Specialty Chisels For Your Shop

These five specialty chisels will be the perfect compliment to your bench chisels.

- Logan Wittmer

The amount of woodworkers that I meet that don’t have a good set of chisels nearly fl oors me. With the work I do, I couldn’t survive without my sharp set of bench chisels. Between fi ne-tuning joints, paring waste, and cleaning up problem areas, they may just be the most used tools in my shop. However, there are certain tasks that my standard bench chisels just don’t cut it (pun intended). In these instances, I’ll often reach for a set of specialty chisels that I keep on hand. Over the next pages, I want to show you some of my specialty chisels that help get you out of some sticky situations.

■ FRAMING CHISEL

This fi rst chisel that is in my specialty drawer is a large, 11/2" framing chisel. This wide, razor-sharp chisel is just what the doctor ordered when it comes to large paring tasks or taking a beating when hogging out waste. This particular chisel is made by Barr Quarton and, while an investment, a worthwhile one.

The benefi t of a framing chisel, compared to a bench chisel, is that they have extra weight, length, and mass. This makes them perfect for heavy chopping tasks, working with large timbers (such as the timber frame pieces above), and when making large paring cuts where the wide, long back of the chisel serves as a reference point. In fact, I used my Barr chisel to pare down the Kumiko pieces that are used in the wall shelf on page 44.

My large framing chisel may not be an everyday tool in my shop, but when I need the wide cutting edge, mass, and a razor-sharp edge, it’s hard to beat.

■ PARING CHISEL