More wood

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.

Victoly!

One of my grandad's chisels, which my father inherited, has a handle now! That is, I have finally finished a project. Pictures later. Cutting a cylinder out of a square block of wood using only a chisel and mallet, by the way, is a mind boggling pain in the butt. I may have to move the lathe project up a bit.

Chisel handle

Here are the promised handle pictures.

This is my grandfather's chisel, which my dad inherited sans handle. I decided to make a quickie out of some oak I had around, and it came out pretty well. I really need a lathe, though.

Note the lack of a ferrule. Carving a cylinder out of a block of wood was hard enough once. It means that this chisel, while fine for paring (hand pushing) is unsuitable for being hit with a mallet.