mortise chisel, registered or tapered?

I own the Sorby’s and they are just fine for most furniture
work. If you are building big stuff you might like the
Hirsch chisels.

The Sorby Registered chisels are great for short mortises -
the chisel itself doesn’t get in the way of the mortising.
With a deeper chisel like the Hirch you may find you have
to dig the waste out of short mortises with a regular chisel.

The Sorby’s do not “register”against the side of the mortise
as well as a bigger chisel will. When you are fresh and paying
a lot of attention keeping things neat won’t be a problem…
but when you start to tire you may find they twist in the
mortise more than you would like.

I love my Sorby’s. I use them as regular chisels a lot as well.
They don’t hold an edge as well as my Japanese chisels
but they are alright. Mortise chisels get dulled fast by
all the pounding so you have to keep an eye on the edges
if you use them much,

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Hi Martin,

I have the Hirsch 3/8” (10 mm) mortise chisel, barely used, that I’m going to put up on ebay soon. I’ll sell it to you for $25 shipping included if you want to give these a try.

This kind of mortise chisel is nice because they stay pointed in the right direction where the thin chisels want to turn sideways easily. If you haven’t actually held one of these Hirsch’s you’ll be surprised at the size. They are very large. I’m selling mine because I’m working on assembling a set of English mortise chisels which are similar in style.

-- johnjoiner