Narex Richter chisels. A century of thought at the edge of a cut.

The board used to have a different job.

Before it became a drawer side, a cabinet rail or a guitar component, wood was part of a living plant. The USDA Forest Products Laboratory’s chapter on wood structure begins with that essential fact. Wood developed to conduct water, support the plant and store biochemicals. Its architecture belongs to those functions.

That is a useful thing to remember when a board declines to behave like a perfectly uniform manufactured substance. It contains organized cells. Many run along the tree’s axis, while rays provide a radial system. Cross sections and lengthwise surfaces expose different views of that organization.

The Forest Products Laboratory’s description of commercial woods also connects their properties to cellulose, hemicelluloses, lignin and cellular structure. The material’s behavior is a consequence of both its chemistry and its arrangement.

To my mind, that makes woodworking a particularly interesting form of design. The maker begins with a material that already has an internal order. The work is to understand that order well enough to produce another useful object from it.

A chisel is one of the instruments of that negotiation. It can approach a local area, remove a small amount and expose what is happening. The person holding it still has to read the material. The tree did not leave a convenient assembly manual in the box.

The name on the tool is historical. The range is current.

The Richter Extra introduction identifies the line as the centenary project honoring Václav Richter. Its focus is the combination of materials, heat treatment and machining. That is a more interesting commemoration than simply adding a date to an otherwise unchanged handle.

There is a current corporate chapter as well. The manufacturer’s company history records Mikov’s acquisition of Narex Bystřice in 2019 and the official merger into Mikov, s.r.o., on January 1, 2025. Narex continues as the hand-tool brand. The current manufacturer site carries the Richter products and their technical descriptions.

The particular subject here is the Richter bevel-edge bench chisel. The current family also includes different configurations for different kinds of access. It is useful to keep the bench chisel’s identity clear, because a familiar family name can appear on tools whose proportions answer different questions.

That combination of continuity and specificity is what I want from an innovation story. The past gives the object context. The current product gives us something concrete to examine. Neither has to do all the work of the other.

Hardness is a measurement with a specific assignment.

The Richter Extra line introduction states a minimum hardness of 62 HRC. The manufacturer’s line specification is the reference.

What does HRC actually mean? It identifies the Rockwell C scale. The NIST guide to Rockwell hardness measurement explains the measurement through the depth change produced by an indenter under a defined loading sequence. The scale and procedure matter; hardness is not a free-floating number that can be compared without its context.

It also measures a different thing from sharpness. A hardness test does not inspect the final intersection of the blade surfaces, and it does not tell you whether an edge has been honed well. The heat-treated material must support a cutting edge that is then created through grinding and sharpening.

That distinction makes the engineering more impressive to me. There is no one master specification that does everyone else’s job. The blade needs appropriate material properties and appropriate geometry. The production process brings them together.

A chisel can look simple because these decisions have been resolved before it reaches the bench. Simplicity in use often has a fairly substantial technical staff working behind the curtain.

The whole thermal history belongs to the material.

The word “cryo” attracts attention, but steelmaking rewards looking at the sequence. Hardening, subsequent treatment and the final condition of the material belong together. A single dramatic temperature is one detail in a larger process.

Bhadeshia’s questions and answers on steels discusses how tempering changes the hardened structure, including the movement of carbon from solid solution into carbides and the possible decomposition of retained austenite. The changes depend on the treatment conditions and the steel involved.

The useful lesson for a reader is that heat treatment does more than make a blade hot and then cold. The internal arrangement is being managed. The resulting properties belong to a material with a particular history.

That helps me appreciate the phrase “forged Cr-V steel” without treating the alloy name as the entire answer. Composition provides possibilities. Processing develops a condition suitable for the task. Finishing gives the object the surfaces and dimensions through which those properties become useful.

Narex publishes the broad outline of its Richter process, not every detail of the production recipe. There is plenty to admire in the documented work without inventing a furnace schedule or claiming to have looked at one of these blades under a microscope.

The quiet surface on the other side matters just as much.

The bevel gets most of the visual attention because it announces itself. The back of a chisel can appear less eventful, but it participates in forming the edge and provides a surface that can register against the work.

If two surfaces meet to make a cutting edge, their condition near that meeting place matters. Polishing only one side does not make the other side disappear. The quality of the edge belongs to their intersection.

This is why initial preparation and later honing are part of a chisel’s life. The maker creates the blade and its starting geometry. The owner refines and maintains the working edge for the task. A tool intended to be sharpened repeatedly has an ongoing relationship with its user.

I find that relationship more interesting than the idea of an object that is perfect once and then slowly used up. The chisel’s edge can be renewed. There is still finite material involved, of course, but maintenance is built into the way the object makes sense.

Width is another way of shaping the task.

The current Richter bevel-edge listing offers eight nominal widths, from 3 to 38 millimeters. The useful question is how the chosen width relates to the surface being worked. A narrow recess and a broad shoulder do not present the same geometry.

A larger tool is not automatically a more ambitious tool. Sometimes the ambitious act is to leave everything except one small area alone. A useful range of widths lets the maker match the edge to the scale of the decision.

An edge worth making is an edge worth keeping.

Narex recommends protecting the blade with its guard and using oil, wax or another corrosion inhibitor on the steel. These are ordinary requirements for maintaining an exposed tool-steel surface. The maker’s maintenance guidance treats care as part of ownership.

The logic is straightforward. The small area doing the cutting benefits from protection when it is no longer working. Storage should keep an edge from meeting other hard objects unintentionally. A blade that has been carefully honed deserves a better retirement between jobs than loose contact with the rest of a drawer.

I like tools for which care remains understandable. Protect the edge, protect the steel and renew the working surfaces when they need attention. There is no need to turn the routine into a ceremony, although a person is entitled to enjoy a well-organized roll of chisels more than is strictly necessary.

Maintenance also changes the time scale of the relationship. The product arrives as a manufactured object and continues as something the owner tends. That ongoing care is one of the reasons hand tools can remain meaningful long after the novelty of acquiring them has passed.

The next cut begins by looking at the last one.

A chisel offers unusually immediate feedback. The cut reveals a surface. The shaving, the resistance and the condition of what remains give the user information about the material and the approach. The next movement can respond to that information.

That feedback is one reason handwork can hold a person’s attention so completely. The task is physical, but it is also interpretive. There is a constant exchange between an intended result and the evidence of what the wood is doing.

The structure of a board makes that exchange necessary. Grain is not merely a decoration applied to the surface. Its direction reflects the organization of the wood. Around changing grain, a movement that worked comfortably in one place may need to be reconsidered in another.

I would not describe that as the tool doing the thinking. The value is that a well-suited tool gives the person a useful way to act on what they notice. The thin sides allow access; the edge allows a controlled removal; the handle allows guidance. The maker connects those capabilities to the piece in front of them.

The useful evidence is on the newly cut surface. Before another shaving comes off, the woodworker can look, adjust and decide. After all the furnaces, factory history and careful geometry, the next instruction comes from the wood.

Questions from the bench.