Chisel with teeth

A woodworking chisel is supposed to have a perfectly flat back, because that’s how it works: the back guides the chisel as it cuts, using the surface it’s just visited as the template for what it’s about to shave next. So it doesn’t make sense to un-flatten the back by forging a rack of rasp teeth into it...or does it? 

Well, you got to hand it to the tool designers at Nicholson, who came up with the Wood Chuck chisel-rasp combination tool. Their target market is the guy installing lock sets. He has to chisel little flat spots for the strike plate and maybe for the escutcheon, and he has to fit the cylinder into whatever raggedy hole he’s inherited or hacked through the door. Sometimes he wants a chisel, sometimes he wants a rasp, and sometimes he wants both.

So rasp teeth on the flat back can come in pretty handy, and half-round rasp teeth on the beveled top face can be even handier. At only $25 for a set of 3 (½-inch, ¾-inch, and 1-inch), there's not much wood that the Wood Chuck couldn't chuck. Especially if you’re like me and you wouldn't want to lug around your whole toolbox for a fiddly little doorknob job.