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Make A Better Chisel And…

Hard Cap Technologies has reinvented the chisel. This new chisel, called the Hard Cap Safety Chisel, features design elements that protect users against injuries, something that chisel makers had never thought to do before.

Hard Cap Safety Tools is the latest edition of a tool designed nearly 10,000 years ago. The story behind the development of the Hard Cap Safety Tools illustrates how innovative product ideas and research can alter the luck of a small company threatened by harsh economic and business trends.

Founded in 1925, Baltimore Tool Works, which manufactures Hard Cap Safety Chisel, has forged millions of struck tools under its own brand and the brands of many nationally known companies. Like many small businesses, Baltimore Tool Works has overcome numerous business challenges over the years. None, however, was more serious than the looming crisis that Harry McCarty, the third-generation president of the family owned Baltimore Tool Works, sensed in 2001. As recession pummeled U.S. manufacturing, low-cost manufacturers were springing up around the world to challenge U.S. companies. Some of these international manufacturers could make high quality struck tools for less than half the cost charged by U.S. based manufacturers. McCarty worried that imported chisels would soon shatter the domestic struck tool industry.

McCarty and other U.S. manufacturers had faced similar threats during the 1980s, when European and Pacific Rim manufacturers built automated factories, cut labor costs, and undercut U.S. prices for vehicles, electronic equipment, and other products. Back then, McCarty survived by utilizing lean manufacturing procedures in the Baltimore Tool Works production process. The move doubled production, improved quality, and allowed price cuts to match the competition.

As prices began dropping again in 2001, McCarty was trapped. He had already wrung as much productivity as possible out of his forge plant. Further price cuts would only initiate a slow decline toward eventual oblivion. There was another alternative: product redesign. The U.S. auto industry had remade itself by developing new product designs for minivans and sport utility vehicles. U.S. television manufacturers were mounting a comeback with high-definition television sets. In each case, companies beaten down by low-priced competition had mounted a comeback with redesigned products that commanded higher prices.

Redesign a chisel? Chisels had been around for thousands of years. In all that time, their basic design had been altered perhaps three times: from stone bronze, from bronze to iron, and from iron to steel. What else could be done?

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A Brief History Of Chisels

About the time of the invention of the wheel, an early artisan thought of striking a long piece of rock with a flat piece of rock to cut other rocks. The idea caught on. During the Bronze Age, someone hit on the idea of forging these cutting tools from an alloy of copper and tin. About the year 1000 chisels were upgraded once again; this time with iron.

The Romans started using the word cesium to describe a chisel. Nearly a thousand years later, in 1382, John Wycliffe published the word in English for the first time. In translating a passage from the Biblical account of Job, he wrote: “Who giueth to me that my wordis be writen?…or with a chisell thei be grauen in flint?”

Besides inventing a word to describe a chisel, no one thought much about chisel design between the Iron Age and today. Chisels did undergo incremental technical improvements, thanks to the rise of metal alloys, steel in particular, and better heat treatment techniques. Unlike the wheel, however, no one ever researched chisels with an eye toward making them safer. Research turned up during the Baltimore Tool Works redesign effort indicated that basic chisel has not changed for at least 100 years, since the discovery of steel.

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Thinking Up A Cutting Edge Idea

A few years ago, Harry McCarty started wondering about chisel safety. As president of Baltimore Tool Works, McCarty has served on the board of the Hand Tool Institute multiple times and on insurance claim committees looking closely at product design and safety review as they related to workplace injuries while using hand struck tools.

In reviewing claims, McCarty began to study the details of injuries related to striking tools. The most common injuries, of course, occurred when a user missed the chisel head with the hammer and hammered the fingers or wrist of his or her other hand. Those with perfect aim had complaints, too. After years of holding chisels and whacking them, some workers developed repetitive motion injuries in their hands and arms. The energy transferred to a struck chisel reverberates up and down both arms and can eventually cause debilitating injuries. Sometimes, mushroomed chisels would chip when hit, sending metal shards flying. McCarty also discovered a problem with noise. The high-pitched metal pinging sound created when a good hammer hit a well-made chisel could, over time, cause hearing loss.

Not only were there serious injuries from workplace accidents but also long term effects including repetitive motion injuries to arms and hands, high-pitched sounds causing hearing loss and in general, workplace fatigue.

These concerns set McCarty to wondering. What did scientific research show about reducing vibration and noise produced by struck tools? Was it possible to reinvent the chisel to make it vibrate less and ping more softly when struck? While many businesses might shy away from such questions about their core products, McCarty needed a product idea to help him battle the increasingly unmanageable competition from low-priced international manufacturers.

Other manufacturers of commodity products had taken their cause to Washington, asking for trade protection. McCarty reasoned that even if some kind of protectionist legislation became law, it would provide too little relief too late. Buyers for hardware chains were already demanding lower prices for chisels and beginning to limit buying from companies who would not meet those demands. McCarty asked several buyers for a hearing to sell the quality of Baltimore Tool Works products but found himself rebuffed. No one had time to talk about the relative merits of chisels. Bring the price down or sell the chisels somewhere else.

McCarty concluded that the only possible answer lay in product redesign. What if Baltimore Tool Works could make a chisel that reduced the incidence of injuries to workers? In today’s world, such a chisel might create a new market of interest to retailers. Pondering the question in his office one day, McCarty sketched out a urethane plastic cap that would fit on top of a chisel. He tried it in the shop. The cap deadened the pinging noise and seemed to reduce vibration. The overhanging sides of the cap reduced the problem of missing the top of the chisel and smashing up hands and fingers.

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Research And Development

A small manufacturing company has no staff available for research and development, so McCarty looked around for larger companies that might be interested as potential suppliers for his idea. He called DuPont and asked for research on plastic materials that would make a safety cap for chisels. DuPont indicated a mild interest but told McCarty he would have to work things out for himself. The company couldn’t afford to devote research and development resources to an idea that might work. It would have to work first. DuPont did make a suggestion: present the idea to the University of Delaware.

Every year, the University of Delaware in Newark, about an hour from Baltimore, runs a design forum for senior engineering students. A committee of professors selects a dozen proposals from hundreds of submissions made by corporations from around the country. GE, Ford, IBM, DuPont, and other Fortune 100 companies have submitted proposals over the years. In 2001, Baltimore Tool Works submitted a proposal for making a safer chisel. Given the competition from major companies, McCarty held out little hope for success. But he figured he had nothing to lose by asking.

In fact, the selection committee liked the chisel proposal. The idea tapped an important design trend toward safety. It was also a relatively simple problem that student engineers could get their arms around. The goal would be to improve conventional hand-struck tool designs in order to reduce the detrimental effects associated with their long-term use.

Research began with a literature search for studies on chisel mechanics. Little information was unearthed. Most tools are still manufactured from medium to high carbon steel, and the basic configurations of typical hand struck tools including chisels and punches have remained unchanged for centuries. Most work in recent decades has focused on improved designs for power tools, and was driven by their larger market presence and value compared to hand struck tools.

The University of Delaware, along with Harry McCarty, built a test stand with an automated hammering arm. The stand would compare the hitting forces required to work with a conventional chisel and a chisel equipped with various kinds of impact resistant plastic safety caps. Meters measured hitting forces, cutting effectiveness, vibrations produced in the chisels when struck, and the pinging tones made by the chisels when struck.

For many months during 2002, the test stand hammered away on chisels with bare heads and with capped heads. They took thousands of measurements.

How many hits would cut a certain material with a bare chisel? How many hits would cut that material with a cap of this thickness and that thickness; made of this advanced polymer? A series of technical papers were submitted to the 2003 ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition.

The findings reported that all of the caps tested helped protect the hands of users. Thinner caps transferred more force to the chisels cutting edge. The thinnest caps transferred the most force, but broke down and had to be replaced. Then McCarty came up with a cap material and cap thickness that optimized cutting force and durability.

They modified that cap based on vibration testing, again optimizing the cap so that it would combine the most cutting force, the longest life, and the least harmful vibration.

Finally, cap materials were optimized to reduce pinging sounds below audible frequencies that might harm hearing. The striking surface of two and a half times larger eliminates flying chips and mushrooming, significantly improving the safety performance of the tool.

Research discovered that a chisel with the most efficient polymer cap could be sharpened to 60-degrees with no reduction in durability. Because the cap reduced the force applied to the chisel, the sharper edge would last longer. The capped 60-degree chisel cut easier than an uncapped 65-degree chisel.

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Chiseling A Sales Strategy

“We incorporated the new design to the basic cold chisel, though we see the potential for Hard Cap across numerous lines of tools. Our objective was to reduce noise, vibration and spalling associated with hammer struck tools while improving cutting power and safety performance,” reported McCarty.

McCarty’s first inclination was to take the product to high-end industrial users, who understood the need for the best tools and the importance of worker safety. Just to be sure he wasn’t underestimating the broader market, he mentioned the new product to Home Depot’s northeast regional buyer. The idea excited the buyer who thought the Hard Cap fit perfectly with recent trends in other lines. Home Depot had recently introduced anti-vibration hammers to their line.

With an enthusiastic response from the regional buyer, McCarty traveled to Home Depot headquarters in Atlanta and spoke with the Global Merchant for hand tools. Negotiations moved quickly. The parties signed a letter of agreement in early January 2004. Within a month, Baltimore Tool Works had ramped up production to meet an order for 100,000 Hard Cap chisels.

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The Launch

On June 5, 2004, the new line began shipping Home Depot stores across the eastern third of the country. Hard Cap Safety Tools line of thirty-four tools includes chisels, brick sets, punches, and star drills is now available to the professional and industrial markets.

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Background

Founded in 1925, Baltimore Toolworks (www.baltimoretoolworks.com) has been manufacturing precision struck tools for nearly 80 years. The forging company, which is based in Baltimore, employs the latest manufacturing software systems and lean production methods. It produces more than 400 tool patterns under the Baltimore Toolworks name and for many nationally known private labels.

For more information about Hard Cap Safety Chisels and other Baltimore Toolworks products, write or call Harry (Downie) McCarty at Baltimore Toolworks, 110 W. West Street, Baltimore, MD 21230. Phone: 800-752-5533 extension 180. Fax: 410-752-0528. Email: dmccarty@baltimoretool.com.

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