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A Better Handle The handles to these tools are a complex shape that gives the user feedback to keep the tool true in the cut. The handles are elliptical in cross-section and are tapered both front to back and side to side. This elliptical shape tell you instantly whether or not the tool's bevel is straight on your work. And the tapers allow the tool to fit your hand gracefully.
Reaching Back to Sheffield Joel Moskowitz, the owner of Tools for Working Wood, learned many of his hand tool skills while studying under Maurice Fraser. Fraser introduced Moskowitz to this pattern of mortising chisel, and when Moskowitz started his tool-selling business a few years later he really wanted to sell that pattern to his customers. "I start the business and no one makes real mortise chisels," he says. "Just sash mortising chisels, which are for shallower mortises and in softwoods. So I carried those. But as you know, I'm a purist." Moskowitz eventually met Ray and Barry Iles, two sons of legendary Sheffield toolmaker Ashley Iles. Barry runs Ashley Iles Ltd., which sells nice carving tools and bevel-edge chisels. And Ray makes a wide variety of tools for his company, including a reproduction of the Norris A5 smoothing plane. About four years ago, Moskowitz invited the brothers to the United States to attend a woodworking show and get acquainted. And in Moskowitz's Manhattan apartment, the ball to develop mortise chisels began rolling. Moskowitz handed over his personal set of mortisers and asked simply, "Can you make these?" The brothers stared at the tools silently and intently for a long time. They said that yes they could, in theory. But that there was no market for the tools in England. Time passed, and Moskowitz continued to press Ray to give it a try, and Ray eventually became deeply interested in figuring out how to make these complex tools. Ideas and prototypes began flying back and forth across the Atlantic. And eventually, in July, the first shipment of Ray Iles mortising chisels landed in New York City. "We're now talking about other tools to make – our goal is to make the most difficult tool possible," Moskowitz says with a laugh. "You have to appreciate (Ray's) skill. He's not reinventing the wheel. He innovating in a classic tradition. Someone who knows the old traditions can do stuff – he has the hand skills to do an oval handle. He doesn't have to look for a shortcut."
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