Today, because I was at a loss for something useful to do, I started working on some handles for some of my Dad's socketed chisels; these have been without handles at least since my grandfather died and Dad inherited them. Making octagonal chisel handles is not that difficult; my hand tools mailing list has been talking about them recently, with several web pages up on the subject. Due to dinner I haven't gotten any further than cutting some of the blanks out of the hunk of red oak I'm making them out of. That, however, was the first time I had to use Dad's newly sharpened panel saw in anger, and on something that he said would probably cause his chop saw or radial arm saw to choke. It turns out, much to my joy, that cutting 2" × 8" hunks of hard oak is not that difficult if the saw is sharp.
Incidentally, the reason I'm going for octagonal rather than some of the turned handles you see on some of those pages is pretty simple; I am presently lathe-less and turning a square block of wood into an octagonal block of wood is as easy as planing the corners.
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