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I ordered and received an LMI glue clearing chisel. I have to admit, I'm a little disappointed. Although it does have an Hock blade, the sharpening was amazingly poor. It appears that the bar stock of the blade was held against a coarse bench grinder stone, and that was that. The cutting edge has large chipouts, and can't be considered a cutting edge. It isn't even vaguely square to the tool edge as well as having large chunks out of the "cutting" edge.

Now, being a hock blade, I know I can grind and hone a cutting surface on this tool and have a good chisel, so I'm not too upset, but I'm interested in knowing if this is the quality that others have received when they purchased this tool. What I received is what I would consider a chisel kit. I have a number of Lie Nielsen chisels that cost less, that were beautifully finished.
thanks, Mike

I bought the stew mac version and it came SCARY sharp.

Mike,

As I understand these chisels are a one off purpose built tool making them more expensive to produce. Just my thoughts but I would take the time to first put and decent edge on that Hock steel and put it to use on some brace carving before deciding if it was a good purchase or not. I suspect you will be happy once you do.

Cheers

Kim

I don't like them sharp. In fact I want them rather dull. When they are sharp they tend to grab and dig into the spruce.

I have basically switched to making a "chisel" out of spruce to clear glue with. So far it is the very best thing I have found. It does an excellent job and it doesn't cut into the braces or the tops.

_________________
Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Imbler, I know exactly what you are talking about, and such chisels straight from the factory are unacceptable...its one thing to have an edge that needs honing to be scary, its another to have actual chips in it!...

Brock makes an excellent point, for the simple procedure of scraping glue off you don't want a scary sharp edge....on the other hand you certainly don't want an edge which is going to mar the wood as the one you describe

I use a bit of wet spruce as well and never really thought to use the LMI chisel to clear glue. I got it quite recently from the swap, put and edge on it for brace carving and it seems fine and dandy. I went with this chisel as I feel the bend in the shaft gives better clearance for your hand allowing a very fine angle of attack.

Cheers

Kim

Maybe it needed proper sharpening Todd?

Mine works just fine and I do not see any great advantage to a double bevel in this particular application.

Cheers

Kim

Have you asked LMI? They are pretty good at standing behind their products.

_________________
It's not the miles ahead, it's the stone in your shoe


In Markham,Virginia

Glue chisels are supposed to have a square edge.. not pointy -- They are intentionally "dull" so they won't gouge the very light and soft wooden plates...

The curve is so you can get them down in next to braces and components without being way up at some crazy angle...

For brace carving, find some old Pattern Maker's chisels at a flea market or yard sale.

I have 2 old pattern makers chisels that I love dearly.... I also have a couple Blue Spruce paring chisels and a Pfeil carving gouge.... These are wonderful tools for shaving braces... but for Glue scraping duty -- I use a beater Home Depot Buck brothers butt chisel that hasn't been sharpened in years.... I think the shape of the LMI deal looks nice...

Good luck

John

Thank you Kim!!!
It's amazing the difference one tiny little bit of info can make.
I've been making the switch to HHG for a while now, especially for bridges, and have been reading all the tips and guides and threads I could find concerning it's use. One thing I keep hearing about is the ease of clean-up, just a sharpened scrap of spruce, wait till it cools a bit, and bob's your uncle. Well I keep trying to find the right time/temp and it keeps smearing. Kind of like trying to clean up boogers, it wants to stick and smear everywhere, and I wind up having to scrub with a wet rag. Not the simple clean-up I keep hearing about.

Then Kim in an aside above mentions, "I use a bit of wet spruce as well" to clean up glue. And there is the secret! Wet spruce! I just glued on a bridge, let the glue cool a bit, and this time I dipped my sharpened spruce in water and the HHG squeeze-out could just be scraped away with ease. It didn't stick and smear to every other surface. Easy clean-up at last. Just one tiny missing piece of info, I hadn't seen mentioned before or maybe it just didn't register with me before.

Hurray, you never know when that one vital piece of info about a simple procedure is going to pop up!

Thanks again Kim,
Joe

I bought one of those years ago and never liked it much but after seeing the Taylor brace gluing video, I ground the end flat and square and now it works great for clearing glue along brace edges. And no worry of slicing into the wood.

_________________
Tickle your guitar daily, and it'll tickle you back.

Thanks Joe,

Seems the older I get the more 'missing bits' I have.

Cheers

Kim

thanks for all the input - I had really purchased it more as a bent shank chisel rather than for glue removal, so the edge is important to me. I can fix that, so I will, but I will also take the advice to contact LMI to see if the ragged chipped edge is standard, or mine slipped past quality control,
Mike

Just bear in mind what they are designed for... scraping glue!

The hardness and edge retention may not really be as good as what you could get in a proper carving chisel... and carving chisels are pretty cheap. My pfeil gouge was like $25.00. You could probably get a Two Cherries for around the same price.

I bought my old patternmakers chisels 2 for $1.00 at a yard sale.
They were in rough shape... but they were still nice and long...
They cleaned up easily enough and are Perfect for shaving braces.

Good luck

John

It's sold as a glue clearing chisel first and says that you could use it for carving braces which to me means it would have to be sharpened for such a job.

That's is precisely why I shelled out the moe at the swapmeet for mine, I had heard good things about the hock steel used in these chisels and felt I would like to put this tool to the test. re the LMI web site:

"Schneider glue-clearing chisel. Specifically designed by Richard Schneider for removing glue squeeze-out from the sides of bracing. This chisel has a precisely curved blade with a specially ground bevel, which simplifies an otherwise difficult and time consuming task. Richard said this was probably the most used tool in his shop.
Although, primarily for glue cleanup, the chisel is used wherever a flat-bottom chisel can’t be used. Richard also used it for carving braces and cleaning wood “fuzz” from certain areas of the top. It’s great for shaving braces, too! A long handle for two-handed control completes a tool that has received rave reviews from those who have used them."

After honing, I have no reason to argue with that statement. I find the chisel useful for carving braces as have others who have frequented this forum in the past and taken the time to commented in support. I guess we each have and are entitle to our opinions, but at the end of the day, unless one has actually gone through a process 'first hand', theirs remains nothing more than supposition.

Cheers

Kim

Tell me about the dread. I scored a set of near 'never used' blue label, wood handled, EA Bergs a few years back. Great score from ebay however lapping the back to a mirror from the factory grind was nothing short of finger numbing torcher. The drudgery literally went on for DAYS by the time I had them all perfectly flat and shining. However it was a job worth doing but certainly not something I would stick my aching hands up for again in a hurry. Thank goodness once is enough for bergs.

To get some idea of what I am talking about, have a look at this review which includes a set of Bergs in the mix. I found his comments re lapping to be very accurate.

http://www.spehar-toolworks.com/Articles/Chisel-Review.doc

Cheers

Kim

If you just want a glue clearing chisel you can try this. Being you have to grind the tip anyway and save yourself $60 bucks. Sorry but I just can't see paying $63 plus S&H for a chisel to clean up glue.
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/d ... mber=39698
For $3 it works. I'm going to try and aneal the shaft with a torch to put a smoother curve on it.
I bought a double bevel chisel for carving braces and like it. But I guess the next time I'm in Walmart I get a bag of sticks in the craft section and give that a go too before I aneal .

I agree on the Hock blades... They are definately good steel, and the price is good, but they do take some work initially.

If you do decide to sharpen out the dings... Don't use a grinder. That carbon steel looses temper quick if it gets hot! Sharpen them out by hand on Coarse stones... A couple rounds of sharpening should get the worst of them.

On chisels for brace shaving... I actually don't like the perfectly lapped flat backs. They seem harder to cut the curves and get in to tight sections with. My old pattern makers chisels have a nice hefty belly... and are Very nice for carving braces.. Neck mortises and tenons are a different matter all together -- so my fancy long paring chisels have nice flat backs.

Thanks

John