Alf
Established Member
A bashed together this one to demonstrate a couple of things:
a) You don't need a lathe to make chisel handles. Neither do you need to try and make round handles off the lathe - take advantage of the benefits of non-round handles.
b) You don't need fancy tools to do this sort of thing.
c) Plastic handled chisels can be made bearable for even the dedicated wooden handle user.
d) There's nothing so daft that I won't try and encourage someone else to do... 8-[
A quick look at the contents of the famous Seaton Chest will show you a sort of squashed tapered octagon handle shape on many of the chisels, which is flippin' comfy. This is kinda an approximation, but I probably didn't take as much trouble over it as I would have if the chisel had been worth the effort...
First, take your unlovely plastic handled chisel. In this case a Stanley 5500; not very old at all and really very, very unlovely indeed.
Remove the plastic that doth offend your hand. I used a hot air gun, but hacksawing it off is another option I've tried with success.
And here is the rather odd tang revealed; a brief trip to the grinder dealt with the vestigial lugs. Two options; spend a while grinding it into a square tapered tang; or cheat, bore a hole and get out the Araldite...
I cheated. Well I did the tang thing last time I did this, so I wanted to see how the epoxy'd hold up. The handle in potentia is a piece of beech, about 1" x 1 1/4". In hindsight maybe 1 1/2" would have been better, but then again... Length is up to you. And yes, we attach the handle before we do the shaping. If you want to be all posh, you could refer to this as "the workmanship of risk". I call it "in that case let's try not to make too big a mess of the handle shaping then, shall we?" :wink:
First stage, a taper shape across the width. Then the same on the thin sides, so you've got a sort of tapering oblong-ish shape. I actually slightly curve the taper so it's not dead straight, but a bit convex.
The high-tech tool used for this delicate shaping? That Groz block plane. No fancy tools, see? If you like you could look on it as a good opportunity to play with a spokeshave. Or just sand the heck out of it.
You might need to do a bit of angling to avoid trying to plane the blade of the chisel, but to be honest it's not much likely to hurt either of these tools... :wink:
Then it's a case of planing down the corners to make the squashed octagon shape. I pencilled in a couple of lines to give me a guide, but to be honest it ended up being a case of a tweak here, a tweak there to get it in line with the chisel - which is the benefit of doing the shaping after fitting the blade. Ah ha :idea:
A bit of rounding over of the facets at the butt end to make a comfortable area to push against, a wipe of shellac and a lick of wax and it's... well still ugly, but slightly less so than it was. IMO. Of course you may be sitting there, banging your head on the monitor, wailing "why, Alf? Why? That beautiful plastic handle, destroyed. And for this?!". Sorry.
At about that point I lost the plot completely and spent time grinding down the agricultural bevels, regrinding the primary bevel and honing the lot on the felt wheel. Pearls before swine really, but it did perform okay once it was done. Should need resharpening again by the end of that shaving... :roll:
So I don't want to hear any more excuses, ya hear? [-X
:wink:
Cheers, Alf
a) You don't need a lathe to make chisel handles. Neither do you need to try and make round handles off the lathe - take advantage of the benefits of non-round handles.
b) You don't need fancy tools to do this sort of thing.
c) Plastic handled chisels can be made bearable for even the dedicated wooden handle user.
d) There's nothing so daft that I won't try and encourage someone else to do... 8-[
A quick look at the contents of the famous Seaton Chest will show you a sort of squashed tapered octagon handle shape on many of the chisels, which is flippin' comfy. This is kinda an approximation, but I probably didn't take as much trouble over it as I would have if the chisel had been worth the effort...
First, take your unlovely plastic handled chisel. In this case a Stanley 5500; not very old at all and really very, very unlovely indeed.
Remove the plastic that doth offend your hand. I used a hot air gun, but hacksawing it off is another option I've tried with success.
And here is the rather odd tang revealed; a brief trip to the grinder dealt with the vestigial lugs. Two options; spend a while grinding it into a square tapered tang; or cheat, bore a hole and get out the Araldite...
I cheated. Well I did the tang thing last time I did this, so I wanted to see how the epoxy'd hold up. The handle in potentia is a piece of beech, about 1" x 1 1/4". In hindsight maybe 1 1/2" would have been better, but then again... Length is up to you. And yes, we attach the handle before we do the shaping. If you want to be all posh, you could refer to this as "the workmanship of risk". I call it "in that case let's try not to make too big a mess of the handle shaping then, shall we?" :wink:
First stage, a taper shape across the width. Then the same on the thin sides, so you've got a sort of tapering oblong-ish shape. I actually slightly curve the taper so it's not dead straight, but a bit convex.
The high-tech tool used for this delicate shaping? That Groz block plane. No fancy tools, see? If you like you could look on it as a good opportunity to play with a spokeshave. Or just sand the heck out of it.
You might need to do a bit of angling to avoid trying to plane the blade of the chisel, but to be honest it's not much likely to hurt either of these tools... :wink:
Then it's a case of planing down the corners to make the squashed octagon shape. I pencilled in a couple of lines to give me a guide, but to be honest it ended up being a case of a tweak here, a tweak there to get it in line with the chisel - which is the benefit of doing the shaping after fitting the blade. Ah ha :idea:
A bit of rounding over of the facets at the butt end to make a comfortable area to push against, a wipe of shellac and a lick of wax and it's... well still ugly, but slightly less so than it was. IMO. Of course you may be sitting there, banging your head on the monitor, wailing "why, Alf? Why? That beautiful plastic handle, destroyed. And for this?!". Sorry.
At about that point I lost the plot completely and spent time grinding down the agricultural bevels, regrinding the primary bevel and honing the lot on the felt wheel. Pearls before swine really, but it did perform okay once it was done. Should need resharpening again by the end of that shaving... :roll:
So I don't want to hear any more excuses, ya hear? [-X
:wink:
Cheers, Alf
