My carving teacher used to admonish me to do as much work as I could with the tool in my hand. Carvers often have a lot of tools on their benches. Swapping between them uses time. Use the tool in your hand until you can do no more work with it, then change.

I’ve just cut 13 brackets for a chest. They each have two ends with five edges at each end. That’s 130 edges. I started by using a block plane (an old Record 018  in case you’re only here for the tools!) for the straight edges and a chisel, bevel down, for the curves. The block plane wasn’t gaining me anything. The straight edges are so short that keeping the plane flat and the cut even was as much effort as doing the whole thing with a chisel. So I did.

If you’re paring end grain chamfers here are some notes.

• Pare along and up, never down.
• Always pare towards an already chamfered edge. That’s what the first corner cut is for.
• Bevel down on concave curves.
• As always – a very sharp chisel makes this a lot easier.