Search for used Marples chisels and two kinds fill the results. One has a blue plastic handle and has usually lived a hard life in somebody's site box. The other has a honey-colored boxwood handle and a brass ferrule and looks like it came out of a cabinetmaker's chest. People call the wooden one pre-Blue Chip, which suggests one replaced the other. It didn't. Marples sold both, side by side, for thirty years. What changed over time was how each was made, and that matters more than the handle when you're buying one used.
Where Marples came from
William Marples set up as a joiner's tool maker in Sheffield around 1830, though the firm's own catalogs claimed 1828. By 1859 he and three of his sons were at the Hibernia Works in Westfield Terrace, and the company took the shamrock as a trademark in 1862. In 1875 it registered two more, the word HIBERNIA and a triple shamrock, and you'll still see that pair stamped on older chisels. The historian behind williammarplesandsons.com has found HIBERNIA on tools as late as 1943. Marples was a family business until 1962, when it was sold jointly to William Ridgway and C. & J. Hampton, the maker of Record tools. The two merged as Record Ridgway in 1972. After that the brand went through Bahco, Record Holdings, the American Tool Companies and Newell Rubbermaid, which renamed its tool arm Irwin in 2003.
The boxwood chisel
Marples' bevel-edge chisel with a boxwood carver-pattern handle carried catalog number 377 from at least 1909 to 1998, and a square-edged twin, the 317, ran almost as long. Before the 1950s every Marples chisel had a wooden handle, ash, beech or boxwood, and there was no plastic in the catalogs until after the war. Over those 90 years the boxwood chisel changed in ways you can see in a photo.
- Square neck. Before about 1952 the blade met the ferrule in a square-sectioned neck. The Marples historian rates these as the best of the line.
- Round neck. Around 1952 Marples moved to a drop-forged round neck, probably to cut costs. These still had full brass ferrules and handles sized to the blade.
- Tapered neck. From about 1985 the necks were tapered, every width had the same size handle, and the ferrules were shortened and later made of brass-plated steel.
The handle transfers help too. A small green shamrock transfer points to roughly 1958 to 1967, and a red one to about 1967 to 1973. Some late chisels have no maker's mark at all, which is confusing, but they're still Marples.
The plastic handles arrive
The first plastic Marples handle was the Splitproof, introduced around 1954 in amber cellulose acetate butyrate, later red and yellow. It came on the 373 bevel-edge firmer and the 313 firmer and was built to be hit with a hammer. Then, in 1968, Marples introduced the Blue Chip bevel-edge chisel, number 444, with a polypropylene handle, and added the 333 firmer in 1971. By the 1984 catalog Record Marples was selling five ranges of bench chisels at once, the boxwood 377, the Blue Chip 444, the Splitproof 373 and two ash-handled lines. The catalog called the boxwood the choice of the craftsman, the Splitproof the construction worker's chisel and the Blue Chip the range for the professional woodworker. It said the Blue Chip was designed for the mallet but would take occasional hammer blows, and that its square handle was less likely to slip in the hand.
That hammer-friendly reputation is why so many used Blue Chips look rough. The Marples historian is blunt about it, saying neither the Blue Chip nor the Splitproof was ever meant as a fine-woodwork chisel. They're trade chisels with little feel or balance, built to survive. One owner who weighed a Blue Chip against a Stanley socket chisel found the Marples the heavier-feeling of the two.
Sheffield or not
For the Blue Chip, the important date is about 2008. Irwin kept making bevel-edge Marples chisels in Sheffield after it took over Record, and the early Irwin ones still have MADE IN SHEFFIELD etched on the blade. After about 2008 production moved abroad. The historian warns that some of the later chisels have only a light etched name that rubs off easily, so a worn blade with no mark can be passed off as older work. Read the top of the blade in the photos before you look at anything else.
- Early Marples-made Blue Chips have electro-etched markings on the blade and a semi-oval MARPLES mark in the handle.
- Record-era chisels often read SHEFFIELD ENGLAND on the blade, with Record Marples or MARPLES on the handle.
- Late Irwin sets came with black plastic edge guards, open at the toe.
Which to buy
For fine work, buy a boxwood 377 with a square or round neck. A round-necked one from the 1950s to the 1970s still has the proper brass ferrule and graded handles, and it's the sensible user buy. If you collect, the square-necked chisels with a clear HIBERNIA stamp are the ones to hunt. Check the boxwood at the ferrule and the top for splits, and ask whether the handle is tight.
For rough work, site jobs, or a set you won't mind hitting, buy a Sheffield-etched Blue Chip and use it the way it was designed. Count the set, check that the marks match from chisel to chisel, and pass on anything that says Irwin with no country, or that has no etch at all.
There's a middle path if you like the idea of a handle you can hit but want an older forging. The Marples historian says any Splitproof chisel with a round neck is an original Marples tool, made before the tapered necks came in, and calls those the best Splitproofs ever made. They're the oval amber or red-and-yellow handles, and they turn up in the same listings as Blue Chips. Our 1918–1941 and 1962 and later era pages show which tools in the catalog come from each side of that change.
Either way, Marples isn't the only choice. Sorby chisels come from three different Sheffield firms, so read our Sorby bevel-edge chisel page before you buy one. The American socket chisels, like the Stanley 750, Witherby socket firmer and Greenlee firmer, were built to be driven with a mallet. Compare them all on the bench chisel page, read the full maker story on the Marples brand page, or go straight to the Blue Chip and boxwood listings. If you're new to buying old tools, the user-grade vs collector-grade guide is about planes but makes the same point, that condition beats pedigree. Everything for sale right now is on browse.
