Forging woodworking tools

[Shawn Stennett]

My two biggest hobbies are woodworking and blacksmithing. I want to combine them into basically one hobby by making my own tools and forge legs and parts for my woodworking as well as making the handles and such for my tools. I have been working on tooling up in the blacksmithing area for a bit because it is where I am lacking. I have been forging myself hammers and punches lately.

I am thinking about making chisels, drawknives, holdfasts and whatever I can come up with. Anyone have any suggestions?

I plan on making something and then find someone to give it a try and give me some unbiased opinions and ways to improve them. I am probably going to do a few other things before I make the chisels, so are there any other ideas out there?

[Bruce Haugen]

Do you follow this guy?  He’s done some interesting tools.

[Shawn Stennett]

Yeah he forges some amazing stuff. He definitely takes the time to really finish everything off well. I enjoy his videos but wish there was some talking/explaining but understand that if he isn’t good at the speaking parts it would take away from the video instead of adding.

[AHill]

You may want to see if you can watch a few of the episodes from The Woodright's Shop with Peter Ross.  He's a blacksmith and frequently forged tools or hardware on the show.  Many of the shows are available on YouTube.  Peter was a blacksmith at Colonial Williamsburg and now teaches blacksmithing at New England School of Metalwork.

[wmickley]

My two biggest hobbies are woodworking and blacksmithing.  I want to combine them into basically one hobby by making my own tools and forge legs and parts for my woodworking as well as making the handles and such for my tools.  I have been working on tooling up in the blacksmithing area for a bit because it is where I am lacking.  I have been forging myself hammers and punches lately.  

I am thinking about making chisels, drawknives, holdfasts and whatever I can come up with.  Anyone have any suggestions?

I plan on making something and then find someone to give it a try and give me some unbiased opinions and ways to improve them.  I am probably going to do a few other things before I make the chisels,  so are there any other ideas out there?

There is a lot of material about 18th century chisels in the Seaton Chest book. The second edition has drawings of more than thirty chisels with dimensions and construction notes by Peter Ross who was Master Blacksmith at Williamsburg at the time. Today's chisels are very clumsy in comparison.

For information on holdfasts, look into Roubo's work. Today most holdfasts have almost no spring to them, but Roubo says a holdfast should be very flexible (plus elastique). The arm of his holdfast tapers from the post portion the whole way down and is only 1/8 to 1/6 inch thick where it reaches the pad.

[Hank Knight]

Warren's holdfast suggestion is a good one. Forged bench hardware seems to sell well to hand tool guys. There was a guy in Alaska that sold a bunch of forged holdfats several years ago. The demand was so great he eventually farmed the production out to a Russian blacksmith there. In addition to holdfasts, you might also consider planing stops.

url=https://flic.kr/p/MoRoQC][/url]IMG_0775 by Hank Knight, on Flickr

[Arlin Eastman]

I also want to do the black smithing and hope you do well.

[Bibliophile 13]

How about a froe? I'll bet you could find a healthy market for a hand-forged froe, especially among people who are really into green woodworking. And I'd imagine that a froe would be pretty easy to make.

I'd be fascinated to see somebody making hand-forged tang-chisels, too. You could even sell them un-handled, like they used to do in the 18th and 19th century, for people who want to built a truly period-correct set of hand tools.

Drawknives would be a good idea. In my experience, a lot of the new drawknives made today (e.g. the Lie-Nielsen) are just too heavy, or the handles are too short. The best vintage drawknives are light and graceful, and take a keen edge. You might well find a market for drawknives made in custom lengths and configurations.

[Shawn Stennett]

Thank you, I didn’t thing about the froe, I have some good new leaf spring that would work great for a froe I would think. I want to make some chisels for sure.