carbide lettering chisel

With hammerhead. Length 210 mm.

Lettering chisels or flat chisels can be used to carve lettering and details out of the stone very well, but also to shape edges or - depending on the width of the cutting edge and size of the stone - to smooth surfaces.

General information on carbide chisels:

Sculpting tools made of carbide or with carbide inserts are particularly suitable for working on hard types of stone. Carbide tools need to be resharpened less frequently during work, as the material is so strong that there is less abrasion than with tools made of forged steel. The carbide cutting edge therefore has a longer service life.

Carbide chisels should always be loaded as evenly as possible and should not be used on one side, otherwise they can tilt and break. Levering movements when hammering can also lead to breakage. If carbide chisels are sharpened to a point or ground thin, careful working is required as carbide is a brittle material due to its hardness and can break easily when ground thin.

The rule of thumb for hard stone is: the harder the stone, the blunter the cutting angle of the chisel should be. With hard stone such as granite, the chisel is placed at almost a right angle and the stone is virtually pulverised. The chisel therefore has a very blunt cutting edge. For crystalline stone such as hard marble, a more pointed tool with a sharper cutting edge is required. The chisel is set flat so that the stone can chip off without damaging the underlying crystalline structure.

Tapered carbide point chisels are available with a conical cut and, more rarely, with a pyramid cut. The pyramid-ground tools come from Italy and are very suitable for working crystalline stone types such as marble. For sandstone, hard limestone and granite, conical ground chisels tend to be used.

Carbide chisels can also be used for working sandstone. As sandstone is highly abrasive, forged steel chisels can wear relatively quickly. Carbide cutting edges also have a longer service life here due to their hardness. However, it should be noted that the carbide pins are usually set in steel.

As with crystalline rock, pointed chisels tend to be used for working sandstone: the aim with this type of rock is to destroy the bond between the sand particles when striking, for which a pointed tool is better suited than a blunt one. However, the same applies here: for very hard sandstone, use less pointed chisels that are less likely to break.

KAPRA carbide chisels are manufactured by BAVARIA Steinmetzwerkzeuge according to the requirements of bildhau. You can find out more about the special features, production and quality of BAVARIA carbide tools in an interview with Andreas Weber, owner of BAVARIA Steinmetzwerkzeuge.