade, but you need to be careful to prevent two unfortunate things from occurring during this process. The first thing to avoid is the chipbreaker jumping out of the block providing Murphy the opportunity for gleeful mischief.

The second thing to avoid is the blade backing out of the body further/faster than the chipbreaker causing the chipbreaker to ride over the extreme cutting edge dulling it. This point is one newbies often overlook until they wonder why the pretty cutting edge they just sharpened is dinged even before they begin cutting.

How does one keep blade and chipbreaker under control? Your humble servant recommends pressing a forefinger onto the chipbreaker and applying pressure upwards when removing it. Do the same on the face of the blade when its turn comes/ as shown in the photos below.

When removing the chipbreaker, apply pressure towards the blade and upwards with your index finger to monitor its movement and help maintain control. It is critical that the chipbreaker moves upward faster the than the blade to prevent the chipbreaker from contacting the sharp cutting edge dinging it.
While applying upward pressure with the index finger on the chipbreaker, tap the chamfer behind the blade to cause the chipbreaker to move up and out of the body’s mouth. BTW, please make it a habit to not strike the center of the chamfer, but instead alternate strikes between the right and left sides of the chamfer to ensure the body will provide long service.

Once the chipbreaker is loose, remove it and go back to tapping the body to loosen the blade further. Continue to apply light pressure to the blade’s face to better monitor the blade’s movement, and to prevent it from jumping out of the body.

The plane used for this example is an extra-wide 80mm finish plane with a blade forged by Yokosaka Masato. The oasaebo steel rod which retains the chipbreaker in-use can be seen tightly installed across the mouth. This is typically never removed over the life of the plane. In the center are the blade and the chipbreaker (uragane). A very nice blade hand-forged from Shirogami No.1 high-carbon steel. To the right is the mallet your humble servant uses for plane adjustments. Notice how the head of the blade is not mushroomed, its pretty face is free of the dents and dings, and the body is free of the dents, cracks and splits that often result from using steel hammers.

Adjusting the Chipbreaker (Uragane)

The chipbreaker is a recent addition to the Japanese plane. In earlier centuries, they had only a single-blade. Unlike the Western Bailey-pattern planes that incorporate the chipbreaker into the linkage necessary to adjust the blade, hiraganna planes work just fine without the chipbreaker. Indeed the chipbreaker’s only role is to reduce tearout, so when tearout is not a concern, removing the chipbreaker will reduce the force necessary to motivate the plane and may even produce a smoother cut.

The chipbreaker of a new plane often needs to be fitted to the blade and body using files and stones, but that is a subject for a future article, so to keep things simple, we will assume the chipbreaker is in good shape and is happily wedded and bedded to its blade.

Gentle Reader is no doubt wondering how to adjust the chipbreaker with the large head of a mallet. The answer is to use the butt of the handle as shown in the photo below. Just hold the mallet’s handle in a fist with the head upward and bring the handle’s butt down on the the chipbreaker. Easy as falling off a log, as my father would say. The connection between the mallet’s head and handle must be quite solid, of course. These mallets are easily made.

Using this technique, your plane blades will look beautiful, and your dai will give many years of reliable service. And although they only have tiny mouths with just a single, shiny, silver tooth, if you look carefully you will sometimes see their clever little smiles.

Using the end of the mallet’s handle to adjust the chipbreaker. Notice that, once again, the index finger is use to monitor the chipbreaker’s movement and to keep it under careful control. To ensure the chipbreaker will do its job, its edge should ultimately be adjusted to be in very close proximity to the cutting edge (>0.002″ (0.05mm). This distance will vary with your plane and the wood being cut, and will require experimentation and fiddling to get right, but with practice, this process will become automatic and intuitive. Be careful to prevent the chipbreaker passing over the cutting edge as this may dull the blade causing Gentle Reader to say undignified things and the iron pixies skulking in your workplace to howl with glee.

To remove or back-out the chipbreaker, one strikes the dai as if loosening the blade, but with a finger on the chipbreaker to keep it from dragging over and perhaps dulling the blade’s cutting edge.

When adjusting the chipbreaker, sometimes the blade will shift position too, so a back and forth adjustment of blade-chipbreaker-blade is sometimes necessary. The tighter the fit of the blade and chipbreaker in the body, the more fiddling is required, so craftsmen such as joiners, sashimonoshi and cabinetmakers that routinely make fine, precise cuts and sharpen frequently tend to prefer thinner blades that fit into the body with less force and are easier to adjust than do carpenters who perform less refined work.

We will delve into this aspect of handplane setup in our journey ass over teakettle down the rabbit hole in a future post.

Adjusting the Blade

In order to take a clean full-width cut, the blade must project from the mouth the appropriate amount, and evenly across its width. In other words, it must not project too far, nor too little, and one corner of the blade must not be projecting more than the opposite corner.

To evaluate the blade’s projection through the plane’s mouth, hold the plane upside down to a light-colored uniform background and look along the plane’s sole. The correct projection will be a thin line of uniform height across the width of the sole. If one side of the blade is projecting more than the opposite side, the blade is either skewed in the body, or it is shaped skewed.

If the blade is skewed, tap the head to the right or left with the mallet. If, however, a few taps fails to make the projection uniform, the blade’s cutting edge must be reshaped.

Please be aware that continued lateral pounding on the blade will not improve the situation and may damage the wooden body.

Most planes allow a little bit of wiggle room for the blade, but sometimes, especially if the body shrinks in width due to reduced ambient humidity, the notches in the side of the mouth may need to be pared slightly deeper, or the blade ground narrower, to provide this right/left wiggle space. Be very careful, however, to avoid paring these grooves more than a thin shaving or two wider because removing wood at the grooves directly and irrevocably weakens the weakest point in the wooden body.

Looking down the sole to ascertain the blade’s projection, the black line visible at the top of this photo. A light-colored, uniform background is helpful for this. In this case, two adjustments are necessary. The first problem is that the blade is projecting too far. This is easily resolved by tapping the chamfer behind the blade, something that, with practice, can be done while the plane is held upside-down in this position. The second problem that must be resolved is the skew evidenced by the blade’s projection being much greater on the left side of the photograph.
Adjusting a skewed blade by tapping the blade’s head laterally. If a few taps will not correct a skewed blade, it probably needs to be reshaped to correct a skew that developed during sharpening.
A much smaller, useful projection with just a tiny bit of residual skew that must be corrected. When taking extremely fine finish cuts, the ability to determine the blade’s projection sometime seems more clairvoyant than simply optical.

To test the projection of the blade, and ensure skew has been removed, hold a a short, narrow piece of softwood such as pine or cedar in your hand and run it over the cutting edge, first on one side of the blade, then the opposite side, and finally the center, and observe the shavings (if any) produced. They will tell you the truth. Be careful not to shave your fingers unless they have become hairy (ツ).

Even experienced craftsmen betimes become gutted, gobsmacked, and guragura upon discovering their otherwise perfect plane blade has become skewed and is projecting too far on one side to be adjusted for a good cut without resharpening it. Of course, the culprit is almost always pernicious pixies, but a wise Beloved Customer (are there any other kind? Nah!) will be careful to follow Petruchio’s example and tame the skew. And don’t forget to use a hardened stainless steel straightedge to check the blade for square when sharpening.

Striking the Body of the Plane

Your humble servant does not want to seem repetitious, but just so there is no confusion, I feel compelled to review a point or two before we end this discussion.

When backing out or removing the blade, make it a habit to strike the chamfered edge of the dai behind the blade alternating between the right and left sides instead of dead-center.

Also, angle your strikes so they are more or less parallel to the long axis of the blade. With a little practice this will become second nature. The reason for this action is simply that it is both more effective and at the same time helps to keep the dai in one piece.

Please, never strike the flat tail end of the plane’s body, but only the chamfered top edge of behind the blade. Too many people who strike the flat end of the tail get carried away and end up damaging the sole.

If you examine your plane you will notice that there is actually very little wood holding the plane’s body together in the mouth area. Indeed the only continuous wood is at the sides, and it is only as thick as the distance between the bottom of the blade grooves and the exterior sides of the body. Not a lot of meat.

If we strike the body’s tail in the center, the body, being relatively unsupported in this area, must flex creating stresses, sometimes enough to crack, sometimes even enough to split it. This sort of damage is common, but almost entirely avoidable because, if we strike the right and left extremes of chamfered edge behind the blade, stresses will be carried through the stronger sides reducing the chances of cracking and/or splitting the tail. You can feel and even hear the difference if you pay attention.

If you don’t care how your plane looks, and prefer replacing or fixing their wooden bodies instead of using them, by all means disregard this suggestion. You might want to get some extra bubble wrap to keep yourself entertained while the bolt and epoxy repair to your plane’s broken body cures.

Damage to the body or blades of C&S Tool’s planes caused by the incorrect use of metal hammers will void the tool’s warranty.

Plane Storage

When you purchase a plane, the blade is already installed in the body, although the cutting edge is usually recessed inside the mouth to protect it. The first step, therefore, is to remove the blade and examine it.

If you live in a low humidity area such as Nevada or Arizona in the USA and purchase a plane from a part of the world with high-humidity at times, such as Japan, it is wise to remove the blade and set the plane aside for a few days to let the body become acclimatized, especially if you plan to use the plane in a space with central heating and cooling which may cause the wooden body to shrink in width

If you plan to store your plane for several years in a dry climate, or in a space with central heating and cooling, we recommend you remove the blade and chipbreaker, oil them, wrap them in aluminum foil, and store the body and blades together but without being installed in the body to prevent the blades from restraining the body’s shrinkage causing it to crack. Just to be safe.

In the next post in this adventure we will discuss how to modify a Japanese plane’s body to make it easier to use.

And please remember the wise words of the Sage of Possum Lake: “Remember I’m pullin’ for ya–we’re all in this together.”

YMHOS

The end view of an amazing nagadai plane body by Inomoto-san made from a piece of Japanese White Oak combining “Oimasa” grain orientation and the highly-desireable ripple grain. In oimasa orientation, the dense, tough, light-colored medullary rays are oriented towards the sole, making the sole wear slower. Using plain-sawn wood will direct even more of these rays to intersect the sole further reducing wear, but at the same time would increase the tendency of the sole to warp. On the other hand, orienting the annual rings vertically in a “quartersawn” configuration would maximize the body’s stability, but at the same time would cause the sole to wear quicker while making the body less resistant to cracking and splitting. Oimasa orinetation shown in this photo is a compromise intended to reduce warping without reducing strength and to improve the sole’s wear resistance. Ripple-grain white oak is not only more beautiful, it contains more of the harder Winter wood making it both more wear-resistant and more stable than ordinary white oak.

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 plane blade be forever skewed if I lie.

Other Posts in the Japanese Handplane Series:

Four Habits and Three Mysteries

The carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp

Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” Leaves of Grass

When working in wood the professional aiming for efficiency must continue the work of accurately cutting or shaving wood just as long as possible without stopping to sharpen his blades too frequently because time spent sharpening is time the primary job isn’t getting done. The wise professional therefore needs chisels, planes and knives with cutting edges that not only become very sharp and cut exceptionally well, but stay sharp a long time. C&S Tools are handmade one at a time by master blacksmiths to meet the expectations of Japanese professional woodworkers for sharpness and edge retention.

Alas, even our tools do not have eternally-sharp cutting edges, and at some point must be resharpened to maintain work efficiency and product quality. The experienced professional craftsman will develop unconscious habits to help him constantly monitor the condition of his blades and the quality of the work being performed. In this post we will examine a few ancient techniques for doing so.

The Four Habits

As the saying goes, “timing is everything.”

If Beloved Customer pays attention, you will discover there is a point where a woodworking tool’s blade still cuts, but its cutting performance begins to drop off. Sensing this point in time is critical because if you continue cutting wood much past this point, not only will the energy needed to motivate the blade increase dramatically, but the quality of the cutting done will quickly deteriorate while the time and stone expenditure necessary to resharpen the blade will increase. That’s three variables in the blade, the work and the craftsman that could be expressed in a pretty graph if one was so inclined, a graph that would have at least one inflection point. Which variable is most important to you?

In most cases, when considered from the viewpoint of a craftsman that uses and sharpens his tools daily, and needs them to be quite sharp, minimizing wasted of time and stones over the years tends to be the governing variable because it costs the most money.

Most woodworkers fail to consider these efficiency variables; They simply keep cutting away until the tool either becomes too difficult to motivate, or it stops doing an acceptable job, then stop work and sharpen the blade. This is normal, but the wise woodworker will focus on minimizing the total time and total cost required to maintain his tools even if it means he must pause work to resharpen his blade well before its performance deteriorates badly.

This sharpening inflection point will vary from blade to blade and job to job because every blade, every piece of wood and and every user are unique. Simply counting strokes is not enough. It takes attention and practice to sense when a blade has reached this point.

The following are some things you should pay attention to, and habits you should develop, to help you identify the sharpening inflection point.

Habit No. 1: Sense Resistance Forces: As you use a tool, a plane, chisel, or saw for instance, tune your senses to detect the point at which the blade becomes more difficult to motivate. As the blade dulls, the force that you must apply to the tool to keep it cutting will gradually increase. This is especially noticeable when planing and sawing. Develop the habit of paying attention to this force so you can determine when it is time to resharpen. Your humble servant recommends you regularly use an oilpot to ensure any increased resistance is due to a dulled blade and not increased friction between the tool and the wood;

Habit No.2: Listen to the Music: Pay attention to the tool’s song. That’s right, turn off the radio and CD player and listen to the music your blades make instead. If you do, you will notice that each tool sings its own song, one that varies with the wood, the cut, and the condition of the blade. Is the blade singing, lisping, or croaking as it chews wood? Is it a saw with a basso profundo voice, or a mortise chisel with vibrant tenor tones, or perhaps a soprano finishing plane singing a woody aria? A sharp blade makes a clearer, happier sound when cutting or shaving wood than a dull one does. Learn the happy song it sings when it’s sharp and the sad noise it makes when it’s dull, and all the changing tones in between. If you have ears to hear, it will tell you what kind of job it is doing and when the time has come to resharpen it;

Habit No.3: Eyeball Cuts: Watch the tool and the wood it has cut. Is your chisel cutting cleanly, or is it crushing the wood cells? A sharp chisel blade cuts cleaner than a dull one. You can feel and hear the difference. And you can see the difference in both the shavings or chips and the surfaces the tool leaves behind. Don’t be a wood butcher: develop the habit of frequently checking the quality of your cuts. It doesn’t take extra time, and your tools will wiggle with happiness;

Habit No. 4: Feel Surface of the Wood: Is your plane shaving the wood cleanly, or are the surfaces it leaves behind rough with tearout? Develop the habit of running your fingers along the path your plane just cut to sense surface quality. If you detect roughness or tearout, the plane may be out of adjustment, or more likely, the blade is becoming dull. Or maybe you need to skew the blade, change the direction of the cut, or moisten the wood’s surface with a rag dampened with planing fluid (I use water, industrial-grade busthead whiskey, or unicorn wee wee when I can get it). Next, run your hand across the cut your plane just made to detect ridges that may have been created by irregularities or chips in your blade’s cutting edge. Every one of those ridges indicates a small waste of your time and energy and a flaw in the wood. Don’t forget that the top of those ridges contain compressed cells (kigoroshi) that may swell and become even more pronounced with time. This is accomplished with a few swipes of the fingertips along and across the wood between cuts without spending any time.

These techniques are not rocket surgery. They don’t take extra time. They can be applied to any tool all the time. The key is to pay attention. To listen to one’s tools. To watch their work.

Let’s next shift our attention to three of the Mysteries of Woodworking, their potential impacts on mental health, and how to avoid unfashionable wardrobe decisions.

The Mystery of the Tilting Board

To discuss this Mystery, we will call on the services of my old buddy Richard W. (Woody) Woodward. You may remember him from a mystery story in previous article. Yes, it was a near thing, but he has fully recovered from the effects of chugging a 5th of tequila in an emotionally-charged bout of drama over a brittle blade.

Anyway, this mystery goes something like this. Woody is planing a board about the same width as his plane’s blade down to a specific thickness, but for some unfathomable reason, the board ends up thinner on one side of its width than the other. He checks the blade’s projection from the plane’s mouth, but it is absolutely uniform. In fact to make the board the correct thickness he ends up having to tilt the blade to take less of a cut on one side of the board than the other.

Most everyone has experienced this curious and wasteful phenomenon, but because it is not consistent, many never solve the mystery of the tilting board, but blame it on Murphy’s antics or Pixie play. But never fear, because the solution is elementary, Dear Watson.

In Habit No. Four listed above, your humble servant mentioned residual “ridges.” Please be aware that these ridges are not only unsightly and may damage applied finishes later, but they can actually keep your plane from cutting shavings of uniform thickness. Think about it.

Let’s assume you are planing a board the same width as your plane blade, but the blade has a tiny chip near the right end of the blade that leaves behind a .0005″ high ridge on the board’s surface. With each subsequent cut using this same blade with the same defect the right side of the plane’s body and likewise its blade will be elevated above the board’s surface by .0005″, while the left hand side, which doesn’t have any ridges for the plane’s sole to ride on, is shaved the normal amount.

Assuming you checked that the blade is projecting from the plane’s mouth the same distance across its entire width, with each pass the surface of the wood becomes tilted, a little high on the right side and a little low on the left, so that instead of a flat surface square to the board’s sides, you have produced a flat surface that is thinner on the left side and thicker on the right. This is no bueno, amigo.

If you detect ridges on a freshly-planed surface, immediately check the blade’s cutting edge by running a fingernail along it’s width. Don’t worry, it won’t dull the blade unless you are also a bricklayer. Your nail will feel the catch and grab of defects too small for your eye to see. A few small ones may make no difference, but on the other hand, they might make a big difference.

With this the Mystery of the Tilting Board, one that has driven many a woodworker to distraction, sometimes even leading to fashion decisions involving stiff, canvas jackets with long sleeves connected to straps and buckles that fasten behind the barking woodworker’s back and even pass under the crotch (decidedly uncomfortable, I assure you), has been solved. Only the Beloved Customers and Gentle Readers of the C&S Tools’s Blog can be assured of avoiding this undignified state. Sadly, all others must be responsible for their own mental health.

The Mystery of the Missing Plan

Here is another mystery of woodworking, one that especially vexes those tender souls new to the calorie-burning fun of dimensioning wood by hand.

Let’s say Woody needs to turn a bunch of twisty, banana-shaped boards into flat, square, precisely dimensioned and cleanly-surfaced drawer fronts, for example. All the adjectives after “banana” in the previous sentence are critical to his project’s success because Woody’s ambitious objective is to make 24 piston-fit drawers. Let’s also assume the wood he uses for each drawer-front is unique in both appearance and warpage. It’s a heck of a lot of wood to cut and with no time to waste, so our erstwhile wood butcher gets out his trusty handplane, sharpens it up, adjusts the blade and chipbreaker, gives it a kiss for luck, and without further delay makes the shavings fly through the air in glorious fashion!

But wait a minute! No matter how much Woody planes, he just can’t seem to make some of the surfaces flat, free of wind and the sides square to the faces. It’s like some kinda frikin moving target! Indeed, eventually he is dismayed to discover some of the edges are getting too thin. What to do, what to do!?

Drama queens typically begin interesting antics at this point, but not so our Beloved Customers who, unlike Woody, are stoic, laconic, intelligent and of course, sharply-dressed, and therefore pause their physical efforts to focus their mental powers on solving this mystery. At this point BC’s benchdog perks up his ears and tucks in his tail in fear of the humming emanating from his master’s ears, his benchcat arches his backs, hisses like a goose, and flees the workshop like his tail is on fire, and the resident pixies frantically hide in the lumberpile to avoid being disrupted by the power they sense radiating outward from BC’s mighty brain.

Of course, the conclusion you eventually arrive at is operator error. After then there is cat urine to deal with…..

Too few people really pay attention when using their tools, focusing too much on the joy of making as many chips or shavings as quickly as possible without a plan. For example, a failure common to many woodworkers is to start planing without first identifying and marking the high spots that must be cut down first, and then areas to be cut down next. In other words, they fail to plan the sequence of the work. The result is that time, steel and sweat is wasted cutting wood that didn’t need to be cut while ignoring wood that did need to be cut. And all for lack of a plan measured with a straightedge or dryline and written on the board with a few strokes or circles of a lumber crayon or carpenter pencil

This mystery too has been known to increase profits of the mental health industry and even (heaven forfend!) fashion decisions involving poorly-tailored canvas jackets with crotch straps. Simply not to be borne!

The Mystery of the Sounding Board

Lastly, we come to perhaps the most frustrating and least-understood of the Mysteries of Woodworking. Not to say there are no other mysteries, because there is always that most ancient of riddles that baffled even the enigmatic Sphinx, one which has been repeated endlessly since before Pharaoh wore papyrus nappies, of why Woody would respond honestly to his wife when she asks him if her new pair of jeans makes her bottom look “simply humongous.” Sadly, this is one mystery upon which your humble servant is unable to shed light because even I do not fully understand the heart of woman.

But I digress. This Mystery is one that torments those badly befuddled souls like friend Woody who, lacking a plan to follow, eyes that see, hands that feel and ears that hear, unwisely assume that the board they are working on is stable simply because it doesn’t walk away from him. Perhaps it is the malevolent influence of pernicious pixies that causes himm to ignore the downward deflection the pressure of their plane unavoidably induces in a warped, unevenly supported board, or in a board being planed on a flimsy or crooked workbench.

This unintentional, indeed unnoticed deflection too often causes the board to escape the cutting blade resulting in hills being raised and valleys remaining low where flat surfaces were required. Of course, this leaves the handplane bitterly dissatisfied because it wanted to do good work too.

But this waste of wood, steel, sweat and goodwill can be avoided because, even if the board isn’t rocking like Zepplin and dear Woody can’t feel the board deflecting away from his plane’s cutting edge, he could detect the change in his plane’s song when it is cutting an unsupported area of a board if he only listened because the board is also a “sounding board.”

Think of all the money saved that Woody would otherwise spend on lithium, Prozac, and small hotel rooms with padded walls to ease his mental anguish if only he had the foresight to make a plan, train his hands and eyes to confirm his tool’s performance, and his ears to listen to what his plane tries to tell him.

The experienced professional will investigate each board, make a plan for his work, mark the plan on the wood, shim the board so it is evenly supported on a flat workbench surface, and sharpen his blade if necessary before making a single cut. Then instead of cutting randomly like a modern artist wielding a paintbrush, he will make each cut intentionally, purposefully, in accordance with his plan to make each cut as efficient as possible.

He will also pay attention to the reaction of the wood and feedback from his tools during each cut. He will use the four habits discussed above, and maybe even a drop or two of unicorn wee wee to limit tearout if his budget allows.

If Beloved Customer doesn’t have a master to give you a dirty look or to box your ears when you impatiently err, you must train yourself. Slow down. Make a plan. Execute the plan. Pay attention, use your senses, and spend the time needed to evaluate progress against the plan. Consider carefully why the work is going well or why it is not. This process will slow the work down at first, but over time it will help you develop good habits and guide you along the path to becoming a master craftsman instead of just the typical woodcutter.

May the gods of handsaws smile upon you always.

YMHOS

If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please click the see 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 my straightjacket dig into my crotch.



The Mystery of the Brittle Blade

There are few blessings without a curse hidden inside, nor curses without a whiff of blessing. Like most things, it’s a matter of how you look at it.

Joe Abercrombie, Isern, “A Little Hatred”

In this article your humble servant will seek to unravel for Gentle Reader another aspect of the ancient “Mystery of Steel.”

This story does not begin on a dark Scottish moor, nor on a foggy London night in a drawing room with the door inexplicably locked from the inside concealing bloody mayhem splattered across intricately carved linenfold oak paneling; Rather, it begins in an ordinary woodworking shop. And it goes something like this.

The Brittle Edge

The curtain rises on a humble detached workshop where, unbeknownst to our victim, an erstwhile woodworker we shall call “Woody,” dastardly events are about to unfold (cue the deep, ominous music). It’s really just an old dilapidated garage, but it’s Woody’s kingdom and he is master here, or so he imagines. He’s expecting us, so we’ll just go on in.

Make sure the door is firmly closed behind you now; It tends to stick and Woody’s bench dog loves to jet out and root around in the neighbor’s garbage. No need to solve the mystery of why they call the fuzzy little leg-humper “Stinky.” (ツ)

Pine and cedar plane shavings litter the floor of Woody’s shop and their fragrant aroma fills the air erasing the mutt funk. Autumn sunlight filters gently through the single dusty window as sawdust motes dance above a limp bench cat sleeping at the far end of the workbench dreaming of buffalo wings and big-eyed kittens. All appears well in Woody World.

Woody’s sitting at his workbench on his white Smith & Wesson padded stool where he has just unpacked his new chisel, admired it, checked the fit, finish and edge, and appears quite satisfied. He lays out a test mortise hole on a piece of scrap oak, picks up his gennou hammer (the one with the classic Kosaburo head and the sexy Osage Orange handle that turned out so well), and begins to chop a test mortise. But, wait!… Something’s not right!

With trembling hands, Woody examines the chisel’s cutting edge to discover the last thousandth of an inch or so has changed from smooth and sharp to ragged and dull. “Nooooo!” Woody wails as he lifts his arms to the ceiling, arches his back, and slumps to the floor on his knees in a pose reminiscent of Sergent Elias in that poignant moment on the battlefield; “I have been betrayed!” he screams with wavering voice. Yes, Woody’s a talented and enthusiastic drama queen in the Smeagle mold; Maybe even good enough to run for the US Congress.

Another of Woody’s qualifications for high public office is that he dearly loves to pull a cork, so while he walks to the corner Piggly Wiggly to get a 5th of tequila to anesthetize his emotional shock and refill his thespian fuel tanks, let’s take a load off and sit on his workshop sofa over there while I explain the cause of his emotional fragility. Yep, you’re right; It’s a recycled bench seat from an old Power Wagon he salvaged from a junkyard and converted to a sofa for watching ballgames and taking naps in the shop away from the jaundiced eye of “She Who Must Be Obeyed.” Don’t worry about your pretty pink dress, princess, it’s just honest sawdust.

With tools, tequila, and the mystery of steel involved, this could be a long story, so let’s consider how to solve this particular mystery before Woody gets back and starts up his caterwauling again.

But just so you don’t become discouraged, let me state right now that there is a tunnel at the end of the light, and that while all seems dark and hopeless to Woody now, he may actually have reason to rejoice greatly! But we’ll get back to that later in the story.

The Questions

A Japanese blacksmith fluxing and placing a piece of high-carbon steel onto a hot piece of jigane in preparation for forge-welding the lamination of a blade.

Your humble servant always asks the following questions when someone complains of a chipped cutting edge on a chisel or plane. When Woody gets back, and if he manages to remain coherent and vertical long enough, we’ll ask him these same questions. If your blades are causing you grief, you should consider asking yourself these questions too. Jose Cuervo and acting skills are not required.

  1. What sort of quality is your problem chisel? Low? Medium? High? How do you know? This is relevant because a poor-quality chisel will fail just by looking at it too hard;
  2. What type of chisel is it? A striking chisel or a paring chisel? Each type of chisel is used for different tasks and in different ways;
  3. What and how were you cutting when the edge failed? This is important because some woods are best cut in a different manner than others, and some cuts require a special approach if we are to avoid damaging the chisel;
  4. What is the bevel angle? If the angle is much less than the ideal for the type of chisel, plane, cut and wood, we may have found the culprit. Finding the perfect angle for your chisel and situation may take some experimentation;
  5. How did the edge fail? Did it crumble? Chip? Roll? A combo failure (with cheese)? This will tell us a lot about the tool.
  6. Was the wood you were cutting dirty? Did it contain embedded grit? This is an important question because many people carelessly use their valuable chisels, planes and powertools to cut hard minerals instead of scrumptious wood. The lesson? Don’t be a slob: Scrub your wood with a steel brush before cutting it. And saw off the last 3~4 millimeters of every board, or at least chamfer the ends with a block plane, drawknife or knife to remove the grit always embedded in end grain, before you put it through your jointer, thickness planner or tablesaw, or cut it with handsaws, planes or chisel. If you have not made a habit of doing this, don your scratchy sackcloth tidy whities, smear ashes on your face, then repent and be baptized because you have been abusing your innocent tools, Bubba. Clean your wood and you will notice the difference. Strange that no one I have ever asked this question to has admitted to using dirty, stony wood at first. The reason is usually simply that they didn’t realize it was filthy until I pointed it out to them, just as it was pointed out to me many years ago. What’s that you say? You don’t have a stiff steel wire brush in your toolbox?! Shame on you;
  7. Did you abuse the chisel by trying to lever wood out of the cut, a mortise for instance? This is a common cause of failure. People accustomed to using amateur-grade tools with soft cutting edges frequently discover the edge of their new chisel chipped after using it like a cheap Chinese screwdriver to lever waste, never imagining the harder and more brittle steel of a quality chisel might be damaged. Such boorish behavior voids the warranty on our chisels, BTW, because a chisel is a cutting tool, not a prybar or a can opener, much less a screwdriver.

Did your answers to these questions suggest any remedial action to you? The best answer to Question 1 is often to procure a better-performing tool.

But if your tool is professional-grade instead of hardware-store grade, then you need to learn how to use it and maintain it properly. But that is a story for another day.

Let us shift our attention briefly to another, related mystery, one that has more to do with human nature.

Why Are the Blades of So Many Modern Tools Mediocre Performers?

It wasn’t always that way, but there are sound business reasons why chisel and plane blades are such poor performers nowadays, even in Japan, and like many things, it boils down to money. The numbers of craftsmen that routinely use handtools has decreased, and therefore the demand for professional-grade tools is way down. In Western countries the degradation of tool standards started even earlier.

In this situation, mediocre tools are simply more profitable. After all, low-quality materials are cheaper and it only takes ordinary machines and minimum-wage factory workers, not expensive trained blacksmiths, to make tool-shaped objects from mediocre-quality materials. Professional woodworkers won’t touch such crap, but amateurs, the inexperienced and those deluded, wandering souls who judge performance based solely on lowest cost buy them by the ton. More now than ever, sustainability is given pious-sounding pompous lip-service, while the reality of modern society is that high-volume sales of colorful but poor-quality tools designed to meet planned obsolescence goals, manufactured in lots of thousands by Chinese farmers, and destined to become early landfill stuffing has become the only viable business model left standing. Gofigga.

More importantly, even if they would do better if given half a chance, inexperienced amateurs seldom have anyone to teach them how to use and maintain their tools, so they never learn proper maintenance principles and cutting techniques. When they damage their woodworking tool blades carelessly, they blame the tool supplier for their own failure. As Mr. T would say: “I pity the fool.”

Faced with this sort of consumer, it is simply easier and more profitable for tool companies to manufacture, and for retailers to sell, chisels and planes with softer, tougher blades suited to amateurs. I think you can see the vicious cycle.

A kakuuchi oiirenomi chisel by Hidari no Ichihiro
An Atsunomi chisel by Hidari no Ichihiro

A Non-technical Technical Explanation

Your humble servant’s earlier comment that Woody may have cause to rejoice about what appears to be metallurgical malfeasance may cause some Gentle Readers to wonder if I am mad as a sack of owls; Perhaps my most excellent aluminum-foil skull cap (the one with purty curly copper wires) malfunctioned permitting those icky inter-dimensional aliens’ mind-control waves to leak through.

Like our absent drama queen, I too was devastated when first faced with the Mystery of the Brittle Blade, but I can explain why it may be sign of a blessing instead of a curse. It’s elementary dear Watson. But I think it best to provide some background and explain some time proven solutions before presenting the good news. Steak before ice-cream, you see.

I beg the indulgence of knowledgeable Gentle Readers who feel insulted by the lack of temperature curve drawings and jargon such as “pearlite,” “martensite” and “ austentite,” and ask them to understand that, while this blog is focused primarily on informing our professional Beloved Customers, many Gentle Readers require a less technical explanation. Simple hospitality demands that your humble servant make an effort to provide useful insight to a wide range of Gentle Readers. As a dude wearing a skirt and sandals in a movie once said: “ Are you not entertained?”

A shinogi oiirenomi chisel blade by Hidari no Ichihiro

Quenching the Blade

When a blacksmith quenches a high-carbon steel blade in water in the ancient manner (called “Yakiire” 焼き入れ in Japanese which translates to “burn in” in English), the steel suffers a thermal shock, sometimes severe enough to crack it. This violent cooling also causes a peculiar crystalline structure to form in the metal, one that causes it to become harder and increase in volume, and to warp to some degree. The casual observer may imagine the water cools the entire blade uniformly, but ‘tain’t so.

Those areas of the blade that cool the quickest form the highest volume of crystals and become hardest. In the case of chisels, planes, and kiridashi knives, the end of the blade has the most exposure to water, cools quickest, and therefore becomes hardest, at least during the first quench.

The blacksmith may carefully repeat the heating and quenching process multiple times, sometimes varying the heat time and temperature to achieve the desired crystalline structure and uniform distribution of small, hard carbides that define “fine-grained steel,” but the quenching process by itself always leaves the blade too hard and too brittle to be useful as-is.

Tempering the Blade

Now that the blade is hardened, indeed too hard, the blacksmith must mellow the steel, reducing its hardness while at the same time increasing its toughness by carefully reheating and cooling the steel to modify the crystallized steel in a process called “tempering,” in English and “yakimodoshi “ 焼戻し ( literally “ burn return” ) in Japanese. In this way, a steel blade hardened to Rc85 degrees during the first quench, indeed brittle enough to break into pieces if dropped onto a concrete floor, can be softened to a useful hardness while becoming at the same time much tougher.

In materials science and metallurgy, toughness is defined as the ability of a material to absorb energy and elasticly deform without fracturing. To “elasticly deform” means an object changes shape or deforms when pressure is applied, but returns to its original shape when the pressure is removed. For instance, if you clamp one end of a piece of mild-steel wire in a vise and apply a little force with your hand at the other end it will bend at first and then spring back to its original shape when you remove pressure. This is called “elastic deformation.” But if you apply enough pressure the wire will not spring back (“rebound”) but will remain bent. This permanent bend is called “plastic deformation.” Mild steel wire is truly “tough as nails.”

Glass is the opposite case. While it may exhibit more elastic deformation than most people realize it can, it will tolerate no plastic deformation, because when the stresses in glass reach the “yield point,” instead of bending plasticly, it breaks.

A brittle blade is hard but not tough, and while it will elastically deform a little bit (often so little it’s unnoticeable), it too easily breaks. Proper tempering therefore, is critical.

But this reduction in hardness and increase in toughness brought about through tempering is not always 100% uniform, and as mentioned above, the extreme cutting edge of the blade of a chisel or plane tends to be hardest and therefore most brittle in the case of hand-forged tools, even after tempering. The cheap, mass-production solution is to simply make the entire blade softer, say Rc55 for example, so brittleness will never be a problem. But such a tool is more a sharpened screwdriver than a cutting tool suited to the needs of professional woodworkers, IMHO.

I’m being too harsh, you say? Not even a little bit. A soft blade dulls quickly, wastes the professional woodworker’s time and money, and is irritating instead of useful. Perfect for turning screws, spreading spackle or stirring paint but not much good for quickly and precisely cutting lots of wood for pay, thank you very much.

Solutions 1 & 2

The Mystery we are investigating on Woody’s behalf is as ancient as steel itself. And of course there are reliable ancient solutions our blacksmiths employ. Let’s consider two of them.

First, create a crystalline structure in the blade through hand-forging that is more resistant to fracturing than ordinary steel regardless of its hardness. This doesn’t happen by accident.

Second, employ painstaking heat-treatment techniques combined with uncompromising quality control to achieve the right balance of hardness vs. toughness.

To help control the heat-treat process, our blacksmiths apply a special mud-like compound to specific areas of the blade to slow down the thermal shock during the quench and improve the steel’s crystalline structure. Every blacksmith has their own “secret sauce,” so I can’t tell you what it’s made from. This technique is not perfect nor unique to Japan, but we know it has been successfully used by Japanese swordsmiths for at least 900+ years

It ain’t rocket surgery, but factory workers in Guangzhou or Mumbai can’t do it.

So, we have discussed the reasons, and some solutions, but what to do about a blade that’s already chippy?

Solution 3

Assuming the blade has been forged by an expert blacksmith in accordance with the principles outlined above, the fix to chippiness (oops, did I coin a word?) is to be patient and sharpen the blade three or four times removing the extra-brittle steel exposed at the cutting edge, the area that became harder and less tough than the rest of the blade during the heat-treating process. With few exceptions, the blade will then “calm down” and stop misbehaving.

This is the solution we ask our Beloved Customers to employ when this problem infrequently arises. It requires faith, and patience, but it almost always works.

Solution 4

The last solution, and one I certainly do not recommend to anyone except as a last resort, is to heat the cutting edge under a candle flame. Not an acetylene torch; Not a propane torch; Not even a butane lighter; A candle flame only. You want the extreme cutting edge to become just a smidge hotter than you can comfortably touch with your bare finger. Don’t heat the entire blade, just the cutting edge.

BIG FRIKIN DISCLAIMER 1: This method won’t fix a poor-quality blade or one that was initially ruined during forging or heat-treat.

BIG FRIKIN DISCLAIMER 2: If you are careless and do this wrong you can easily ruin the blade!

Rejoice Greatly!

But what insanity made me say that Woody should rejoice when the cutting edge of his new chisel crumbles? I assure you, my reasoning is sound, I have Woody’s best interests at heart, and I will explain all to him when he sobers up. Probably tomorrow afternoon, at this rate. (ツ)

But I’ll explain it to you now, if you will be good enough to get me a root beer from Woody’s cooler over there to wet my whistle. No, that’s not a Class M-3 Model B-9 General Utility Non-Theorizing Environmental Control Robot, it’s one of those mini-fridges sitting on two skateboards with a shop-vac wrapped in Christmas lights perched on top that Woody puts out on his front porch for Halloween to thrill the kids and to keep a sufficient stash of cold adult beverages, and root beer too, of course, close at hand. He’s very practical that way. Oh, BTW, please don’t tell SWMBO about the adult beverages, or you’ll ruin a great Halloween tradition and preclude many erudite discussions in the future: Vino Veritas

Ahh, that’s better. Nothing like an ice-cold root beer.

Now where was I? Oh yes, the reason for my optimism: A high-quality blade that crumbles like Woody’s did when brand new, and mellows after a few sharpenings, is highly likely to be an exceptionally fine tool!

On the other hand, a blade that is too soft when new will never crumble or chip, but it will always quickly dull and never improve. A veritable gasket scraper. (个_个)

There are exceptions, of course: some hand-forged blades are defective and crumbly from beginning to end, usually a result of overheating the steel during the forging process, a rookie mistake. You should return such a defective blade to the retailer you purchased it from. If, however, to save a few bucks, you bought a tool without a warranty, or purchased it from an online auction, you will need to enlist the services of Murphy’s two bubbly buddies Mr. Doodly and Mr. Squat.

Somehow I doubt Woody will thank me for solving this piece of the Mystery of Steel for him, but I am confident he will love the flavor of that chisel for the rest of his life.

YMHOS

PS: If you found this interesting, you may find other posts regarding the Mystery of Steel found in our “Sharpening Series” interesting too. The one at this link in particular is relevant to this discussion.

A kakuuchi oiirenomi chisel by Hidari no Ichihiro

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 I gag on a hairball if I lie.

Relevant Posts:

The Story of a Few Steels

Professional-grade Tools

The Care and Feeding of the Wild Mortise Chisel – Part 1

Sukezane brand 9mm mortise chisel (mukomachinomi) side view

It is well with me only when I have a chisel in my hand

Michelangelo 1475-1564

This is the first in a five-part series about the Mortise Chisel, especially the Japanese version.

Also called the “Joiner’s Chisel” in Japan, this is a specialized chisel used by specialist craftsmen to cut precise, smallish joints when making furniture, cabinetry and joinery. Carpenters don’t use it, and few have even seen one.

In this post we will briefly examine a tiny bit of the terribly long history of the mortise and tenon joint, and give a description of this specialized chisel.

In future posts we will look at how to evaluate, adjust and even how to use the Japanese Mortise Chisel. We will also touch on bevel angles and blade hardness problems.

We will discuss what to look for in a good mortise chisel and how to examine it with an eye to increasing its performance. This is something most users of chisels never consider, but it can make a big difference in the case of mortise chisels. Indeed, I daresay most Gentle Readers will mutter the equivalent of “Splish us and splash us” when they read it.

Of course we will also discuss how to effectively correct irregularities in our mortise chisel that negatively impact performance, irregularities most people never notice.

After it is fixed (they almost always have some problems) we will take our racing chisel out for a few laps, but prior to that we will consider how to effectively use this specialized tool. Too few receive proper training nowadays in chisel work, but here are C&S Tools we feel it our duty to help our Beloved Customers improve their skills.

We will conclude this series by taking the “Old Master’s Test,” just to make sure both our mortise chisel and our skills are improving.

While focused on the Japanese mortise chisel, the principles and improvements discussed are applicable to any chisel used to cut mortises.

While all Gentle Readers with eyes to see, ears to hear, and hands that love wood are welcome to share this hard-earned knowledge, it is intended primarily for our Beloved Customers, especially those who use chisels professionally to keep body and soul in close proximity.

Some Background

Your humble servant drafted this series of posts years ago, and has shared bits of it with Beloved Customers from time to time when requested, but the information has not always been well-received for a number of reasons.

There is an old Japanese saying, one which probably originated in China, written 「馬の耳に念仏」and pronounced “Uma no mimi ni nenbutsu,” which translates to “Prayers in a horse’s ear.” Why are Buddhist prayers relevant you ask? Good question. You see, some of the principles I will present in this series directly contradict doctrine taught by some of the woodworking Gurus in the West. Like vespers to a beast of burden, wisdom is wasted on the willfully, woefully ignorant (wow, that almost sounds like iambic pentameter!).

But our Beloved Customers are neither horses nor asses nor politicians but shockingly intelligent human beings to whom your humble servant is convinced the time has come to expound the gospel of the mortise chisel. Perhaps it will be canonized some day (ツ)

This series of posts is equivalent to a graduate school course in chisels, something like “Mortise Chisels 701.” And just like a course in advanced differential equations, most Gentle Readers will never need it. But never let it be said that your humble servant didn’t do his best to improve both the skills and the tools of our Beloved Customers.

Some History of the Mortise & Tenon Joint

Mortise chisels are used for cutting rectangular holes in wood usually intended to accept tenons to form a structural connection called the “mortise and tenon joint” between pieces of wood.

No one knows how long humans have been using the mortise and tenon joint, but it has certainly been longer than nails, and many thousands of years longer than screws, although modern humans with their lithium battery-powered, made in China, landfill-bound, multicolored plastic and rubber screwdrivers may find it difficult to imagine. So let’s begin the journey by examining just two well-documented extant physical examples that may provide motivation for using this enduring joint.

The oldest known wooden structure is a neolithic well liner discovered near Leipzig Germany, constructed from oak timbers shaped by stone adze and joined at the corners with half-lap joints and pinned tusk-tenons at through mortises. Tests indicate the trees the timbers were split from were felled between the years 5206 and 5098 BC, making the assembly at least 7200 years old.

Next, let’s look at a less soggy but more recent, complicated and elegant example.

The oldest existing wooden building in the world is a Buddhist Temple named Horyuji located in Nara Japan. Originally constructed around 600 A.D. and rebuilt around 700 A.D. after a fire, this huge 1300 year-old temple and pagoda complex was reconstructed using hundreds of thousands of mortise and tenon joints, testifying to the longevity of wooden structural systems and the value of this universal connection technique.

Horyuji  is far more than just a temple to Buddhism, it is a temple to woodworking. If you haven’t yet visited it, you’re truly missing something. 

I mention these two examples to illustrate the universality, strength, and durability of the mortise and tenon joint. Anyone serious about woodworking must master this most ancient and essential connection.

The mortise chisel is the best handtool for the job of cutting mortises less than 15mm in width. For wider mortises, oiirenomi or atsunomi are more efficient.

Japanese Mortise Chisels

12mm mortise chisel (mukomachinomi) Face View
12mm mortise chisel (mukomachinomi) Side View
12mm mortise chisel (mukomachinomi). Please notice the rectangular cross-section precise right angles, and straight, clean sides. This is the most precise of the Japanese chisels.

In the Japanese language mortise chisels are called “mukomachi nomi” (向待鑿), with “nomi” meaning “chisel.” Don’t ask me the origin of the rest of the word because I don’t have a clue, and have heard few plausible explanations. There is another post linked to here that contains more information about this chisel.

I will use the term mortise chisel in this article to refer to mukomachi nomi.

For our Gentle Readers interested in the Japanese language, there are several combinations of Chinese characters used to write mukomachi, none of which make much sense or seem related in any way to either tools or woodworking. The most common characters used are “向待” with the first character meaning “there” or “direction,” and the second character meaning “wait.” Combined, they seem to mean “Waiting over there,” or something like that.

I assume the name was originally phonetic and somebody decided to use these kanji because their pronunciation matched the phonetic name. This sort of linguistic contortion is seen frequently in Japan, and has been a source of confusion for all and sundry for many centuries. I blame it on elitist Buddhist priests going back and forth between Japan and China over the centuries, but it is typical of the Japanese people in general and priests in particular to take a perverse pleasure in intentionally making and using terms others can’t figure out.

This confusing practice is not unique to bald priests. When I was an engineering student, I recall the professors insisting we never attempt to simplify or too clearly explain the technical jargon of the trade to non-professionals because it was essential to job security for them to never quite understand it.

If you are familiar with Japanese architecture, you have seen the wooden lattice work that defines it in doors, windows, dividers, shoji, fusuma, koshido, glass doors, ceilings, and even fences, all items made by “tategushi” or “joiners” in Japan. Each piece of any lattice needs two tenons and two matching mortises to stay in-place, so a single piece of traditional Japanese joinery may have literally hundreds of small, very precise mortises, indeed thousands in the more complicated pieces. The Japanese mortise chisel was developed specifically at the request of joiners for this type of work. Therefore, it is also known as the “Tategu Nomi” which translates to “joinery chisel.” Few carpenters use this chisel.

Nora Brand 6mm Mortise Chisel (Mukomachinomi) Side View
Nora Brand 6mm Mortise Chisel (Mukomachinomi) Ura View
Nora Brand 6mm Mortise Chisel (Mukomachinomi) Shoulder View. Exceptional shaping and filework .

Japanese mortise chisels are similar to other Japanese chisels in having a laminated steel structure with a hollow-ground ura (flat), an integral tang, wooden handle, and steel ferrule and hoop. Unlike most other chisels it has a rectangular cross-section with sides usually oriented 90˚square to the hollow-ground ura, and either flat or just slightly hollow-ground to better keep the blade aligned in the cut and to dimension and smooth the mortise’s walls.

Western mortise chisels do not typically share this detail, although unusually intelligent and observant Western woodworkers of course modify their chisels to gain similar benefits.

If speed and precision are important to you, then the sides of the chisel being oriented at 90° to the ura absolutely provide a serious advantage when cutting most mortises because the sides, and especially the two sharpish corners where these three planes meet, will effectively shave and precisely dimension the mortise’s side walls as the mortise is being cut without the need to pare them later.

Unlike most mortise joints cut with oiirenomi or atsunomi, so long as the mortise is the same width as the mortise chisel, and the user has the ability to maintain the chisel at the right angle while striking it with a hammer, the width of mortises cut with this chisel are usually quite precise and seldom if ever need be cleaned with a paring chisel. This functionality means that you can cut mortises, and especially small ones, both precisely and quickly with great confidence. It’s not called the “joiner’s chisel” for nothing.

The mukomachi chisel does not work as well in wider widths because of the increased friction between the chisel’s sides and the mortise’s walls. For joints wider than 15mm, please use a trued oiirenomi or atsunomi. And don’t forget to use your oilpot.

In the next class in our graduate course on the care and feeding of the wild mortise chisel, we will examine the various details to look for in an effective mukomachi nomi. Most of these details are applicable in the case of other chisels such as oiirenomi and atsunomi too, indeed any chisel intended to be used to cut mortises including Western mortise chisels.

But wait a minute! Before ya’ll run out of the classroom like a caravan of crazy stoats chasing a pixie, please pick up your homework assignments from the table by the exit doors. And please, don’t leave your empties behind on the floor. Paper coffee cups are one thing, but aluminum beer cans attract out-of-work divorce lawyers and other such desperate vermin.

See you next time.

YMHOS

Your most humble and obedient servant’s set of well-used mortise chisels. The 8 pieces on the right are by Kiyotada (1.5mm~15mm). The two 2 newer chisels on the far left are by Nora. Over the years I have used these tools both professionally and as a hobbyist more than any other of my chisels, as you can perhaps tell from the differing blade and handle lengths which have become shorter with use. A stoic tool, they gossip among themselves less than most other chisels. Good friends and reliable workmates that helped pay the rent and feed the wife and babies for many years.

If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please click the see 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 Mama Shishi bite my head off.

YMHOS

The Story of a Few Steels

An illustration of the Eidai tatara furnace (a cross-section illustration is shown at the end of this article) with human-powered blowers to right and left. Looks like hot work.

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

Theodore Roosevelt

The terms White Steel and Blue Steel frequently pop up in discussions about Japanese woodworking tools and kitchen knives. The usual misunderstandings abound in those discussions and BS takes majestic wing. In this article we will try to share some accurate information sourced directly from the steel manufacturer and our ancient blacksmiths that actually make and work these steels instead of the usual soft-handed shopkeepers and self-proclaimed experts living in their Mom’s basement.

We will begin by studying some etymology of two of Japan’s most famous tool steels. We will then drop into history class to discuss ancient domestic Japanese steel, and then shift our attention to why these modern steels came into being. After that, we will go to metallurgy class, but without the technical jargon, to understand what chemicals these steels contain and why. We will also outline the defining performance characteristics of those same two steels in the case of woodworking tools.

For those who enjoy more technical details combined with pretty pictures, we have concluded with the results of a brief but very informative technical study.

Please ready your BS shovel.

Product Designations: Yellow, White & Blue Label Steels

These terms refer to tool steels manufactured by Hitachi Metals, Ltd. in their plant located in Yasugi City in Shimane Prefecture, Japan. If you are into woodworking tools or Japanese cutlery you have heard of these steels.

Hitachi, Ltd., founded in 1910, is one of Japan’s most prestigious manufacturers. Its subsidiary, Hitachi Metals, Ltd., was established in 1956 primarily through acquisitions.

“White Steel” is an abbreviated translation of HML’s nomenclature of “Shirogamiko” 白紙鋼, which directly translates to “White Paper Steel.” Likewise, “Blue Steel” is an abbreviation of “Blue Label Steel,” the translation of “Aogamiko” 青紙鋼.

Just as “Johnnie Walker Blue” is the commercial designation of a famous Scottish whiskey with a blue label pasted onto the bottle, Aogami is the designation of a high-carbon tool steel with a blue-colored paper label pasted onto it. It’s that simple.

While Johnny Walker may be kind sorta yellow, it is definitely not a blue tinted booze much less red. Likewise, the color of Hitachi Metal’s tool steels do not vary in color, only the labels do. If someone tells you they can tell the difference between the two steel by simply looking at them, tell them to pull the other one.

There are those who insist they can tell the difference between steels by licking them. Your humble servant has never tested these claims, even on a dare, and never will, so please don’t ask.

Since your humble servant can read and write Japanese, I feel foolish calling it White Steel or Blue Steel as many in English-speaking countries do, so prefer to call them Yellow Label Steel, White Label Steel or Blue Label Steel in English, or Kigami, Aogami, or Shirogami steel. Please excuse this affectation.

Now let’s go back in time a few hundred years. My tardis is just over there. A change into period-correct wardrobe will not be necessary, but please put away your iPhone and try to not embarrass yourself in front of the locals.

Traditional Japanese Steel: Tamahagane

Tamahagane, written 玉鋼 in Chinese characters, which translates to “Jewel Steel” and is pronounced tah/mah/ha/gah/neh, is famous as the steel traditionally used to forge Japanese swords, but prior to the importation of steel from overseas, beginning with products from the Andrews Steel mill in England, it was once used for all steel production in Japan.

Before Admiral Perry’s black ships re-opened the many kingdoms and fiefdoms scattered across the islands that now comprise modern Japan, the only local source for natural iron was a material called Satetsu, a loose surface iron written 砂鉄 in Chinese characters, meaning ”sand iron,” and pronounced sah/teh/tsu. Satetsu looks exactly like a black sand. It is quite common throughout the world, as you may discover if you drag a magnet through a sandy river.

Typically found in rivers and estuaries, for many centuries the area around Yasugi City in Shimane Prefecture was a prime source.

Satetsu iron, loose and with a magnet

Satetsu was historically harvested in Japan using dredges and sluices creating horrendous environmental damage. Fortunately, the days of wholesale estuary destruction are in Japan’s past.

Although Aluminum is the most abundant metal on this rock we call home, iron is said to make up 34% of the earth’s mass. Japanese satetsu as harvested is a fairly pure form of iron lacking nearly all the impurities typically found in iron ore from mines.

Historically satetsu was refined in rather crude furnaces called ” tatara” to form clumps of brittle, excessively-high carbon steel.

A tatara furnace in operation. Satetsu is combined with charcoal and heated over several days. The resulting bloom steel, called “Tamahagane,” settles to the bottom in clumps and puddles and is removed by breaking the furnace apart.
出来上がった巨大な鉧を引き出します
The tamahagane that melted to the bottom of the tatara furnace being pulled out of the factory building.
https://story.nakagawa-masashichi.jp/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/tamahagane02.jpg
Freshly-smelted Tamahagane. Being raw iron, it oxidizes quickly.

Steel produced this way in the West is called “bloom steel.” Blacksmiths hammer, fold, and re-hammer these crumbly lumps to remove impurities and reduce/distribute desirable carbon forming the more homogeneous Tamahagane steel. This webpage has some interesting photos of tamahagane.

Related image
A clump of Tamahagane early in the forging process. Most of this material will be lost as waste before a useful piece of steel is born.
This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is tumi.JPG
After the Blacksmith hammers the raw clumps of Tamahagane hundreds of times, he then forms it into numerous small flat steel patties, which he breaks into the pieces shown in this photo in preparation for forge-welding them into a single larger piece of steel that he can then forge into a blade.

Tatara furnaces are still operated today producing Tamahagane in limited quantities for use by registered sword smiths. Tool blacksmiths use Tamahagane occasionally too out of interest in traditional materials and methods. It is expensive and difficult to work, with lots of waste.

A sawsmith who was active both before and after the availability of British steel on the island of Shikoku in Japan is recorded as saying that imported foreign steel increased saw production efficiency in his area tenfold. Clearly, Tamahagane was very labor intensive.

Mr. Kosuke Iwasaki, a famous metallurgist and blacksmith, described forging Tamahagane as being like “hammering butter” because it flattened and spread too quickly and unpredictably, at least compared to modern steels.

Besides its peculiar forging characteristics, compared to modern tool steels Tamahagane is a difficult material infamous for being easily ruined and extremely sensitive to temperature during all phases of forging and heat treatment.

In use, tools made from Tamahagane behave differently from modern commercial steel, or so I am told. I own and use a straight razor custom forged from Tamahagane for me many years ago by Mr. Iwasaki. I also own antique Scheffield and German razors, but my Iwasaki razor puts them all to shame in terms of sharpness, edge retention, and ease of sharpening. I also own a couple of antique Tamahagane saws, but I have not used them much, nor have I used Tamahagane chisels, planes or knives, so my experience is limited to this one wickedly sharp little blade.

My beloved Tamahagane cutthroat razor by Iwasaki

Why do I bother Gentle Reader with this story of ancient techniques and obscure products no longer viable? Simply because Tamahagane and the cutting tools and weapons it was once used to produce had a huge practical and cultural influence on both Japanese history and the Japanese people’s attitude towards weapons and cutting tools, in your humble servant’s opinion.

Although imported Western steel served Japan well during its advance to modernity, the memory of the performance of cutting tools made from Tamahagane remained alive in the national memory. Indeed, I am convinced the Japanese people’s love and fear of sharp things is not only psychological but genetic, although I have not seen any studies on the “sharpness gene.” But that is a story I will save for the next time we are enjoying a mug of hot coco together around the iori fire on a moonlit Autumn night. May that evening come soon.

Steel Production in Modern Japan

Enough ancient history. Let’s jump back into the tardis and travel to the late 1950’s so we can shift our focus to more modern steels. No you can’t bring back souvenirs. I don’t care what Doctor Whatsit did with his tardis, we are responsible time travelers and will avoid creating casual conundrums. Besides, the import taxes are pure murder. And please, do be careful no little kids sneak in with you.

When Japan began to mass-produce commercial steel from imported pig iron using modern techniques, the first tool steel made was identical to Western steels, including the impurities. These are still available today as the “SK” series of steels as defined by Japan Industrial Standards ( JIS).

Eventually, to satisfy the irrepressible sharpness gene of their domestic customers, Japanese blacksmiths and tool manufacturers pressured Japanese steel companies to produce steels with fewer impurities and with performance characteristics approaching traditional Tamahagane.

Rising to the challenge, Hitachi Metals endeavored to replicate the performance of Tamagane using modern smelting techniques and imported pig iron and scrap metal instead of expensive and environmentally unsustainable satetsu.

Ingots of Swedish pig iron

Hitachi purchased and modernized an old steel plant in Yasugi for this purpose. They formulated the best steel they could make using the best pig iron they could find, mostly from Sweden, an area famous for hundreds of years for producing especially pure iron ore. The results were Shirogami Steel (pronounced she/roh/gah/mee/koh 白紙鋼), Aogami Steel (pronounced aoh/gah/mee/koh 青紙鋼), and Kigami Steel (pronounced kee/gah/me/koh and written黄紙鋼) meaning “Yellow Label Steel.” Later, they developed Aogami Super steel (青紙スパー ) and Silver Label Steel (stainless steel). Each of these products are available in various subgroups, each having a unique chemical formulation.

For a time, Hitachi marketed these steels with the “Tamahagane” designation. Problematic, that. Indeed, many saws and knives were stamped “Tamahagane” when these steels were first introduced.

With the increased popularity of Japanese knives overseas, several Japanese manufacturers have once again adopted this problematic practice of naming the steel their products are made from as “Tamahagane” despite being made of common steels and even stainless steels. Because these spurious representations were and continue to be made for the purpose of increasing profits for companies that clearly know better, in your humble servant’s opinion even the stinky label of BS is too good for them.

Caveat emptor baby.

Chemistry

We tend to think of steel as a hard metallic thing, but lo and behold, ’tis a chemical compound. Few chemicals humans make are absolutely pure, and while White Label, Blue Label, and Yellow Label steels have exceptionally low amounts of undesirable contaminants, they do exist. Dealing with the results of these impurities has been the bane of blacksmiths since the iron age.

The most common undesirable impurities include Phosphorus (reduces ductility, increases brittleness, and messes with heat treating), Silicon (a useful chemical but too much decreases impact resistance), and Sulfur (a demonic chemical that reduces strength, increases brittleness and warping). Obviously, something must be done about these bad boys.

Some people imagine that, through the Alchemy of Science, impurities are simply “disappeared” from steel during smelting. While some impurities can be eliminated through heat and chemical reactions, it is not possible to reduce the content of those listed above to insignificant levels through smelting alone.

Undesirable chemicals can be tolerated in steel to some degree because, like arsenic in drinking water and carbon monoxide in air, below certain levels they cause no significant harm. The best solution we have discovered is to reduce the concentration of impurities to acceptable levels by using ore and scrap that contains low levels of impurities to begin with, and constantly test, and reject or dilute the ”pot” as necessary to keep impurities below acceptable levels. This practice is known as “Solution by dilution.”

White Label steel is plain high-carbon steel without other additives, while Blue Label, Silver Label, and Aogami Super steels have various chemicals added to achieve specific performance criteria. Please see the flowchart below.

Production Flowchart of Yellow Label, White Label, Blue Label, and Super Aogami Steels
A flowchart outlining the manufacturing process

Another technique used to mitigate the negative effects of impurities found in steel ore is to add chemicals to the mix. Chrome, molybdenum, vanadium, tungsten and other chemicals are added to create “high-alloy” steels that can be more predictably forged and heat-treated, are less likely to crack and warp, and will reliably develop useful crystalline structures despite detrimental impurities. Such high-alloy steels can reliably produce useful tools in mass-production situations by untrained labor and with minimal manpower spent on quality control. But no matter the hype, such chemicals do not improve sharpness or make sharpening easier.

If you look at the table below, you will notice that White Label and Blue Label steels both have the same minute allowable amounts of harmful impurities such as Silicon, Phosphorus, and Sulfur.

The table below is a summary of a few tool steels in Hitachi Metal’s Japanese-language catalogue. A PDF can be found at this LINK.

Chemical Table of White Label, Blue Label and Aogami Super Steels

Product Designation Shirogami 1 (White Label 1)Shirogami 2 (White Label 2)Aogami 1 (Blue Label1)Aogami 2
(Blue 2)		Aogami Super
Carbon1.3~1.4%1.20~1.30%1.30~1.40%1.10~1.20%1.40~1.50%
Silicon0.10~0.200.10~0.200.10~0.200.10~0.200.10~0.20
Manganese0.20~0.300.20~0.300.20~0.300.20~0.300.20~0.30
Phosphorus<0.025<0.025<0.025<0.025<0.025
Sulfur<0.004<0.004<0.004<0.004<0.004
Chrome0.3~0.050.20~0.050.30~0.05
Tungsten1.50~2.001.00~1.502.00~2.50
Molybdenum0.3~0.5
Vanadium
Cobalt
Annealing Temp °C740~770°cooled slowly740~770°cooled slowly750~780°cooled slowly750~780°cooled slowly750~780°cooled slowly
Quench Temp°C760~800°water760~800°water760~830°water or oil760~830°water or oil760~830°water or oil
Tempering Temp°C180~220°air180~220°air160~230°air160~230°air160~230°air
Hardness HRC>60>60>60>60>60
Primary UsagesHighest-quality cutlery, chisels, planesHigh-quality cutlery, chisels, axes, sicklesHighest-quality cutlery,  planes, knivesHigh-quality cutlery, planes, knives. sicklesHigh-quality cutlery,  planes, knives
Chemical Table of White Label and Blue Label steels as well as Aogami Super (this table can be scrolled left~right)

Carbon of course is the element that changes soft iron into hardenable steel, so all five steels listed in the table above contain carbon, but you will notice that White Label No.1 has more carbon than White Label No.2. Likewise, Blue Label No.1 has more carbon than Blue Label No.2.

The greater the carbon content, the harder the steel can be made, but with increased hardness comes increased brittleness, so White Label No.1 is likely to produce a chisel with a harder, more brittle blade than one made of White Label No.2.

Accordingly, White Label No.2 steel makes a wonderful saw, but sawblades forged from White Label No.1 tend to be fragile unless the blacksmith removes excess carbon during forging to improve toughness.

In the case of chisels, plane blades, and kitchen knives intended for professional use, White Label No.1 is the first choice followed by Blue Label No.1 steel.

Where high performance at less cost is required, Blue Label No.1 or Blue Label No.2 are often preferred.

With impurities and carbon content the same, the chemical difference between White Label No.1 and Blue Label No. 1 then is the addition of chrome and tungsten, elements which make the steel tougher, much easier to heat treat, and reduce warping and cracking, thereby yielding fewer defects with less work. Chrome, and especially tungsten are expensive chemicals that make Blue Label steel costlier than White Label steel, but with easier quality control and fewer rejects, overall production costs are reduced.

All things considered, and this is a critical point to understand, compared to White Label steel, Blue Label steel is easier to use, and more productive despite being a more expensive material. Indeed, many blacksmiths and all mass-producers prefer Blue Label steel over White Label steel, when given a choice, because it is easier to use and more profitable, not because it makes a superior blade.

Many wholesalers and retailers insist that Blue Label steel is superior to White Label steel because it is costlier and contains elements that make it more resistant to wear and abrasion intimating that it will stay sharper longer. To the easily deceived and those who do not follow this blog this may make perfect sense. But when wise Gentle Readers hear this sort of tripe they will know to gird up their loins and ready their BS shovels to keep their heads above the stinky, brown flood.

Wise Gentle Readers who choose blades forged from Blue Label steel will do so because they know that Blue Label steel makes a fine blade at less cost than White Label steel, not because Blue Label steel blades are superior in performance. Moreover, regardless of the steel used, they will always purchase blades forged by blacksmiths that possess the requisite dedication and have mastered the skills and QC procedures necessary to routinely produce high-quality blades from the more tempermental White Label steel. The reasons are made clear in the Technical Example below.

Quenching & Tempering

The process of hardening steel, called “heat treatment,” is key to making useful tools. Modern high-alloy steels vary in this regard, but in the case of plain high-carbon steels, the two primary stages (with various intermediate steps we won’t touch on) of heat treatment are called “quenching” and “tempering.”

In the case of quenching, the steel is heated to a specific temperature, maintained at that temperature for a set amount of time, and then plunged into either water or oil, locking the dissolved carbon in the steel into a rigid crystalline structure containing hard carbide particles. After this process the steel is brittle enough to shatter if dropped onto a concrete floor, for instance; Basically useless.

To make the steel useful for tools it needs the next step in the heat-treatment process, called “tempering,” to adjust the rigid crystalline structures created during the quench, losing some carbides, but making the steel less brittle and much more tougher. This is achieved by reheating the steel to a set temperature for a set period of time and then cooling it in a specific way. This heating and cooling process can happen in air (e.g oven), water, oil, or even lead. All that really matters is the temperature curve applied. Every blacksmith has their own preferences and procedures.

With that ridiculously overly-simplified explanation out of the way, let’s next take a gander at the “Quench Temp” row in the table above which indicates the acceptable range of temperatures within which each steel can be quenched (using water or oil) to successfully achieve proper hardness. If quenching is attempted outside these ranges, hardening will fail and the blade may be ruined.

In the case of White Label steel, Gentle Reader will observe that the quenching temperature range is 760～800°C, or 40°C. Please note that this is a very narrow range to both judge and maintain in the case of yellow-hot steel, demanding a sharp, well-trained eye, a good thermometer, proper preparation, and speedy, decisive action. Just to make things worse, even within this allowable range, a shift of temperature too far one way or the other will significantly impact the quality of the resulting crystalline structure, so the actual temperature variation within the recommended quench temp range an excellent blacksmith must aim for is more like ± 10˚C.

Compare this range of quenching temps to those for Blue Label steel with an acceptable quenching temperature range of 760～830°C, or 70°C of range, a 75% increase over White Label steel. That’s huge.

Let’s next consider the recommended tempering temperatures.

For White Label steel, the tempering temperatures are 180～220°C, or 40°C of range. Blue Label steel’s temperatures are 160～230°C, or 70°C of range, once again, a 75% greater safety margin.

The practical temperature range for quenching and tempering Blue Label steel is still quite narrow, but this increase in the allowable margin of error makes the job a lot easier, making Blue Label Steel much less risky to heat-treat successfully than White Label steel.

Judging and maintaining proper temperatures during forging, quenching and tempering operations is where all blacksmiths, without exception, fail when they first begin working plain high-carbon steel. The guidance of a patient master, time and perseverance are necessary to develop the knack. Experience matters.

I hope this partially brings into focus the challenges these two steels present to the blacksmith.

If you seek greater adventure, please look online to find similar data for many of the popular high-alloy tool steels. Comparing those numbers to White Label steel and Blue Label steel will help you understand why mass-producers of tools, with their lowest-possible-cost mindset, non-existent quality control efforts, and workforce of uneducated peasant farmers instead of trained blacksmiths, prefer them for making the sharpened screwdrivers represented as chisels nowadays.

Warpage & Cracking

A huge advantage of chrome and tungsten additives is that they reduce warping and cracking significantly. This matters because a blacksmith using plain high-carbon steel like White Label steel must anticipate the amount of warpage that will occur during quenching and shape the chisel, knife, or plane blade in the opposite direction so that the blade straightens out when quenched. This exercise requires a lot of experience to get right consistently, making White Label steel steel totally unsuitable for mass-production.

Steel is a magical material. When yellow hot, the carbon is dissolved and moves relatively freely within the iron matrix. Anneal the steel by heating it and then cooling it slowly and the carbon molecules will migrate into relatively isolated clumps with little crystalline structure leaving the steel soft. But if the steel is heated to the right temperature and suddenly cooled by quenching, the carbon is denied the time and freedom it had during the annealing process, instead becoming locked into the iron matrix forming a hard, rigid crystalline structure. This iron/carbon crystalline structure has a significantly greater volume than pure iron, which is why the blade wants to warp when quenched.

Adding chrome and tungsten and other chemicals reduces this tendency to warp.

An interesting example is a sword blade. A Japanese sword blade is typically shaped either straight or curved towards the cutting edge before quenching, but during quenching the blade warps and curves without encouragement from the blacksmith. The skill and experience required to pre-judge the amount of this warpage and the resulting curvature of the blade, and then compensate while shaping the blade before quenching to achieve the desired curvature post-quench is not something one learns in just a few months or even years.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is IMG_7583-1024x683.jpg
A Japanese swordsmith with a blade made from high-carbon Tamahagane poised for quenching. Notice how straight the blade is. He has invested months of work into this blade to this point and a misjudgment or even bad luck in the next second can waste it all. Not a job for the inexperienced or timid.
Related image
After quenching, the resulting warpage is dramatic, but according to plan. The swordsmith must anticipate this distortion and shape the blade to compensate prior to the quench if he is to avoid unfortunate results. Notice the mud applied to the blade before quenching to control the formation of crystalline structures, achieve differential hardness, and control warping. Tool blacksmiths are faced with the same challenges on a smaller scale but more frequently.

Unlike Tamahagane, however, modern commercial steels containing alloys like chrome and tungsten warp much less, and suffer far fewer shrinkage cracks.

Aogami Super is another steel in the table above. It’s an interesting steel, containing more carbon than both White Label steel and Blue Label steel and a lot more tungsten than regular Blue Label steel. Consequently, it is even more expensive. Aogami Super was originally developed as a high-speed tool steel especially resistant to wear. There are much better steels available for this role now, but Aogami Super is still hanging in there.

But all is not blue bunnies and fairy farts because high-alloy steels have some disadvantages too. 

Those who hype high-alloy steels always praise to the heavens the “wear-resistant” properties Chrome and Tungsten additives afford. When the subject is woodworking handtool blades, however, please understand “wear resistance” to mean “a bitch to sharpen,” and/or “not very sharp.”

Tungsten makes the steel warp less and expands the heat-treat and tempering temperature ranges significantly leading to fewer defects during production. But the addition of tungsten also produces larger, tougher crystals that simply can’t be made as sharp as White Label No.1, and that makes the blade much more difficult, unpleasant, and time consuming to sharpen, all while wasting more sharpening stone material in the process.

White Label steel has no additives other than carbon. It does not need additives to compensate for or to dilute impurities because its production begins with exceptionally pure pig iron, mostly from Sweden (for many centuries the source of the purest iron in the world), and carefully tested and sorted scrap metal. Both White Label and Blue Label steels, if properly hand-forged and heat treated by an experienced blacksmith with high quality standards, will have many more and much smaller carbide clumps distributed more evenly throughout the iron crystalline matrix producing a ” fine-grained” steel of the sort coveted since ancient times

Nearly all the tool steel available nowadays contains high percentages of scrap metal content. Scrap metal is simply too cost effective to ignore. Careful testing is the key to using scrap metal advantageously.

Performance Differences

Gentle Reader may have found the historical and chemical information presented above interesting, but they do not really answer questions you may have about the performance differences between these steels, and when presented a choice, which one you should purchase. Your humble servant has been asked and answered these questions hundreds of times, and while only you can decide which steel is best for you, I will be so bold as to share with you the viewpoint of the Japanese blacksmith and woodworking professional.

Long story short, in the case of planes and chisels, the typical choices of steel are still White Label No.1, White Label No.2 or Blue Label No.1. These steels will not be available much longer.

If you are dealing with honest blacksmiths and honest/knowledgeable retailers with experience actually using, not just talking about and selling, tools, you will have observed that a specific plane blade, for instance one made from Blue Label steel, will cost less than the same blade made from White Label steel, despite Blue Label steel being a more costly product.

At C&S Tools a 70mm White Label No.1 steel plane blade cost 77% more than one made from Blue Label No.1. This means that the blacksmith’s average cost in terms of his labor (overhead, forging and shaping cost being equal) is also around 77% greater than Blue Label steel, a direct reflection of his potential additional time expenditure due to risk of failure.

White Label steel simply warps and cracks more, but when failure occurs it only becomes apparent after all the work of laminating, forging and shaping are complete. Ruined steel cannot be reliably re-forged or re-used, so all the material and labor costs up to the point of failure are simply wasted like an expectation of honesty in a California politician. It is not a material for careless people or newbies. The steel that is, not the politician who is certainly irredeemable.

So if White Label steel blades are riskier to make, with more wastage, and therefore more expensive, what are the performance characteristics that make White Label steel blades a favorite with professional Japanese craftsmen? Two primary reasons: First, properly made White Label steel blades can be made sharper. This makes the craftsman’s work go quicker and more precisely.

Second, properly made White Label steel blades are easier, quicker and more pleasant to sharpen. That sums it up. To some people this difference matters a great deal; To others, not so much.

Is White Label steel worth the extra cost? I think so, but the performance differential is not huge, and only someone with advanced sharpening skills will be able to take full advantage of the difference. For most people on a tight budget, or in the case of woodworking situations where sharpness is not critical, and sharpening speed and pleasure are not driving factors, then a less-expensive Blue Label steel blade is perhaps a better choice. It absolutely makes a fine tool that does a great job of cutting wood.

Let’s shovel some more BS out of the way by performing the mandatory experiment of taking a high-quality White Label steel blade and a high-quality Blue Label steel blade, sharpening them identically using the best stones and advanced technique, test them to cut some wood, and then consider the answers to the following two important questions:

Question 1: Will the additional sharpness of a White Label steel plane blade create a smoother, shinier finish surface on wood than a Blue Label steel blade?

Answer 1: Definitely no. But since it started out a little sharper, it will cut a little better a little longer.

Question 2: In the case where edge-retention, cutting speed, and cutting precision are more important than a shiny finish, which absolutely applies to chisels and knives, will the additional sharpness of a properly made and proficiently sharpened White Label steel blade improve a woodworking tool’s cutting speed, edge-retention, precision and control?

Answer 2: Absolutely yes. On condition that the user possesses the skills to achieve and maintain that extra degree of sharpness. There is a reason sharpening has always been the first essential skill in woodworking.

These are the reasons why we don’t even offer chisels made from Blue Label steel, or even White Label No.2 with its lower-carbon content, and resulting reduced hardness.

But whether plane blade, chisel or knife, a properly forged and heat-treated blade made by an experienced professional blacksmith from simple White Label steel will always be quicker and more pleasant to sharpen than if made of Blue Label steel with its added sticky chrome and hard tungsten. To the professional that has the need for the additional sharpness as well as the skills necessary to produce and maintain it, that’s a difference many find worth the extra cost.

I daresay many of our Beloved Customers agree.

A Technical Example

You may find all this technical stuff a bit obscure, but perhaps a real-world example with pretty pictures will help bring things into focus. Please see this informative article by Niigata Prefecture’s Prefectural Central Technical Support Center. If you input the URL into Google and use the translate feature a decent English-language version can be seen. Some of the key results are copied below.

The steel being tested in the study outlined below is White Label No.2 steel (row 2 on page 4 of the Hitachi catalogue pdf). They heat-treated seven samples and listed the results. In each case, the quench temp varied from 750˚~900˚C (1382˚~1652˚F) in water, but the tempering temp was kept constant at 180˚C (356˚F). Figure 4 below at 775˚C (1427˚F) shows the best, finest, most uniform crystalline (Austentite) structure. Lower temps are not as good. Higher temps are worse. A 25˚ variation one way or the other made a big difference.

The photographs below tells the story graphically. The white stuff visible in the photographs is Ferrite (iron), while the black stuff is spherical carbide (Cementite). When Ferrite and carbon combine to form a hard crystalline structure, desirable Martensite is formed, although there are several steps in between we will not touch on. This subtle change is the essence of the ancient Mystery of Steel, and the keystone to modern civilization.

Fig.1 shows the steel before quench. Notice how the soft Ferrite and spherical carbon are isolated from each other indicative of little crystalline structure and a soft metal. No significant Martensite is visible.

Fig.1: Pre-heat treat condition of Shirogami No.2 steel.

The table in Fig.2 below shows Vickers Hardness on the vertical axis and quench temperature (with a 20 minute soak) on the horizontal axis. Notice how hardness makes a big jump between 750˚C and 775˚C. This is the sweet spot.

Fig.2: Vickers Hardness vs. Quench Temp

Fig. 3 below shows the crystalline structure at a quench temp in water of 750˚C, after a 20 min. soak, followed by tempering at 180˚C for one hour, followed by air cooling. This is 10˚C below the manufacturer’s recommended quench temp. Notice how the ferrite and spherical carbon are mixing, forming some gray-colored Martensite, but there are still big lakes of Ferrite visible. This is not acceptable.

Fig. 3: Quench Temp = 750˚C, 10˚C less than the recommended quench temp

Fig. 4 below shows the crystalline structure at a quench temp in water of 775˚C, after a 20 min. soak, followed by tempering at 180˚C for one hour, followed by air cooling. Notice how the Ferrite and spherical carbon are well-mixed forming pretty grey Martensite, indicating that this is close to the ideal quench and tempering protocol; The sweet spot. The crystalline structure shows few lakes of Ferrite or islands of carbon typical of durable, hard, fine-grained steel. A mere 25˚C increase in quench temp has yielded a large improvement.

Fig.4: Quench Temp = 775˚C. Well within the recommended quench temp.

Fig. 5 below shows the crystalline structure at a quench temp in water of 800˚C, after a 20 min. soak, followed by tempering at 180˚C for one hour, followed by air cooling. This is still within the quench temp range recommended by Hitachi. Notice how the Ferrite and spherical carbon are still fairly well-mixed, but the dark spherical carbon is becoming a bit more isolated from the ferrite forming more, darker groupings. While the Martensite formed is still quite adequate, the performance of this steel may not be as ideal as that in Fig. 4. Notice also that the hardness of the steel has dropped slightly.

Fig.5: Quench Temp = 800˚C. Max recommended quench temp.

Fig. 6 below shows the crystalline structure at a quench temp in water of 825˚C, after a 20 min. soak, followed by tempering at 180˚C for one hour, followed by air cooling. Notice how the crystalline structure has become less uniform than in Fig 5 after only a 25˚ increase in quenching temp.

Fig.6: Quench Temp = 825˚C. 25˚C greater than the manufacturer’s recommended quench temp. The crystalline structure is clearly inferior to Fig.5

Fig. 7 below shows the crystalline structure at a quench temp in water of 850˚C, after a 20 min. soak, followed by tempering at 180˚C for one hour, followed by air cooling. Once again, only a 25˚ increase in quenching temp has resulted in significant degradation in the uniformity of the crystalline structure as well as reduced hardness.

Fig.7: Quench Temp = 850˚C. The crystalline structure has degraded further.

Fig. 8 below shows the crystalline structure at a quench temp in water of 875˚C, after a 20 min. soak, followed by tempering at 180˚C for one hour, followed by air cooling. Once again, significant degradation in the uniformity of the crystalline structure and loss of Martensite is apparent.

Fig.8: Quench Temp = 875˚C. The crystalline structure has once again degraded further. This result is not acceptable in a quality blade.

Fig. 9 below shows the crystalline structure at a quench temp in water of 900˚C, after a 20 min. soak, followed by tempering at 180˚C for one hour, followed by air cooling. in Figure 9, there are many white tissues observed in addition to tempered martensite. The fibrous-appearing white stuff is considered retained Austenite, a formation that can later be converted into hard Martensite. Once again, only a 25˚ increase in quenching temp has resulted in significant degradation in the uniformity of the crystalline structure as well as reduced hardness.

Fig.9: Quench Temp = 900˚C. The crystalline structure has obviously become less uniform. Not acceptable.

Clearly, Shirogami No.2 steel can be a very good tool steel, but it is also obvious that it is extremely sensitive to heat-treatment technique, requiring knowledge, experience and care to produce good results.

YMHOS

A cross-section of the Eidai tatara furnace (also pictured at the top of this article) with human-powered blowers to right and left. The central furnace shows satetsu as the first layer resting on charcoal with the fire below. More layers of satetsu and charcoal are added as the process moves forward. The resulting mass of Tamahagane settles to the bottom of the furnace, but does not drop into what appears to be, but is not, a void below.

YMHOS

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Relevant Posts

Tool Maintenance: Corrosion Prevention

A Rusted Plane Blade by Hatsukuni. What did it do to deserve such horrible neglect?

“How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life!”

Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ulysses

Between damaged tools and guns, corrosion prevention has been a high priority for your humble servant over the years motivating me to purchase many corrosion-prevention products and test them in various climates. After climbing mountains of hype and swimming floods of BS I think at last I have something of value, perhaps even the genuine article, to share with Gentle Readers.

There are three aspects of corrosion prevention for steel tools we will address in this article: Corrosion due to sharpening, corrosion due to handling, and corrosion due to storage.

But first, to help Gentle Reader understand the basis for the measures I will recommend below, allow me to explain my sharpening philosophy.

Tool Philosophy

The word “philosophy” is of Greek origin and means the “love of wisdom.” I won’t flatter myself that I developed any original wisdom about maintaining tools, because the truth is I stole most of what I know from better men and the rest came ipso facto from my own screw-ups. Embarrassment is a fine teacher.

Professional craftsmen have no choice but to constantly maintain and repair the tools of their trade, but necessary or no, clients and employers often resent the time craftsmen they hire spend maintaining tools during the work day. After all, they are paying them to make a product, not to fiddle with tools. The perceptive craftsman will strive to understand his Client’s perspective if he wants to be trusted with profitable repeat work.

Therefore, I don’t sharpen, fettle, or repair my tools at the jobsite anymore than is absolutely necessary, and never in front of the Client or employer. This is not some feel-good yuppy-zen BS, but a serious, concrete work philosophy with physical and financial consequences. It was taught to me by experienced craftsmen in America and Japan, all since retired to the big lumberyard in the sky, who knew what they were about. It has served me well.

So how do I keep working when blades dull, planes stop shaving, power tools stop spinning and bits stop biting? Whenever possible I have multiple saws, planes and chisels in the types/sizes critical for that day’s work, and even extra bits and power tools on-hand, so that if a particular chisel or plane becomes too dull to get the job done, or a bit breaks, or a circular saw, for instance, goes tits-up, I need only pause work long enough to retrieve a sharp, ready to rock-n-roll replacement from my toolbox or tool bag.

This means I must purchase, sharpen, fettle and carry around more tools than I am likely to use during that workday. But since my tools are partners that earn their keep, it is not wasted money or effort. In fact, this philosophy has resulted in tool-maintenance habits that I believe ultimately save me time and money while improving my work efficiency all while reinforcing my Client’s or employer’s confidence in me, just as the old boys said they would.

Of course, after a few days of continuous work I will have accumulated multiple blades that need sharpening, so if I am to keep making sawdust I must sharpen them in batches of 5~10 at a time. And because I sharpen in batches, as do professional sharpeners, I have given great thought over the years to maximizing positive results such as speed, sharpness achieved, and economical use of stones while minimizing negative results such as rusted steel. I humbly encourage Gentle Readers to give these matters just a few seconds of consideration. What have you got to lose besides steel?

Corrosion Prevention: Wet Sharpening

The bevel of the Hatsukuni blade shown above. Lovely colors.

The corrosion risk to tools when sharpening is corrosion caused by residual water in the scratches, cracks and crevices of the blade, as well as accumulated chlorine from tap water, promoting rust, especially at the very thin cutting edge. Yes, that’s right, I’m more worried about corrosion dulling the cutting edge than of it creating red spots elsewhere on the blade.

When sharpening a batch of blades in my workshop, after a blade is done on the final finish stone, I dry it with a clean paper towel, apply a few drops of Corrosion Block, smear it around on the blade to ensure a complete coating, and set it aside to draw water out of the pores and seal the steel. It works.

Corrosion-X is another good, but stinkier, product. Neither is good enough long-term, however.

After the blades have sat for a while, usually at the conclusion of the batch, I wipe off the CB and apply CRC 3-36. This is a paraffin-based corrosion preventative that floats out water. Paraffin won’t evaporate or wick-off and is the best product I have found to prevent rust developing on a clean, moisture-free surface.

CRC 3-36 sprays on easily and soaks into everything, and if allowed to dry, will give good long-term protection, as in years. It’s especially good for saw blades because it gets deep into the teeth. But you don’t want to apply it to anything even a little wet with water because paraffin will seal it in promoting rust. Ergo, Corrosion Block first.

There are many rust-prevention products on the market, so I am not suggesting CRC3-36 is the best, only the one I prefer, partly because O Mistress of the Blue Horizons doesn’t object to the smell too strongly if it wafts into her holy chambers from the workshop. If I use Corrosion-X, however, she bars the door with a broom, bayonet fixed, and makes me strip before she’ll let me back into the house. A gentle flower, indeed. But I digress.

This system works fine for short-term, and even for long-term storage if I wrap the tool in newspaper or plastic to protect the coating.

When sharpening in the field, or if I will be using the tool right away, I don’t bother with spray products, but just strop the blade on a clean cloth or the palm of my hand to generate friction heat, apply some oil from my oilpot, and call it good.

If you don’t own and use an oilpot already I won’t call you an idiot, but I still remember the time long ago when that word was directed at me by someone I respected for not making and using one. He was right.

A useful trick I learned from sword sharpeners is to use chlorine-free, slightly alkaline water for sharpening. I mix Borax powder with distilled water in a plastic lab bottle to use to keep stones wet and to wash blades when sharpening. Washing soda works too. A little lye added to sharpening water will also increase its pH. Using such water will not entirely prevent corrosion, but it certainly slows it way down. Test it for yourself.

Corrosion Prevention: Handling

We sometimes pull out a chisel, saw, or plane blade to gaze upon it. They are lovely creatures, after all. There are two things to be aware of when doing this, however.

Recall that the adult human body is comprised of approximately 60% water, some of which is constantly leaking out of our skins mixed with oils and salts. When you touch bare steel with your hands, skin oils, sweat, and the salt contained in sweat stick to the steel and will cause rust. It’s only a matter of how quickly and deeply.

The solution is to avoid touching bare steel you will later store away with bare fingers, and if you do touch the blade, wipe it clean and apply some oil from your oilpot or spray can right away before returning it to storage.

Gentle Reader may be unaware, but there can be no doubt that harsh words not only hurt the tender feelings of quality tools, but can directly damage them. How do I know that rude language offends steel tools, you say? Well, I have ears don’t I? In addition, over the years I learned a thing or two from professional Japanese sword sharpeners and evaluators, who are even more obsessed with rust than your paranoid humble servant, no doubt because of the high financial and historical costs of corrosion in rare and expensive antique weapons.

With the gift to the entire world of the Wuhan Virus from the Chinese Communist Party, we have all become more aware of the human tendency to constantly spew droplets of bodily fluids, often containing nasty bugs, into the air around us sometimes with unpleasant consequences. A handsaw can’t catch the Commie Flu, but fine droplets may find their way to the steel surface when we talk to them or around them. Corrosion ensues.

In Japan it is considered rude to speak when holding a bare sword. Indeed, it is SOP to require viewers who will get close to a bare blade to place a piece of clean paper between their teeth to confirm the mouth is indeed closed and not spewing droplets of spit onto the blade.

I am not exaggerating the cumulative long-term damage fingerprints and moisture droplets expelled from human mouths and noses cause to steel objects. Any museum curator can confirm.

How does this all apply to woodworking tools? If Gentle Reader takes a tool out of storage and either talks to it, or to humans around it, please wipe it clean, apply oil, and rewrap it unless you will be using it immediately.

Tools deserve respect. Perhaps I’m superstitious, but I’m convinced that if we avoid rudely smearing salty sweat or spraying globs of spittle that would cause our tools to turn red and go away, they in turn will be less inclined to cause us to leak red sticky stuff. Some tools are vindictive if offended, donchano.

Corrosion Prevention: Storage

The air on earth contains dust and moisture. Dust often contains abrasive particles harder than steel as well as salts and other corrosive chemicals. We must keep these particles and chemicals away from our tools.

Air also contains moisture that, given access and a temperature differential, can condense on steel tool blades causing condensation rust.

Your humble servant discussed these matters in length in earlier articles about toolchests, but a critical criteria of proper storage is to prevent dust from landing on tools, and to prevent the tools from exposure to airborne moisture and temperature differentials. A closed, tightly sealed, clean container, cabinet, toolchest or toolbox is better for tool storage than pegboards or shelves.

If Gentle Reader does not already have such a tool container of some sort, I urge you to procure or make one.

Tool Rolls

The tool roll at the far left is leather. Notice the rust stains on the roll and the rusted chisel. The cotton tool roll in the center is newer. Notice the rust stains. The 5 chisels in the far right photo were stored in this tool roll for years. Notice the rust. The owner of these tools thought his cloth tool roll was adequate since he just used the chisels for work. The damage is far worse than just cosmetic, however. Wasted time and money. And what does this say about the man?

Your humble servant owns and uses tool rolls. They are handy for transporting tools such as chisels, files rasps and saws, but they have limitations Gentle Readers need to be aware of.

The first problem with tool rolls is that they appear to protect the cutting edges of chisels and saws, but that is only wishful thinking because the delicate and dangerous cutting edges are only hidden behind a thin layer of cotton or leather. Guess what happens if you drop a cloth tool roll of sharp chisels onto a concrete slab.

If you bump a tool roll of chisels against another tool, then brush your hand against the now exposed but hidden cutting edges while digging in your toolbox, sticky red stuff may get everywhere. Will the bloodshed never end!?

Do tool rolls protect tools against corrosion? No, in fact they can make it much worse because fibers in contact with steel, especially organic fibers such as cotton, can wick moisture to the steel producing corrosion. Please see the photos above.

Leather tool rolls can be especially bad in some cases because of residual tanning chemicals.

I’m not saying don’t use tool rolls, only to be aware of their limitations and use them wisely.

As mentioned above, I do use tool rolls in the field. The trick to preventing rusted blades is to insulate them from the fabric, so I make little plastic liners from the hard but flexible plastic used for theft-proof retail product packaging that fit into the pockets. Just a strip of plastic cut wide enough to fit into the pocket tightly and folded in half. Besides preventing rusty blades (the crowns will still rust) these little liners make it much faster and easier to insert blades into the pockets without cutting the tool roll. They also help prevent blades from cutting through the cloth or leather. The price is right too.

If you need to use tool rolls for long-term storage, I recommend you clean the tools, coat them with a paraffin-based rust-prevention product, and wrap them full-length in plastic wrap before inserting them into the tool roll’s plastic-lined pockets.

If tools are faithful and profitable servants, indeed extensions of our hands and minds, don’t they deserve more from us while they are in our custody than a rusty, pitted, neglected ruin like the plane blade pictured above?

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 crickets be my only friends.

Our erstwhile apprentice from the clothing-optional workshop has dropped a chisel into the water while sharpening it, and laments the inevitable corrosion. Being bald as a bowling ball, I’m desperately jealous of her long, curly tresses, but it must get in the way when working on the stones.

The Essential Oilpot

Clean Wood

Redwoods

Infringe upon the rights of no one. Borrow no tool but what you will return according to promise. Take no wood, nor anything else but what belongs to you – and if you find anything that is not your own, do not hide it away, but report it, that the owner may be found.

Brigham Young

In this post your humble servant will offer some advice that, if followed, will save Gentle Readers time, money, and wear and tear on their valuable woodworking tools. These are not original techniques; I stole them long ago from professional woodworkers in Japan. Wise Gentle Readers will be as bold.

Inspection & Questions

Before we go any further, Gentle Reader, do me a favor. Check the soles of your steel planes. Unless they haven’t been used much, you will probably discover scratches, some of them may even be quite deep. Do you think whatever made these scratches might also have dulled the cutting edges of your planes at the same time?

What could have possibly created these scratches? Have iron pixies been using your planes to shave bricks?

Unless you have a serious pixie infestation, it probably wasn’t anything as large as a brick, but rather tiny particles in or on the wood you have been cutting. Could these vicious, hard particles have grown naturally inside the tree the wood you are using came from? Is there anything that grows naturally inside a tree that is harder than a plane blade’s cutting edge and big enough to cause such deep scratches? Perhaps these abrasive particles were maliciously concealed inside the growing tree by compadres of the shambling horde of 6-armed, green-skinned, Fanta-guzzling aliens that follow me everywhere?

Or could the damage have been caused by nails, screws or staples left in the wood? Perhaps. Pixie toenail clippings? Happens more often than we realize. Tiny fragments of a divorce lawyer’s heart? Maybe, but they are rare and tougher than stellite. No, it’s more likely the culprit is something harder and more insidious than even Murphy’s pointy purple pecker, a substance all around us, one we often ignore.

Nitty Gritty

Logging Redwoods in Humbolt County California, 1905

Politics and journalism aside, we live in a dusty, dirty world, and although the steel in your tool blades is very hard, ordinary dust and dirt contain plenty of particles much harder. I guaran-frikin-tee you that collision with even a small particle of mineral grit embedded in the surface of a piece of wood can and will damage a blade’s cutting edge.

You may believe the damage is minimal and of little concern, but every time your blade becomes dull, you must resharpen it. Every sharpening session costs you time pushing the blade around on stones, time not spent cutting wood. And sharpening turns expensive blades and stones into mud. This is time and money wasted, lost forever.

And the abrasive action of dirt and grit embedded in wood is not hard on just chisel blades, plane blades and the soles of steel planes, but is even harder on sawteeth and wooden planes.

The damage is not limited to just your handtools either. Take a closer look at the steel tables of your stationary equipment such as your jointer or tablesaw. Unless they are new, you will find scratches. Has that pervert Murphy been smokin dope and humpin sumpin on your jointer’s bed when you weren’t looking?

Nay, Gentle Reader, supernatural causes aside, and unless you have been grinding legal beagle body parts in your workshop, these scratches are clear evidence that the wood you’ve been working is neither as clean as it looks, nor as clean as it should be. You’ve gotta do something about that.

Ruba Dub Dub

So what can you do? Strange as it may seem, the simplest and surest way to get rid of dirt and grit is to follow your mother’s instructions about the cleaning the bathtub: Simply wash it with soap, water and a scrub brush, followed by a rinse.

Bet you never thought of washing wood before have you?

The idea is to wet, scrub and quickly rinse the dirt and grit off the wood, not to make the wood soaking wet, so none of that “rinse and repeat” nonsense, and don’t get carried away with the hose. A bit of dishwashing soap or borax mixed in the water bucket will help lift out dirt and grit.

Don’t forget to pat each board down immediately afterwards with clean rags to remove surface water. Then separate each board, stand it on stickers on-end, or rest it on-edge, and allow time and circulating air to dry it out of the sun.

Remember to wet both sides of each board to minimize warping. And don’t soak a lot of water into the ends.

Disclaimer: It is not well suited for thin material or laminated wood products that might easily warp, or if you are in a hurry, or if you lack adequate space to properly air-dry the wood. 

Whether you wash the wood with water or not, be sure to do at least the following two steps on every board before you process it with your valuable tools.

Scrub Scrub Scrub

First, use a steel wire brush to dry-scrub all the board’s faces both with and across the grain. Yes, I know it makes the surface rougher. Tough pixie toenails. Scrubbing with a stiff steel brush is extremely effective at removing dust, dirt, embedded particles of grit, and even small stones from long grain. Give it a try and you will both see and smell the dirt and particles expelled. Pretty nasty stuff sometimes.

Saw Saw Saw

Second, and this is supremely important, before planing a board either by hand or using powertools, saw 2~3mm off both ends. This is why you have that circular saw with the carbide-tipped blade. If you can’t do that, at least use a steel block plane, drawknife, or other tool to chamfer all eight corners of the board’s ends to remove both surface dirt and embedded grit.

This step is critical because grit and even small stones frequently become so deeply embedded in endgrain that even a steel brush can’t dig them out. But sure as God made little green apples, Murphy will place them directly in the path of your plane blade.

If you do these things, your tools will thank you over many years with abundant chips, shiny shavings and cheerful little songs. Promise.

Yosemite Valley California, 1865

YMHOS

If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please use the questions 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, incompetent facebook, or thuggish Twitter and so won’t sell, share, or profitably “misplace” your information. If I lie may the bird of paradise fly up my nose.

The Matsui Precision Notched Straightedge

Matsui Precision Bevel-edged Straightedge with notch

You cannot teach a crab to walk straight.

Aristophanes

This post is about a tool that looks quite ordinary but is in fact extraordinary in subtle ways.

Why Do Woodworkers Need a Good Straightedge?

When woodworking we need to be able to mark and measure straight lines and examine the precision of edges and surfaces. There are several ways and tools available to accomplish these tasks, but the steel straightedge is efficient for shorter distances, assuming one’s straightedge is up to the job.

For most woodworking tasks we don’t need a precision straightedge. But for those few activities where it is necessary, nothing can take its place. So what are some of those activities? I can suggest a few from my experience:

  1. I use a precision straightedge as a “Standard” to check that my working straightedges and squares (the ones that are used and abused daily) are truly straight and square. This is necessary because, during use, Murphy governs all operations, while pernicious Iron Pixies dance among the piles of dandruff on his shoulders. Due to their malicious ministrations, measuring and marking tools are easily damaged, wear-out, and lose tolerance so I need a reliable “Standard” to check them against regularly. Of course, you can’t check for straight or square unless you have a truly straight line/surface to index from. It would be silly to imagine that the edge of one’s tablesaw top or jointer table are perfectly straight without first checking it against a reliable standard;
  2. I use a precision straightedge to examine the soles of my handplanes to help me keep them straight, flat and free of wind because it’s very difficult to plane a flat surface with a screwy plane. No matter how much time I invest in truing my planes, I’ve found the results are never better than the straightedge used.
  3. Check that lapping plates and the float-glass plate I use for truing stones and plane soles remain within tolerances. Yes, they wear out too.
  4. Check that the tables of stationary equipment such as tablesaws, bandsaws, jointers, and planers are true, and that infeed/outfeed soles of handheld electrical planers are properly aligned;
  5. Check that surfaces of wooden components of special projects requiring extra precision are true.

Do you ever need to accomplish any of these tasks?

Tasks for Which the Matsui Precision Straightedge is Not Ideally Suited

The Matsui Precision Straightedge is not an expensive tool, but since it is one I rely on, it is most cost-effective to protect it from premature wear and damage, so the following are tasks for which I use a less-expensive and less-protected “working straightedge” instead of my Matsui precision straightedge:

  1. I don’t use it for checking sharpening stones. The Matsui straightedge can do this job with style, but after a few years of being pressed against (and dragged over) abrasive stones, the tool’s precision would be degraded. Better to use a less-expensive straightedge for this job, and check it occasionally against the Matsui Precision Straightedge to confirm it’s still straight. If it isn’t, fix or replace it.
  2. I don’t use it for daily general woodworking tasks. Once again, the Matsui straightedge can do general jobs with style, but after a few years of being pressed against (and dragged over) wooden surfaces, the tool’s precision would become degraded prematurely. Instead I use a “working straightedge” that has been checked against my “Standard” Matsui Precision straightedge;

How To Use a Precision Straightedge for Checking Tools and Surfaces

Neither the human hand nor eye can measure a straight line or a true plane with any precision unaided, but there is one technique older than the pyramids all woodworkers must be proficient at, namely to place a truly straight, simple straightedge on-edge on a surface to be checked, be it a board, a jointer outfeed table, or the sole of a plane, and shine a light source at the gap between the straightedge and the surface being examined. If gaps exist, light will pass between the edge of the straightedge and the surface being checked confirming the surface is not straight and/or flat. The human eye can detect even a small amount of light this way and both quickly and effectively judge how flat the surface being checked is with a surprising degree of accuracy.

Feeler Gauge

Another technique that yields more precise values without relying on Mark1 Eyeball is to place the straightedge’s beveled edge against the surface to be checked, and insert feeler gauges into gaps between the straightedge and the surface. If the feeler gauge selected won’t fit, then one replaces it with thinner gauges until one that just fits is found.

Once you know the value of the gap between your straightedge and the area of the board you need to true, for instance, you can divide the measured thickness of the shaving your planes takes in a single pass (easily checked with a vernier caliper) to calculate how many passes it will take to true the high-spots on a board. eliminating a lot of the guesswork that makes precise woodworking difficult at times.

To reliably perform these checks, we need a truly straight straightedge. Straight is a relative thing, but straightedges sold for woodworking are seldom straight because purveyors rely on purchasers to not bother, or even know how, to check the quality and precision of the straightedges they sell.

Another reason honest, precision straightedges are relatively rare among woodworking tools is that making a high-tolerance piece of hardened steel that is straight, and will stay that way, is hard work that most woodworkers are neither inclined to appreciate nor bother to check, much less pay for. Is ignorance bliss? I believe it is in the natures of our Gentle Readers to always strive to improve the quality and efficiency of their work. A high-quality precision straightedge is an essential tool in that blissful quest.

Challenges & Solutions

The dilemma of the straightedge is that it must be thick and rigid enough to prevent warping and flopping around in-use, but reasonably lightweight and not too bulky or it will be clumsy. At the same time, it must not be too thick, or it will block out most of the light passing between its edge and work-piece making it useless.

Another challenge the straightedge faces is the constant threat of damage. If the delicate edge is too soft, it will become dinged and deformed instantly becoming inaccurate. And if the straightedge rusts (the bane of steel since ancient times), precision will suffer.

What are the viable solutions? They are obvious and proven, but seldom implemented well. Here is how Matsui Precision does it.

Stainless Steel Construction

First, they use high-quality stainless steel to prevent corrosion. If you work in humid conditions or if you will admit to perspiring salt-laden moisture at times, then this is important, but not rare.

Properly-sized, Precision-ground & Polished

This straightedge is not an insignificant piece of stainless steel. It is available in various lengths, but in the case of the Matsui’s 400mm straightedge (a handy, reasonably-priced length), the blade is 34mm wide and 3mm thick, enough to keep the blade rigid in use and prevent warping, but not so wide or thick as to feel heavy or clumsy. It weighs 320gm, a nice balance of rigidity and weight.

Compact, lightweight tools made using quality materials efficiently have a deep genetic attraction to the Japanese people.

What is more rare is the fact that Matsui then precision-grinds and precision polishes the stainless steel (not the same thing) so the tool is as straight and flat as machinists require, because this is a tool designed to the higher standards of machinists, not just woodworkers.

Hardened & Trued

Matsui also hardens the stainless steel to ensure the tool is rigid and will resist wear and damage over its long useful lifespan.

During heat treating and grinding the metal warps slightly. After stress-relieving the tool, Matsui inspects each tool one-by-one and corrects irregularities or rejects those that cannot be sufficiently corrected. It’s called quality control, something that never happens in China or India in the case of tools intended for woodworkers.

Beveled Edge

To make it easy to see light passing between the straightedge and surface being checked, one edge is beveled. The importance of this detail cannot be overstated.

The Notch

The Matsui Precision Straightedge being used to check the sole of a 70mm finish handplane with a blade by Sekikawa-san. The notch fits over the cutting edge so one can check the sole with the blade protruding as it will be in-use. In this photo the blade has been extended waaay too far out of the mouth to make it easy to see the cutting edge. Please notice the light showing between the straightedge and the sole indicating that something is not right. The wedging pressure of forcing the blade to project this ridiculous amount has warped the block so that the most important part of the sole, the area directly in front of the mouth, is not touching. The point is that the notch makes it possible to check the sole with the blade projecting the intended distance, a job simply not possible with an ordinary straightedge.

In the case of the tool we are introducing here, Matsui cuts a small semi-circular notch in the beveled edge of the blade to provide clearance for irregularities in the surface being checked, such as welds, or in the case of woodworking tools the cutting edges of the blades of handplanes, electrical planers and electrical jointers. This is an important and unique feature.

Why is this notch so useful? The problem with using a metal straightedge to check/true the sole of a handplane has always been that, in order to correctly check for flatness/wind, the blade must be set to project from the plane’s mouth the same amount it should be when the plane is being used, because in the case of Japanese planes the wedge-shaped blade applies slightly different pressures on the wooden block at different depths in the block, producing variable degrees of deflection.

But if the blade is projecting from the mouth from the same amount as it will be in use, then the straightedge will ride on top of the blade preventing a proper examination, and at the same time, possibly dulling the blade and gouging the straightedge. The solution has always been to adjust the blade to not actually project, but to be just in-line with the sole, a fiddly process that has resulted in many dulled blades, scratched straightedges, and inaccurate examinations.

With the elegant Matsui Precision straightedge, however, the notch fits directly over the projecting blade avoiding the irritating and time-wasting fiddling normally required to get the blade in the exact position, one that ultimately yields an imperfect reading.

If you need to maintain handplanes, electrical woodworking tools, or do precision woodworking and need an accurate, reliable, lightweight, durable, reasonably-priced straightedge to help take the guesswork out of these jobs, this product is just what you need. I have been using one for years and couldn’t get by without it.

If you are interested, send us a message using the form below.

YMHOS

Kireaji 切れ味

‘Be careful you don’t cut yourself. The edges are sharp enough to shave with.’
‘Girls don’t shave’, Arya said.
‘Maybe they should. Have you ever seen the septa’s legs?”

George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

I mentioned in a previous article my belief that a love of sharp tools is embedded in the Japanese people’s DNA. I am convinced this is by no means limited to the people of these mountainous green islands. I know it is deep in mine too, and it may be in yours.

Whether they were made of bone, flint, copper, bronze or iron, humans of all races and all locations worked with axe and adze, chisel and scythe, sword and dagger to keep body and soul in close proximity for many thousands of years before written language was invented or Microsoft products crashed. Our reliance on and love of sharp tools is still part of our DNA, to one degree or another, and for good reasons.

The words we humans make and use give insight into our deeper natures, so a very brief lesson regarding a single word in the Japanese language, one that is an intentional, defining characteristic of our tools, and one you will not find in any textbooks, may be illustrative of this point.

Cutting Flavor

The word your most humble and obedient servant has in mind is “kireaji” 切れ味 pronounced “ki/reh/ah/jee. This word is comprised of two Chinese characters. The first of the two ideograms being 切 , which is pronounced in its un-conjugated form as “setsu” or “kiru,” meaning “cut.” This is an interesting character. People who study these things say it is an ancient combination of two characters. The small one on the left looks like the character for the number seven 七, but actually it represents a vertical and crosswise cut in the shape of a plus sign 十. The character to the right, 刀 , is pronounced “to” or “katana” and means “sword.” So “kiru” means to cut with a sword or blade.

The second character in the word is “Aji,” 味 meaning “flavor.” Combined, these two characters mean “cutting flavor,” but the resulting word has nothing to do with the human sense of taste and everything to do with the feeling transmitted to the user when a blade is cutting. This word is used in reference to all cutting tools from axes to swords to razors, and certainly for knives, chisels, and planes.

In the English language, the closest word we have is “feeling of sharpness,” I suppose, but it isn’t the same. The act of cutting, in the Japanese tradition, is a sensory experience, one that can be pleasant, in the case of a well-designed sharp blade, or unpleasant in the case of a clumsy dull blade. I think you now have a sense of what the word kireaji means, and how how it feels. Do you understand why it is an important word when talking about tools?

When we speak with our blacksmiths and sharpeners about the tools they produce, the kireaji we expect of their products is always part of the discussion. A blade can have a good kireaji (良い切れ味, an indifferent kireaji (どうでもいい切れ味）or a “distasteful” kireaji (不味い切れ味). It can be “brittle” (切れ味が脆い）or it can even be “sweet” (切れ味が甘い）meaning soft as a spoiled child. We always insist the first meaning be applicable because anything less is failure. Even if some of our customer’s tastes may not be refined enough to discern the difference, ours are.

We work closely with our blacksmiths and sharpeners to make sure they understand our requirements for sharpness. And just to be sure, we constantly test their blades to ensure compliance. If you buy a tool from us that has an especially sharp edge and looks like it may have been used lightly, please understand this is part of our QC efforts and not a return or a reworked reject.

If you know of other languages that have a similar idiom, please let us know in the comments section below.

Like the flavor of fine wine, rich chocolate or gourmet donuts (mmm donuts), the kireaji of cutting tools varies with materials, blacksmiths, and specifications. At C&S Tools we are not satisfied with outward appearance only, but take our products to a different level by making kireaji the very highest priority. This makes C&S Tools almost unique among retailers of edged tools.

Does kireaji matter to you?

Bon appetite!

YMHOS

If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please use the questions form located immediately below. Please share your insights and comments with all our readers in the form located further below labeled “Leave a Reply.” We aren’t evil Google or incompetent facebook and so won’t sell, share, or profitably “misplace” your information.