Brand new player, as of this week, and accidentally stumbled onto chiseling. As I'm still in the earliest caveman phase of the game, I've been using the chisel to remove one single pixel (..."bit"?... "voxel"?) from a natural stone block, mining it out as it drops as a full 'chiseled' block -- not broken into stones, and then building my first home with it. This has cut down tremendously on work, materials, durability, and general waste.
I've noticed that now these blocks cannot be used as crafting materials (until restored), which is fine. I'm curious though if this has reduced the blocks' durability or hardness, or other properties. Whatever resistance they might have to explosions, or fire, or any other effect I'm unaware of. Minecraft uses a hardness property for explosive resistance, as an example; Terraria has crafted bricks that are incorruptible despite being made from corruptible raw materials. Any known changes to properties like this would be very valuable additions to any documentation made to the chiseling system!!