Skewed Chisel

Would a chisel with a skew across its face be useful for getting into corners of mortises and other square holes? Instead of the cutting edge being 90 degrees to the body, it would be skewed by say 30 degrees.

The problem I'm trying to solve is cutting the corners out of a square hole. After the bulk of the material is removed with a drill bit, I then clean up the edges with the chisel. The corners often give me trouble, as they're not quite along the grain and not quite edge grain.

Puckdropper

Reply to
Puckdropper
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Don't think so except for very long slot mortises. They do make "Mortise Chisels" especially for working inside holes. They don't have ramped edges, just sort of a square shaft.

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Lee Valley is making a specialized square chisel taking the square chisel from a mortiser and adding steel to allow you to hammer with it. It was sort of invented or at least championed by Derrel Peart and now they make them.
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can use a router to make a slot mortise then square out the corner with these. I suggested they have a spring loaded guide that hangs out the bottom to help you line it up but they didn't implement my idea ;-(

Reply to
SonomaProducts.com

A skew chisel, carving skew chisel or a paring chisel should work just fine. Sharpen to use by hand, not with a mallet. A bent narrow carving chisel (gouge or scoop) will cut laterally, too.

Sonny

Reply to
Sonny

Yes, but straight chisels are most often used, if you don't use a square mortising chisel or a corner chisel.

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straight bevel-edge chisels

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mortising chisel

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$15 corner chisel

I usually use a 1/4" Marples with a urethane mallet on the ends, a 3/4 or 1" chisel on the sides of the mortise. The 1/4" should work on your square holes, depending on size.

-- Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself. -- Thomas Jefferson

Reply to
Larry Jaques

As others have mentioned, there are probably better tools to help with your particular problem, but nonetheless I find skew chisels to be some of the most useful tools in my arsenal, sometimes for the most non-obvious reasons. I have a set of right and left (you want both) 3/4" Crowns, which are just wonderful. However, and I found this to be true for most all brands, they came with a

30-degree skew (I think) and for the very first job for which I bought them I quickly found that I needed a 45-degree skew instead, so I reground them. I'm not sure why the use such a shallow skew, but I've never found a need for it and I've never regretted changing the angle of the skew.
Reply to
Steve Turner

30-degrees would probably be more handy than 45 in general woodcarving. I think the main purpose of the tool is, in that context, to get into hard to reach places.
Reply to
Bill

Puckdropper, Here's a corner chisel:

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Reply to
Kerry Montgomery

I recently learned, for turning wood, skews are 30=B0 rather than and is better than 45=B0, because a 45=B0 is more apt to catch the turning wood. Don't know if this turning skew angle has anything to do with other chisel's skew angle. My carving skews are about 30=B0.

Sonny

Reply to
Sonny

My reason for needing/wanting 45-degrees instead of 30 (or 60, depending on how you look at it) was to remove the waste left by the router bit when cutting the arch of a tombstone raised panel door, as illustrated here:

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the chamfered surface of the panel where the arch curves down and meets the short horizontal section, the angle formed at that intersection is much more acute than 60 degrees, so the default skew of the chisel was not of much use here.

Another place where I've found skew chisels to be incredibly useful is in trimming the various inner curved surfaces of my rocking chairs:

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you follow the top-right surface of the seat back to where it meets with the back leg, that curved surface in the back leg joint that turns upwards (and all the other curves similar to it) are perfect candidates for using a skew chisel. You can efficiently cut very graceful curves by holding the chisel bevel-down in one hand and levering it upwards with a twisting action, usually aided by pushing the blade with the thumb on the other hand.

Reply to
Steve Turner

I have a set of right and left (you want both) 3/4" Crowns, which are just wonderful. =============================================================== I've never had a Crown anything that was anything more than garbage. Maybe you got an exception. Maybe they have gotten better but, due to past experience, I would pay no more than a nickel for any Crown "tool".

Reply to
CW

pay no more

I don't know what Crown tools you're buying but that's not been my experience, at least not with their chisels. My skew chisels take and hold an edge beautifully, and are very well made, with nice rosewood handles and brass ferrules. I also have their sliding bevel and mortise marking gauge which I'm less enamored of, but I wouldn't call either of them "garbage". They may not be the best available, but they certainly get the job done.

Reply to
Steve Turner

[...snip...]

Well, it obviously won't get to the very bottom of the hole except in the corner. It seems to me that a skew chisel will have a lower angle of attack, much like using a plane skewed to the direction of push. Which should provide some benefit for fine paring, particularly working the end grain part of the mortise.

The obvious question is are your chisels sharp enough and what is your bevel angle and all that? Since you are a long time poster here I'd guess you know all about that stuff.

Here's some Narex skew chisels. I doubt you would find much better ones or any cheaper but worth having.

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just buy a couple of bevel edge chisels of the brand you prefer and grind them to the skew you prefer.

Reply to
Jim Weisgram

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