If you're working with wood, chisels
are a must for your toolkit.
I'm going to go over a basic range of chisels
available and give your some tips on use, care,
and maintenance.
Chisels come in a wide range of sizes and styles.
Choosing the right one comes down to the type of job
you want to use it for.
You can buy a set with a basic range
that will cover most DIY jobs.
I'm going to show you a few different types of chisels,
and how to use them.
Butt chisel.
A short chisel with beveled sides and a straight edge
is generally used for creating joints.
Bevel edge chisel.
Can get into acute angles with its beveled edges.
Framing chisel.
Similar to a butt chisel, except it has a longer blade
and is commonly used on building sites.
Carving chisels.
These are generally only used for carving.
Now, one of the most common uses for your chisel
is rebating out for a door hinge,
so I'm going to take you through a few basic steps
on how to use your chisel properly.
OK.
I'm just going to be using a bevel chisel.
Now, we've got two sides to it.
Obviously the back is flat and the front is the beveled.
So whenever you're using a chisel,
when you're scoring out around a line like this,
always have the back flat part right on your line.
So let's just steady that with your four fingers at the back.
Sit that nice and neatly on your line.
Now, I can strike this chisel here using a hammer,
because this does have a metal end on it.
If it didn't have a metal end on it,
I'd be better off using like a wooden mallet
so it's not going to damage the chisel.
Now, the first cut you want to make is going across the grain,
so let's just put the flat part facing out
and the bevel of the chisel facing in.
Give that a light tap around.
So let's just follow that line around.
Now that I've marked out the other shape using the chisel,
I'm going to come in and start removing some of the timber.
So now for moving out this timber,
I'm going to make sure that the bevel part of my chisel
is going to be against the surface,
and the flat part is sticking up.
That way, I'm not going to go deep into my timber.
It's always just going to keep scooping back up.
So let's just start a few mil back from the end.
And we just want to flick it up a little bit.
We don't need to remove it just yet.
And you can either go all the way down to your line
or come back to that on a second pass.
Now we can just break all those little fins out.
And we'll come back to our line on the edge of the timber.
And we're just going to give that a little bit
more definition there.
And then we want to come back onto our end
to ensure that we're going to cut the grain off.
And now let's just go back around on our line
pretty much to the depth we want now.
This time we can actually take our chisel
all the way down to our line.
So by having the bevel edge of the chisel facing down,
I've really got a lot of control.
I can control that chisel up or down
as to how much more of the timber I want to take out.
So then most of my timber is out now, so all I need to do
is just tidy that up.
And to do that, I'm going to drop the hammer
and just use my hand.
OK.
That's looking pretty sharp.
Now a little bit of maintenance on your chisels.
After you finish using them, you want
to store them somewhere nice and dry, ideally like a tool
chest, somewhere where they're not
going to get knocked into each other, either that
or hanging up, or put them in a chisel row.
Now also, if you're not going to use them for a while,
a good idea for your chisels is spray
a little bit of oil on them, like 3-in-One Oil or WD-40.
That way, it's going to keep away all the surface rust.
If you find you do get a little bit of surface rust on them,
here's a little tip for getting it off.
Got an old chisel like this.
What you need to do is take a little bit
of fine bit of steel wool and just rub that surface rust off.
That's going to come up.
Now, if you don't have any steel wool,
you could always use also a really fine
wet-and-dry sandpaper.
So after I've given that a clean-up, all I'm going to do
is spray that with a little bit of oil and store
those away where nothing's going to bang into them.
The idea of a chisel is having a really nice, sharp edge.
Now, everyone's got an old chisel tucked away
in their shed that they're used for cutting nails or opening
paint cans.
Now I'm going to show you how to bring this old girl back
to life.
The first thing we need to do when
sharpening a chisel on our grinder
is by taking off all this roughage here.
And to do that, I'm just going to put that
straight in on our grinder and create a 90-degree edge on it.
Now, there's a couple of really important things
you should know when sharpening a chisel on a grinder.
You really don't want to create any hot spots on it whatsoever,
so you just want to take your time, go across really nice
and slow.
And after a while, you want to start dipping it
in the water to cool it off.
So let's crack into it.
Now, I've taken off that really horrible edge,
and I'm just going to double-check with my square.
That's looking pretty good, so I probably need a little bit more
off the left-hand side.
So I'm just using my finger as a bit
of a guide up against there, just to stabilize it.
Just take it off a little bit at a time.
OK.
So that's looking nice and square.
The next thing we need to do is set the bevel
on the end of the chisel.
So to do that, I'm going to put that back on the wheel.
And we're working from our short point back to the sharp tip.
When we start this off, when we put our forefinger
on the back of the chisel, we're not going to move that at all.
That stays there the whole time we sharpen this chisel.
So we've just going to rest our forefinger
underneath our guard.
The chisel goes down.
And we're just going to work from the short point
all the way through and not move that finger whatsoever.
It's really important.
So you only want to go across a few times at a time.
Otherwise, it's going to start to heat up.
And dip that back in.
Now that's starting to take shape nicely.
As you can see, I'm working from the back edge of the chisel all
the way to the front.
And it's squaring everything up nicely.
And I've got one smooth line that's happening on there,
so that's showing I'm doing a good job.
Now that's starting to look pretty good.
So I've still got a fair bit of work to do on that.
I want to take this all the way so there
shouldn't be any daylight left whatsoever
on the end of the chisel.
If I can see daylight on there, I
know I still need to take a fair bit more
of the end of the chisel off.
So it's really important when you're doing this
that you don't put too much pressure on the wheel,
because you really don't want to heat that up whatsoever.
Otherwise, it's going to create a weak point in your chisel.
OK.
So we're just about there.
That's looking really, really sharp.
But I can still see a tiny bit of daylight
on the end of that chisel, so that's indicating to me
I still need to take that all the way off so nothing shines
on it.
Now as you can see, there's no light
shining on the edge of that chisel,
so now I'm ready to take it to my oil stone
and put our sharpening edge on it.
OK.
So we're just about ready to throw an edge
on the end of our chisel.
A couple of things about our oil stone.
There's generally two sides to it.
You've generally got a rough grit on one side and a smooth
on the other.
Now that we've already put a nice sharp edge on the chisel,
we're going to come back to our smooth side here.
And that's just going to tickle up the end of the chisel
to just lovely.
Just going to set that in there nicely and just
put a little bit of lubrication on here.
So the first thing we need to do when putting an edge on, let's
just set the chisel flat so it's on our bevel
that we already set.
And then what we're going to do, I've
got the chisel about 20 mil away from the back of my hand.
And I'm just going to kick that up
and that's just going to set my edge just lovely.
Instead of just going up and down on that oil stone--
if we'd kept on doing that when we're sharpening
a lot of chisels, we're just going to hollow out
the center of the oil stone.
We want to go in a figure-eight pattern.
That way, we're using the whole of the stone.
It doesn't take too long to get that edge on.
Let's have a wee little look.
Now, what you're seeing on the very edge here is a burr.
We're going to take that off later.
So I can see I still need a little bit
more sharpening of that edge, so we'll go back down.
More lubrication.
Set that flat on there.
Bring it back up 20.
OK.
That's looking really good.
So the last thing I need to do is just
set the chisel flat on our oil stone just
to take off any edge that might be on the back.
Right.
That's looking really good.
The last thing I need to do is take the burr off the edge.
To do that, I'm just going to use
the end grain of a piece of timber
and just flicking it like this.
Same effect as stropping it.
Just taking our burr off quite nicely.
That's ready to go.
So as you can see, our chisel is just lovely and sharp.
That's how to sharpen a chisel easy as.
Now you're a bit more clued up about chisels.
But if you need any more help choosing the right one
for the job, just ask in store.
They know what they're talking about.