# Dull Tools



## ship (Jul 11, 2007)

What are you looking for in use of the following tools and for each by way of sharpness, angle of cut and alignment, what’s corrective action and or point you replace or do not buy them? 

Utility Knife Blade.
Knife Blade.
Chisel.
Plane.
Calipers.
Spirit Level.
Dikes (Diagonal Side Cutting Pliers.)
Cable Cutters.
Screw Cutting slots on multi-tool wire strippers.
Phillips Bit.
Slotted Screw Driver Bit.
Hex Key.
Torx Key.
Twist Drill Bit.
Auger Bit.
Spade Bit.
Socket.
C-Wrench (Adjustable Wrench.)

In other words, what about them is notable by way of look or what you detect in use & or can you sharpen say a pair of dikes? In say buying them dikes, what are you first looking at? This beyond specific differences in brand of said tools such as the Journeyman series or D2000-48 of Klien that are hardened to stay sharp longer than something otherwise just off the shelf.

Speaking of this concept of quality but in a different sense. 
Drill bits. What is the difference in them say between solid carbide, high speed steel & others by way of drilling speed and what you drill?
What’s the difference in surface treatments for general purpose use such as on wood, aluminum & steel overall use? Do you say need a TiALN coated bit persay?
What’s the difference in cutting oils for use on steel verses aluminum?
Most important, what is the common drill bit angle: 118 degrees or 135 degrees & what’s the benefits or disadvantages of each? Would one bit be better for wood and not as good for steel? Which one?

A industrial supplier supplies you with a 3/16" drill bit & it works for a long time & eventually dies out after a period of time while drilling steel. You go to your local hardware store & get something off the shelf & it shatters immediately under the same conditions. What was most likely two primary differences in the drill bit which caused the bit to break given similar surface coatings?


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## Chaos is Born (Jul 12, 2007)

ok, from what your asking in one of the couple dozen quesitons here that i read, i can answer to the best of my knowledge on sharpening a knife blade and a chisel as well as a hand plane

Knife blade sharpening - there are multiple stones you can buy for doing so, depending on the type of knife you have and the sharpness you want picking the right stone for you is critical, It also depends on how damaged your knife is and how much you need to work out of it.

Basically if you have a knife that is chipped along the blade a small amount you would start with a course stone working out the problem by doing even numbers of runs along the stone at a 23 degree angle (if you have a problem estimating this angle you can buy a little yellow wedge that is that angle). This angle is the way to get the sharpest and best cutting edge on your blade. Once your major defect is out of your blade you start working on a medium stone, this will start to get you a finer sharpness to your blade, remember to do the same number of strokes on each side of the blade to make sure its even and to acheive the correct sharpness. Using honing oil on these stones will help the process out quite a bit, the oil will carry the metal shavings away from the blade and keep them from interfering with the sharpness of your blade. Once you have done a decent amount of work on the medium corseness stone you can move to the fine stone to get that really fine edge that is the best to have on a blade. Remember that a sharp knife is safer than a dull knife. Repeat the process that you did for both the course and medium stones with the fine stone, using the same angle. The way to test the sharpness of your knife is to take a sheet of paper (regular printer paper) and hold it so that its vertical infront of you. Take the knife and place it at the top and just run it down into the edge of the paper, if it cuts the paper without crinkling it its sharp... course this also dulls the knife slightly so that one molicule edge you just finished putting on your knife is now gone and you can repeat your fine stone for another couple mins getting the perfect edge back...

Sharpening a chisel and a hand plane blade is relitivly the same...

using a grinding stone that can be set up as a grinding station next to your metal working area, you set the angle of the blade on the rest next to the wheel, not on the edge where it gets rounded very easily but on the flat side, this ensures a closer to straight edge than the most likely rounded over edge that the wheel is turning towards, just set the angle to whatever angle the specific chisels bevel is set at and work the chisel back and forth on the grinder wheel, the grinder wheel will make the chisel very hot fairly quickly and your first thought would be to douse in water, don't do this... this will only create many many small cracks (yes too hard to see with the naked eye) in your tool, instead of dousing it, just hold a cold chisel up to the hot one, this will cool the hot one down slower than water but fast enough that it will be useable in a few mins. This process can also be used for the hand plane blades.


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## Grog12 (Jul 12, 2007)

You can't fool me you can't sharpen a C-Wrench!

I replace mine when somebody steals it....
Or more recently when I found this. 
http://www.blackanddecker.com/ProductGuide/Product-Details.aspx?ProductID=15392


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## Logos (Jul 14, 2007)

There's a whole thread somewhere about focusing tools. This looks like a good addition to that list.


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## Chaos is Born (Jul 14, 2007)

Sharpening a Utility knife? i'd rather just spend the 30 cents to put a new blade in...


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## Chaos is Born (Jul 14, 2007)

ship said:


> A industrial supplier supplies you with a 3/16" drill bit & it works for a long time & eventually dies out after a period of time while drilling steel. You go to your local hardware store & get something off the shelf & it shatters immediately under the same conditions. What was most likely two primary differences in the drill bit which caused the bit to break given similar surface coatings?



Well my first thought would be that the steel that i was trying to cut through was hardened steel... but i'm guessing your not going to be that easy with the question...

What i would say the problem is between the two drill bits is the hardness of the aloy used in the drill bit itself. The one you got from the industrial supplier is most likely of high carbon high density and made for cutting metal from sun up till sun down... Could also be a straight titanium drill bit...

While the one off the shelf at the local hardware store is made out of a base aloy that is low carbide high density and coated with a layer of high carbon steel to give it a little bit of an edge on other drill bits.


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