How to Use Chisels

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Photo: Steve Scott There are two basic moves with a chisel. This is chopping. A few taps with a hammer or mallet help the chisel cut across the grain. Here a woodworker has already sawn the sides of his dovetails, and is starting to chisel out the waste.

Photo: Steve Scott And this is paring, which is done with the grain, instead of across it. So hand pressure is all that is needed. Notice how the chopping cuts were done first, and then the paring cuts remove a chunk of wood, stopping perfectly at the earlier cuts. Chop, pare, chop pare, and the dovetails are done.

Photo: Thomas McKenna The bench chisel can be used for a wide variety of tasks, like squaring a mortise after the middle has been drilled out.

Photo: Thomas McKenna You can also use a chisel for making the square notch for a hinge. You first make a series of chopping cuts, working up to your layout lines, and then pare away the waste to leave a clean hinge mortise.

There are a few types of chisels, but you’ll use the garden-variety wood chisel (called a bench chisel) 95% of the time. The first thing you need to know about any hand tool is that it must be razor sharp to work well. Be sure to check out our step-by-step video on How to Sharpen Handplanes and Chisels, and practice a bit. A chisel has one unique requirement: Its back must be perfectly flat for it to slice a straight path through wood.

You can do two valuable things with a bench chisel, chop and pare, and often you’ll do them in tandem.

Paring cuts (second photo above) are thin slices along the grain lines. Your back hand provides all the power you need, and your front hand guides the edge of the tool. 

Chopping cuts (first photo above) are made across the grain, usually straight down into the face of a board. As you might guess, cutting across the grain is tougher sledding, so you’ll often tap or even smack the end of the handle with a wood mallet.

A typical move is to chop down where you want a cut to stop, usually at a layout or scribe line, and then to pare up to that point to remove a chunk of wood in a very controlled way. This is how carvers work, too.

Posted by: Asa Christiana - contributor

October 18, 2010

in How To, Hand Tool Skills, Chisels