Broke my second best chisel today. The one I have had since woodworking school. Tried to use it as a pry bar. Knew better, did it anyway.
Some lessons you have to learn twice apparently.
Ordered a replacement from Lee Valley. Will not be the same. That chisel had twenty years of muscle memory in it.
Let me paint the picture. I am fitting a drawer, which means shaving tiny amounts from the drawer sides until it slides into the opening with just the right resistance – not too loose, not too tight. It is fussy work. You take a pass with the hand plane, test the fit, take another pass. Repeat until it is perfect.
The Moment of Stupidity
The drawer was stuck. Really stuck. I had fitted it too tight – my fault, got aggressive with the plane – and now it was wedged into the carcase opening. I tried tapping it out with a mallet. Tried wiggling it. Tried some very creative language.
Then I spotted my 1/2 inch chisel on the bench.
The smart move would have been to walk away. Get a thin piece of scrap, wedge it in behind the drawer, pry gently. Or clamp a block to the front of the drawer and use that as a purchase point. Or just wait until my frustration cooled and my brain started working again.
Instead, I grabbed the chisel, jammed the blade into the gap between drawer and carcase, and levered.
Snap.
The blade broke about an inch up from the cutting edge. Clean break, right through the steel. The chisel is now two pieces, neither of them useful.
The Chisel History
That chisel was a Marples Blue Chip, made in Sheffield sometime in the 1990s. I bought it at a woodworking trade show when I was in my second year of furniture-making school. Could not afford a full set – I think I paid 35 dollars for just this one – but the 1/2 inch size handles about 60% of the chisel work I do, so I figured it was a good investment.
Twenty years. Twenty years of mortises and dovetails and hinge recesses and fine paring. The handle had darkened from the oil of my hands. The bevel had been sharpened so many times it was shorter than when I bought it. The corners of the blade were slightly rounded from all that careful honing.
I knew exactly how much pressure to put behind that chisel to take a tissue-thin shaving. I knew its quirks – it liked to drift left on cross-grain cuts, needed more camber than my other chisels to avoid corner dig-in. I could sharpen it in the dark.
None of that saved it from my moment of idiocy.
Why I Did It Anyway
I have been teaching woodworking part-time for the last few years. One of the first things I tell students: never use a chisel as a pry bar. Never use a screwdriver as a chisel. Never use any tool for something it was not designed to do. Tools are precise instruments, engineered for specific tasks. Abuse them and they fail.
I know this. I teach this. I have given this exact lecture probably fifty times.
And yet.
Here is the uncomfortable truth: even experienced woodworkers make stupid mistakes. The difference is supposed to be that we make them less often. That we recognize the moment of temptation and resist it. That the lesson, once learned, stays learned.
Apparently not always.
The Replacement
I ordered a Veritas PM-V11 1/2 inch bench chisel from Lee Valley. It is objectively a better chisel than the Marples – the steel holds an edge longer, the tolerances are tighter, the fit and finish are immaculate. It costs about 60 dollars.
It will be here next week. I will sharpen it carefully, breaking in the new bevel, learning its personality. Within a year, I will be as comfortable with it as I was with the Marples.
But it will not be the same. It will not have the history. It will not have the stories – the memory of the dovetails on my first commission piece, the drawer fronts for the dresser I built when my daughter was born, the hundreds of small projects that all passed through that 1/2 inch blade.
A new tool is just a tool. An old tool is a partnership.
The Lesson Relearned
I have got a new rule in the shop now. When I feel the urge to use the wrong tool – when the right tool is across the room and the wrong tool is right here – I stop. Walk away. Get a cup of coffee. Come back when the frustration has passed.
It is a rule I already knew. I just needed to pay 35 dollars and twenty years of muscle memory to remember it.
The drawer, by the way, came out fine once I calmed down and used a scrap block to pry it loose. Fits perfectly now. Slides like butter.
Small victory. Expensive lesson.
The broken chisel is sitting on my sharpening station as a reminder. I will probably keep it there for a while.
