Chamfer/Deburring Tool: Cheaper is Better

This $4 chamfer tool has saved many of my chair seats from being dinged during assembly – a quick chamfer on the end of the sticks makes them much less bitey. Plus, the tool is great for pointing pegs for drawboring or before pounding pegs through a dowel plate.

You can buy them at plumbing supply stores, or at good home centers. If you can’t find them there, buy them from Amazon.

But, please, for all that is holey (dowel plates, chair seats, peg holes) do not buy the fancy versions of this tool. You heard me. If you buy the carbide ones, there’s a good chance they’ll chatter more than cut. Buy the hand-powered deburring tools and there’s a 100 percent chance they will just chew up your work while flapping like a duck’s ass.

Buy the cheap, high speed steel (HSS) ones. The one in my toolbox has chamfered every stick of mine and my students for the last 10 years. And it still cuts great. You don’t need a carbide chamfer/deburring tool. Or one where you can change the hex shank. Or one with an aircraft-grate aluminum body milled from a single billet.

The cheap HSS chamfer/deburring tool has a mouth opening of 15/16", which sucks pinto beans because my leg tenons are 1" in diameter (so I have to chamfer them with a rasp). If you run your peg all the way to the bottom of the tool, it will end up 1/4" in diameter at the tip.

No, it can’t cut a tapered tenon (students have asked). No, I don’t think you can resharpen it (or will you ever have to). As far as I know it only comes in black.

Chuck it in your drill. Flick the drill on high. Chamfer. Joy.